World Café

Fall 2006 Eastern Michigan University was awarded a ground-breaking multi-state EPA grant to develop leadership capacity for sustainability education. The Children's Environmental Literacy Foundation (CELF) was selected to represent New York State as the community partner, with both the Scarsdale and Somers School Districts selected as the NYS School sector partner. While attending the Building Leadership Capacity for Sustainability Education Conference (BLCSE) at Eastern Michigan University, teachers and administrators from New Hampshire, Minnesota and New York participated in the World Café. The World Café, born in 1995 on a rainy day in Mill Valley California at the home of Juanita Brown, Ph.D. and David Isaacs, celebrates the power of conversation. For more on the World Café see http://www.theworldcafe.com/.

The model, in its truest form, invites participants in a larger group to configure themselves into smaller groups situated around café tables. While at these tables, participants discuss ideas, clarify the context, explore questions that matter, connect diverse perspectives, encourage each person’s contribution, listen together for patterns, insights and deeper questions, and share collective discoveries. At the BLCSE World Café, participants posed and responded to pre-constructed questions as a way to surface what people are doing and thinking in and around SE.

Samples of the BLCSE World Café questions included:  Who are the educators who have been responsive to SE? Does SE compete with existent curriculum and common pedagogical practices? How can sustainability education be a vehicle for improved teaching and learning? What is the role of the school in sustainability?

Participants were eager to continue their conversations beyond the allocated time and were involved in a “share-out” session where they reported their findings to the larger group. Findings were occasionally varied which captured the uniqueness of each school. In Minnesota, schools need to “market” themselves and to set themselves apart from other schools in a climate of open enrollment. At other times, the commonality of participants’ experiences was striking. Many reported that, “Kids feel that this [SE] matters to them…it is REAL world…it is their lives.” As a result of SE integration, “A sense of community and social awareness is enhanced.” “Best practices in SE promote and demand project-based learning.”

Lastly, an idea that resonated throughout the BLCSE World Café was the idea that SE leadership must not just talk about SE but rather show SE so that different constituent groups may better understand SE’s place in K-12 education.

CELF continues to foster this model by hosting in-school World Cafés for educators professional development. Questions are tailored to fit the individual school needs, while striving to enrich attendees understanding of SE and its applications to education in general and their own particular classrooms and schools. Schools interested in hosting a World Café should contact Katie Ginsberg, CELF Executive Director, at katie@celfoundation.org or (914) 238-4743.