For our sustainability keyword assignment, I decided to search for "sustainable education" on Wikipedia since I'm studying to be a teacher. The article that came up was titled Education for Sustainable Development. This article describes the idea as "a vision of education that seeks to empower people to assume responsibility for creating a sustainable future." The article then goes into how education systems in general can revamp, if you will, their curriculums to teach both children and adults to think and learn in a way that will encourage them to question and consider the current state of the world society and envision how it can be better in the future. In thinking about this idea of sustainable education it became clear to me that it USF St. Pete is becoming involved in the practice. Between making classes aware of "being green", the construction of a brand new "green" building, and our own class centered around sustainability, we are surrounded by the idea of sustainable education. We aren't being taught to simply produce well-written papers for the sake or writing or having chemistry formulas spoon-fed to us to receive a good grade on an exam. We are being taught to think for ourselves and become curious about the world around us. What a profound idea! If we begin raising a generation to think and question and wonder, might they develop an "inner chaos" that compels them to grow to be "dancing stars"? I began to explore a couple of the websites that were provided at the bottom of the Wikipedia article and found that Universities and various organizations across the United States and Canada are starting to place an emphasis on this Education for Sustainable Development. There are countless resources for teachers wanting to implement this method in their classrooms and schools, as well as non-profit organizations simply trying to inform the general public. As a student studying to be a teacher, it is incredibly exciting to know that education systems are leaving the status quo of overloading students with mass quantities of information they may never use or find interesting, and turning to a practice that will pique the interests of children and spur them to curiosity and action.

-Kathleen

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