Students are witnessing environmental changes in their communities, like extreme heat, flooding, and wildfires. Yet, until now, teachers have lacked California-specific instructional resources to address these critical topics. Seeds to Solutions™ changes that, delivering the tools educators need to engage and empower.
Why Seeds to Solutions?
- Includes everything needed to teach the topic and guide student investigations
- Aligns with California standards and Environmental Principles and Concepts
- Transforms classroom learning into discussions that go beyond school
- Empowers students to explore environmental solutions with confidence
Engaging
Each unit from Seeds to Solutions helps students do sense-making individually and as a class, rather than simply following directions from textbooks or teachers. This engaging approach teaches students how to think, not what to think.
- Explores real environmental issues in California
- Sparks student inquiry, curiosity, and critical thinking
- Provides ample source material, visual aids, videos, worksheets, and more
Empowering
Units conclude with a Culminating Engagement, during which students design and participate in solutions to the environmental challenge they’ve investigated. This helps students feel empowered to enact change in their communities.
- Empowers students to investigate possible causes and solutions
- Provides age-appropriate, culturally relevant, and trauma-informed activities and tools
- Allows teachers to customize lesson length and content to fit their classroom
What Teachers Are Saying
“Using the maps and seeing things like schools and how close they are to hazards is really cool. They may not be super connected personally, but they can put themselves in the shoes of other kids and try to relate. I know it’s working because I have a kid that just watches Netflix all day, every day and he pulled out his earbud and participated!”
“The kids become more engaged because now they are actually actively doing things. They’re really having to look for themselves. It’s not given to them on a platter, but all the resources are right there.”
“They’ve never thought about stuff like this before, and now they’re sharing it. One girl said this was the only class that she went home and talked to her parents about.”
“Every lesson was so thoroughly designed, the case study design book was beautifully organized, and it helped to give my class a real-life understanding of how college/graduate-level academic research works. Being able to connect their research back to environmental issues they actually experience was simply icing on the cake. Well done!”
A Unique, Community-Driven Development Process
Seeds to Solutions was developed with expertise from community organizations, experts in science and traditional ecological knowledge, educators, youth leaders, and curriculum-development specialists. As a result, the lessons reflect the experiences of California communities closest to environmental challenges.
2021: State Support
The California Legislature passed legislation championed by Sen. Ben Allen, allocating funding to create free instructional resources on environmental challenges. The funding is directed to the San Mateo County Office of Education, which partners with environmental literacy nonprofit Ten Strands to lead the development.
2022-23: Team Assembly & Pilot
A diverse group of steering committee members, community organizations, and curriculum-development specialists starts the design and development process. Unit topics and anchor lessons are piloted in classrooms across the state, and independent evaluators gather feedback from students and teachers. Based on the feedback, full units are drafted in preparation for field testing. External reviewers provide feedback on drafts throughout the process.
2024-25: Field Test & Publication
Teachers conduct field tests of each unit in classrooms across California. Feedback and suggestions from teachers are gathered by independent evaluators, then incorporated into units for final production. Units are submitted to the California Department of Education and made available as open education resources for educators.
