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SUSTAINABLE CLASSROOMS

The Classrooms Division trains educators of all kinds on sustainability and how they can bring a sustainable lens into their classrooms.

Our three- to four-hour professional development training provides educators with the confidence, tools, and community needed to empower students to make lifelong sustainable choices. Using our standards-aligned curriculum, a project-based learning assignment, and student-led home investigations as a base, we explore how to use a sustainability lens in any formal or informal K-12 classroom.

How We Work

Urban Green Lab staff member talks to educator

Build Confidence

  • Define sustainability
  • Begin understanding key issues, solutions, and opportunities
  • Discuss how to use sustainability as a lens in any classroom

Provide Tools

  • Distribute our TN-standards-aligned Sustainable Classrooms curriculum
  • Investigate additional lessons, extensions, frameworks, and resources to go beyond our curriculum
Person reading the Sustainable Classrooms curriculum
Person reading the Sustainable Classrooms curriculum

Provide Tools

  • Distribute our TN-standards-aligned Sustainable Classrooms curriculum
  • Investigate additional lessons, extensions, frameworks, and resources to go beyond our curriculum
Woman talks to other educators and grins widely

Foster Community

  • Share access to our Sustainable Classrooms Learning Community to collaborate, network, and learn regularly with other trained educators
  • Credit points toward our Workplaces Certification process

Types of Trainings

Hub Training

One 3- to 4-hour in-person or virtual training with other educators from Nashville and surrounding counties on specified dates. Public or homeschool educators can attend for free. The Hub training is $100 per attendee for private schools and organizations. Nonprofits may attend for $50 per attendee. Potential sponsorships are available.
 

Team Training

One 3- to 4-hour training with your fellow staff members (30 max) from your own school or organization on a date of your choosing with the flexibility to plan for your specific needs during the training. Public or homeschool educators can arrange a Team Training for free. The cost for private schools and organizations is $300 in total. Nonprofits are $150 in total. Potential sponsorships are available.

Classrooms Testimonials

"Overall, teaching sustainability helps my students become responsible global citizens. They are able to consider the long-term consequences and outcomes of their actions to make better decisions, becoming better knowledgeable individuals in their life stages.”

- Carlos Calderón, Sustainable Classrooms Educator

"Thank you for empowering me, making this accessible, providing representation (in slides, quotes, sources), and being an ally in action! Thank you!"

Consuelo Torres, Sustainable Classrooms Educator

"Interacting with Urban Green Lab helped me find tools and words to start being more sustainable that I didn't have. I feel like I have a place to start from now and have hope to actually be able to be sustainable and share about sustainability in multiple areas of life that I didn't consider before."

Upcoming Trainings

Reach out to schedule a Team Training for your school or organization. Please allow at least four weeks for scheduling.

Check back soon for as upcoming trainings are still being scheduled.

Register for Training

To learn more about the Classrooms Division, contact Sofia Guerrero at sofia@urbangreenlab.org.

Key Successes

Trained 338 educators on how to teach about sustainable living

Reached 125 schools across seven school districts

Hosted 32 trainings since 2018, a majority for Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS)

Selected accomplishments since the program started. Updated June 18, 2024.

47%

Percentage of MNPS schools with teachers trained to teach sustainable living

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