Join us for our International Green Schoolyard Conference: Sept. 16-18, 2011, San Francisco Bay Area

[Sharon Danks]

As many of you know, the green schoolyard movement is growing rapidly and flourishing around the world.  Schools near and far are reimagining their grounds, replacing their extensive paved surfaces with a vibrant mosaic of outdoor learning and play opportunities. Schools in many different countries are leaders in this field, finding innovative ways to weave curricula into their landscapes, diversify their recreational offerings, enhance their local ecology, and reflect their unique location and cultural context.

 

We invite you to come to the beautiful San Francisco Bay Area to join us for the first International Green Schoolyard Conference held in the United States. Participate in this exciting conference to hear about cutting edge schoolyards and school gardens, meet like-minded colleagues from the United States and abroad, share ideas, tour fantastic local school grounds, and get inspired to bring these ideas back to your own community.

 

Invited visionary leaders of the school ground movement from Canada, England, Germany, Japan & Sweden will share their experiences, case studies, and best practices. Many of the talks will include a discussion of the value of bringing children outside to interact with nature. Speakers will include:

 

-  Dr. Petter Åkerblom, Movium & Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (Uppsala, Sweden)

-  Cam Collyer, Evergreen (Toronto, Ontario, Canada)
-  Manfred Dietzen, Grün macht Schule (Berlin, Germany)

-  Mary Jackson and Julie Mountain, Learning through Landscapes (Winchester, England)
-  Dr. Ko Senda, Environment Design Institute (Tokyo, Japan)
-  Bernard Spiegal, Playlink (London, England)

-  Birgit Teichmann, Teichmann Landschafts Architekten (Berlin, Germany)

 

During the conference’s schoolyard tours, we will visit four schoolyards in San Francisco that have each undergone a dramatic change over the last decade to transform their traditional, paved, urban schoolyard into a vibrant outdoor learning and play space. We will also visit three inspiring sites in Berkeley including the Edible Schoolyard, the City of Berkeley’s Adventure Playground, and an elementary school with a green schoolyard created by the school community.

 

Sign up now to take advantage of early enrollment pricing!  Please support this event by helping us to spread the word far and wide.  We hope to see you there!

 

For more information, please visit our conference website at: www.greenschoolyards.org

 

- Sharon Danks

 

Conference Director

Engaging Our Grounds: International Green Schoolyard Conference

Sept. 16-18, 2011

San Francisco Bay Area

sharon at ecoschools dot com

www.greenschoolyards.org