Salmonpeople School Programs

Teaching for sustainable prosperity integrates science, humanities, economics, civics, and communications. The outcome is a graduate who surpasses academic standards by meeting the higher standard of citizen stewardship: voting with knowledge, consuming with ecological foresight, inventing systems-solutions to systems-challenges, and creating civil society. This story gets better and better.

All Levels

The Sustainable School Project: Applies good science, basic economics and local civics by engaging students in applying academic excellence towards making their school and community increasingly sustainable.

Sister Watershed Learning Exchange: Establish peer-to-peer learning communities throughout the watersheds of the Pacific Northwest, British Columbia, Alaska and the world. Empower teachers and students from schools with diverse ecological, economic and social conditions to conduct collaborative research measured in real world results of improved stewardship behavior towards sustainable prosperity for all.

College and High School

Salmon Nation Seminar: Students engage in the following inquiry, "If salmon are an indicator species, what are they indicating?" Students understand that our historical patterns of natural resource use are unsustainable and that we are currently shifting to an exciting new kind of economic system, one nested within ecological principles. From the teachings of salmon we examine the most intriguing human adaptations now underway towards a tipping point of sustainable prosperity for all.

Watch Your Wake: A consumer-based approach to watershed wisdom. Students gain research skills in tracking down the natural resource pathway and hidden costs of a given manufactured product. This unit is inspired by the work of Northwest Environment Watch and their publication, "Stuff, The Secret Life of Everyday Things."

Middle School and Upper Elementary

Human History According to Salmon: By understanding salmon, we learn how northwest people first built their cultures around the patterns and cycles of nature. Through a salmon's eye, we map the early explorers who came up the coast, the spread of trade objects, disease, miners, missionaries, fur trappers, settlers, loggers, salmon canners and dam builders. Integrates science, social studies and language arts. Teaches the principles of ecological systems and reviews four basic economic systems.

Watershed Wisdom: An in-depth inquiry into the features and functions of watersheds as ecological whole systems. Includes the story of water, a scientific and poetic inquiry into the business of H2O, where it comes from, where it's been, and how it cycles round and round again.

Salmon, Science, and the Six Traits of Writing: A great overview of local issues and excellent writing in numerous and diverse applications. From poetry to prose, science writing to editorials, from the language of legislation to the legacy of Indian treaties, this workshop really gets students reading, thinking and writing. Here is the tool to integrate your science and language arts curriculum.

Salmon Boy; A fully scripted play with parts for 25: Students apply the "Good Acting Check List" as they recreate this Northwest Coast indigenous story. The first people were careful observers of nature and from them we learn of the powers of their kin, the Salmonpeople. A classic teaching legend with good parts for up to 25 players.

Ecosystems and US History: How the great chapters in American history were catalyzed by innovations in natural resource use framed by the mythos of an endless frontier. A scientific understanding of the principles of ecology and how they function in diverse ecosystems underlies the march of history from cod fishing to tobacco, beaver to sea otter, king cotton to old growth, salmon canning to hydropower. The final inquiry asks, "What will the next industrial revolution be like?"

World Cultures and My Ecological Footprint: This workshop begins with an analysis of the natural resource consumption of a typical North American; our "footprint" on the planet. From this understanding, students examine the footprint of cultures around the world, comparing resource use, and asking the question, "What can we do to sustain a growing world population on a limited resource planet?"

The Dramatic Story of Lewis and Clark: A multi-day reenactment of the epic journey in which Lewis and Clark performed the duties of cartographer, journalist, botanist, zoologist, geologist, ethnographer and cultural ambassador. With this story as context, we ask the question, "Then what happened?" The rapid opening of the west and consequent growing pains of a new nation.

Design Your Own

All of the themes above can be altered and redesigned to align with local curricula. For more details call 206-236-8114 or email Peter: peter@peterdonaldson.net