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Running Grass | Three Circles Center | Comments about Running Grass | Contact Information | More on Diversity in EE
Running-Grass is a professional outdoor and environmental educator with more than 20 years experience. He is widely published and nationally recognized for his expertise in multicultural environmental education and Environmental Justice. He is a West Coast correspondent for Orion Magazine.
In the 1980's he worked intensively with low income urban and rural schools, teachers and communities in 9 Bay Area counties. During this time he began to see how conventional environmental education frequently missed the critical contradictions between the cultural backgrounds of students and the richness of their home communities on the one hand, and the backgrounds of environmental educators and traditional environmental concerns on the other.
Further exploration of these themes led to an understanding that environmental and outdoor educators were generally unprepared to teach successfully in an increasingly multicultural society. To prepare environmental educators for the complexities of teaching effectively in multicultural contexts they would have to become competent multicultural educators also--steeped in "cultural-environmental" knowledge and sensitive to the political histories and aspirations of the broad array of American ethnic groups from which their students are drawn.
The launching of the national Environmental Justice movement in the late 1980's highlighted how a narrowly constructed environmental education supported a circumscribed environmental politics--one that rarely reflected the issues of low income and people of color communities or acknowledged their indigenous cultural perspectives - their lived histories - about, and in, "place."
In 1989, Running-Grass led a group of educators and activists in creating
Three Circles Center for Multicultural Environmental Education to address
these issues. The term "multicultural environmental education," widely
in use today, is derived from this work.
Three Circles Center is an international network pioneering innovative
multicultural and community based approaches to environmental education.
A nonprofit, membership organization, Three Circles Center consults with
environmental organizations, programs and communities on issues of multicultural
communication, staff development and diversity, curriculum, program design
and evaluation, and authentic multicultural community involvement in environmental
programs.
Three Circles Center publishes the Journal of Culture, Ecology and
Community©.
The purpose of Three Circles Center is to introduce, encourage and
cultivate multicultural perspectives and values in environmental and outdoor
education, recreation and interpretation. Three Circles Center is dedicated
to assisting environmental and outdoor educators and interpreters in making
a successful transition to teaching in a multicultural society based on
the principles of environmental sustainability and social justice. Necessary
for this task are multicultural leadership, a vision of a common future
grounded in diversity, innovative skills and strategies for organizational
and personal change, and the support of a network of progressive environmental
professionals. Three Circles Center is dedicated to providing these necessary
components of social change through services to organizations, educators,
youth and communities.
"Your visit here meant a great deal to us,
adding perspective and inspiration to our work and helping us to understand
our convictions
in a new way"
-
Oliver
Barton, Director, New Haven Ecology Project, New Haven, Connecticut.
"Running-Grass spoke in one of the small concurrent discussion groups, the last afternoon while the play props were being dismantled around us. Running-Grass is a black man, working with inner city kids, ethnic groups, the poor -- a long leap from most of us spare-change white attendees -- introducing the radical concept of ecology through culture as opposed to in spite of it. Though what he had to say was minus the romantic wolves and grizzlies that sell so well, I found his words much closer to the ground, further from the clouds, than a good portion of what we'd heard earlier in the week. I think he is a man we need to hear more from."
"I believe the dialogues were equally important as the collegiums but
because the time was shortened and they were at the end of the day
very little was accomplished. I felt bad for Running Grass because he had so
much to offer for those of us who work in urban areas with minorties."
"One last item I feel Orion missed on was not taking more advantage
of Running-Grass."
"Running Grass made a meaningful contribution -- he challenged me to
Think about multicultural environmental education."
Three Circles Center for Multicultural Environmental Education,
Running Grass, Executive Director.
Three Circles Center
c/o 6 Terrace Drive, Sausalito, CA, 94965
Phone:
415-377-1276
email:
To Subscribe to the Journal of Culture, Ecology and Community© contact the Three Circles Center
Running Grass:
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