The Center for Ecoliteracy is appropriately housed within the David Brower Center, the first LEED Platinum-Certified building to be constructed in Berkeley, California. Best known for bringing ecological principles and sustainability into school curricula, the Center offers books, teaching guides, professional development seminars and consulting services, in addition to hundreds of downloadable resource materials.
The importance of understanding the effects caused by a wide variety of social and economic systems that humans have developed during the past century has never been greater. Smart by Nature™, the Center’s framework and services for schooling for sustainability, is based on two decades of work with schools and organizations in more than 400 communities across the United States and numerous other countries.
Ecoliteracy’s Educational Emphasis
We believe that schools play a pivotal role in moving us beyond our growing environmental crises and toward a sustainable society. We recognize schooling for sustainability as a process that fosters abundant living on a finite planet and makes teaching and learning come alive.
One of the phrases the Center often uses in support of their Smart by Nature program is “Schooling for Sustainability”, which allows students to gain critical knowledge, skills, and values essential to sustainable living, thus creating a new generation of leaders.
A truly sustainable community supports the health and quality of life of present and future generations. It recognizes the need for justice, and for physical, emotional, intellectual, cultural, and spiritual sustenance.
Essays From Ecoliteracy Thought Leaders
- A Delicious Revolution by Alice Waters
- Hooked on Sugar by Margaret Adamek
- Rethinking School Lunch by Alice Lee Tebo
- Thinking Like an Ecosystem by Frances Moore Lappé
- A New Era for Nutrition Education by Marilyn Briggs
- When the Building is the Teacher by Carolie Sly, John Dale and Michael Stone
Soon to be Published – Available for Pre-order
Capturing the movement’s collective wisdom
Ecoliterate: How Educators Are Cultivating Emotional, Social, and Ecological Intelligence is the result of an innovative collaboration between Daniel Goleman, Lisa Bennett and Zenobia Barlow.
The book tells inspiring stories of pioneering educators, students, and community leaders engaged in issues related to food, water, oil, and coal in communities from the mountains of Appalachia to a small village in the Arctic; the deserts of New Mexico to the coast of New Orleans; and on the streets of Oakland, California to the bucolic hills of Spartanburg, South Carolina – a treasure of life itself.
Daniel Goleman is an internationally known psychologist, former New York Times science reporter, and author of the classic Emotional Intelligence (with 5 million copies in print worldwide). He’s also written Social Intelligence, Primal Leadership, Vital Lies, and his latest book: Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything.
Lisa Bennett is the communications director for the Center for Ecoliteracy and longtime writer about the environment, education, and equality. Her writing has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The New York Times and books including The Compassionate Instinct: The Science of Human Goodness; Smart by Nature: Schooling for Sustainability; and A Place at the Table: The Struggle for Equality in America. She blogs at the Huffington Post.
Zenobia Barlow is the executive director and cofounder of the Center for Ecoliteracy and coeditor of Ecological Literacy: Educating Our Children for a Sustainable World. Barlow has led the Center’s grant making, educational, and publishing initiatives, including Rethinking School Lunch, since its inception. She serves on the board of directors of the David Brower Center and is a Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute.
We bring a passion to our work that stems from our conviction that the best hope for learning to live sustainably lies in schooling that returns to the real basics: engaging with the natural world; understanding how nature sustains life; nurturing healthy communities; exploring the consequences of how we feed and provision ourselves; caring about the places where we live and the people and creatures in them.
The Center for Ecoliteracy was cofounded by Fritjof Capra, author, systems thinker and physicist; Peter Buckley, former CEO of Esprit International and environmental philanthropist; and Zenobia Barlow, now its executive director.