If Trees Could Talk: A Curriculum in Environmental History
If Trees Could Talk: A Curriculum in Environmental History is a 10-module, middle school curriculum that gives teachers the opportunity to download from our web site social studies activities that are based upon archival materials. The centerpiece of each module is a compilation of primary resources--documents, maps, newspaper articles, oral histories or photographs--from which students are asked to gather, examine, and analyze information, and synthesize insights. The curriculum is presently being tested by teachers around the United States and has already generated much popular support.
Green Teacher magazine recently published an article titled "Environmental History: If Trees Could Talk" that highlights the ways in which If Trees Could Talk: A Curriculum in Environmental History can help students develop a deeper understanding of the history of human-land relationships. Former FHS education consultants Marsha Alibrandi and Lucy Laffitte, together with FHS president Steve Anderson and FHS librarian Cheryl Oakes, authored the piece, which reached an estimated 13,000 classroom teachers in the United States and Canada. The article was included in Teaching Green - The Middle Years: Hands-on Learning in Grades 6-8, an anthology of the best articles to appear in Green Teacher magazine in the last decade. This article, along with several workshops conducted in Minnesota, Oregon, and North Carolina have helped to promote the value of history to environmental education.