Capstone Project
Overview
The Sarah P. Duke Gardens is a 55 acre botanical garden that brings in over 400,000 visitors every year. For his capstone project, Brandon worked with the educational programming staff to develop an environmental justice curriculum for their K-5 students. The original project included two lesson plans to be taught one week, followed by an evaluation and a tailored version of the same lesson to a different group the following week. Due to COVID-19, all programming at the Duke Gardens was canceled and the project had to be modified. The project now includes five lesson plans (based in building community, recognizing diversity, speaking up when someone notices injustice, access to green space, and artistic expression), take-home sheets to send to parents for each lesson, an evaluation for the week, and an annotated resource on education materials used to develop the project. All project deliverables can be found below.
Key Learning:
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Curriculum Development
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Environmental Education Evaluation
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K-5 Environmental Education Standards
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Community-Based Education Models
Relation to Environmental Justice
In order to develop curriculum on environmental justice for such long audiences, Brandon had to find the core of EJ for which to lay the foundation. He decided it was community. The curriculum teaches the children to value diverse voices, talents, and experiences in their community and encourages them to speak up when they notice this is no longer the case. The lessons then build on this notion to outline a specific EJ issue in the Durham community, offering opportunities for them to meet volunteers working in the issues. Hopefully, these lessons will lay the groundwork for these students to grow into fierce advocates for environmental justice one day.