San Diego's Built Environment Education Program (BEEP San Diego), which seeks to educate and engage school-age youth on all aspects of the built environment, is excited about the following posting from the American Planning Association's blog.
By Wendy L. Tinsley Becker
In July 2013 the Built Environment Education Program (BEEP) San Diego graduated its most recent group of 2012-2013 Built Environment Ambassadors from schools throughout the San Diego region.
Offering a curriculum of 17 lessons to inspire, create, connect, and engage elementary, middle, and high school students as leaders and decision makers in their built environment, to-date BEEP San Diego has graduated approximately 300 students as Built Environment Ambassadors.
What’s It Like?
BEEP San Diego’s lessons and projects are developed around the three main disciplines of the built environment — urban planning, architecture, and landscape architecture, and they include concepts relating to architectural history, urban design, sustainability, biomimicry, and public art. Our Built Environment Ambassadors attend sessions weekly and work individually and in teams to create city and community plans, build models out of recyclable materials, hold design ch The program is based on a partnership between local schools, which designate a host teacher for BEEP San Diego. Each teacher provides his or her general availability for BEEP volunteers to be in the classroom during regular school hours — typically an elective period — and BEEP San Diego creates a specialized module of lessons and projects from its curriculum database to fit the available timeframe and teacher and student interest. Some schools have found it more convenient for BEEP San Diego to host after-school clubs. BEEP San Diego looks to the existing environment of the school and the surrounding community for inspiration on what may be more fun or interesting for the students, and may be a direct way for the kids to effectuate change in their own neighborhoods.arrettes, and make decisions based on established models of civic government while learning about the perspectives and roles of different planning and design professions and appointed and elected officials. Every student is encouraged to have fun and be creative while applying critical thinking skills.
Our teaching partnerships have formed organically, some through direct relationships with BEEP San Diego Board members, some through past or current volunteers, and some by teacher request. BEEP San Diego’s presence at its host schools has range from one hour per week on a trimester schedule (approximately 25 students per trimester group with sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students), to two-hour sessions every six weeks (in a third grade classroom), to daily 30-minute sessions with two combined class groups of seventh and eight graders over the school year.
The program’s volunteers make it a success.
BEEP San Diego volunteers represent a broad spectrum of professional and academic experience in the disciplines of the built environment. Each volunteer helps to complete the circle of leadership and mentorship that BEEP San Diego encourages. Volunteers in the classroom are lesson leaders (established professionals or graduate students) or lesson assistants (young professionals, graduate or undergraduate students, or first-time volunteers), with assistants often moved to a leader position after spending time on a lesson team and gaining familiarity in the classroom and with the lesson content and student group. Some volunteers move beyond the classroom to help with administrative tasks, social media, graphic design, and lesson improvement.
