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SSP Staff
SSP Coordinator: Jen Cirillo
jcirillo@shelburnefarms.org
Education Coordinator: Matt Dubel
mdubel@shelburnefarms.edu
Healthy Neighborhoods/Healthy Kids Coordinator: Tiffany Tillman
ttillman@shelburnefarms.org
Project Educator
and AmeriCorps*VISTA:
Elana Dyer
edyer@shelburnefarms.org
Contact Information
Sustainable Schools Project
Shelburne Farms
1611 Harbor Road
Shelburne, VT 05482
(802) 985-0331 x. 31
www.sustainableschoolsproject.org
The Sustainable Schools Project is funded by the generous support of The Bay and Paul Foundation, Redducs Foundation, Nathan Cummings Foundation, and Starbucks Foundation.
Past funders have included Jessie B. Cox Charitable Trust; Turrell Foundation; and A.D. Henderson Foundation.
Special thanks to Fred Bay of the Josephine Bay and C. Michael Paul Foundation, whose impassioned support for sustainability has cultivated the partnerships responsible for this Project.
©2004-2008 Sustainable Schools Project, All Rights Reserved
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 The Sustainable Schools Project is a dynamic new model for school improvement and civic engagement. The program helps schools use sustainability as an integrating context for curriculum, community partnerships, and campus practices.
Our goal was to make the school a center of this community where it’s a friendly place to meet and that’s really happening.
–Champlain Elementary
Grade 4/5 teacher
The Sustainable Schools Project is sponsored by Shelburne Farms, and is a partnership with VT Education for Sustainability. SSP uses the integrating concept of educating for sustainability to improve our communities economically, environmentally, and socially for current and future generations
Talking about the Sustainable Schools Project
with SSP Coordinator Jen Cirillo
Specifically, the Project:
•Facilitates staff, community and/or student priority-setting
for curriculum, community and campus projects;
ongoing study groups and/or in service sessions.
•Supports teaching through curriculum consultations,
classroom support, resource library, and network
of community partners.
•Offers professional development on sustainability
topics and skills, concept-based/integrative curriculum
development, standards-based assessment,
place-based teaching, schoolyard habitat improvement,
and service learning.
•Identifies funding sources for school sustainability
projects, professional development, training, etc.
 Educating for Sustainability is “learning that links knowledge, inquiry, and action to help students build a healthy future for their communities and the planet.” EFS helps teachers bridge grade levels and subject areas, curriculum and school operations, parent and community partnerships. Through SSP, a school develops its own meaningful, coherent approach to improve curriculum, community partnerships and campus ecology.
Teachers learn about the community’s vision and strategies for a sustainable future, then bring this larger dialogue into their curriculum with a focus that’s appropriate for their students. This fosters ongoing school-community partnerships that gain staying power from their ties to the curriculum and to each other. And these partnerships create learning opportunities for students in their community–whether in the schoolyard or at the food shelf.
 With each lesson learned, students develop their own understanding of the web of connections that make up their community and their role in it. Students’ personal appreciation and experience of interdependence give them the foundation for understanding and supporting global decision-making in their future.
Our pilot school sites are Lawrence Barnes Elementary School and Champlain Elementary School in Burlington, Vermont. Each pilot school is exploring different approaches to SSP’s work of strengthening curriculum, community partnerships, campus ecology and school wide collaboration.
With these strategies in place, we are eager to explore additional future sites for Sustainable Schools. We encourage schools to learn more through this web site and by contacting us.
For more information contact Jen Cirillo, SSP Coordinator
at 802-985-0331 x31, or jcirillo@shelburnefarms.org
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