SESSION 5: Outdoors As the First Response, Sharon Danks and Yalda Modabber
August 18, 2020 at 10:30am-12:00pm CDT
Returning to school in the fall safely in the context of Covid-19 is requiring educators to think creatively and plan instruction outside of their traditional classroom walls. This session will highlight how school grounds and local parks can be utilized as learning spaces, along with ways to rethink current structures and practices in the early childhood classroom. Drawing upon scientific research about Covid-19, the benefits of being outdoors, along with real-life examples from Golestan School in Berkeley, California, educators will be inspired to embrace the outdoors as a learning environment to positively impact the physical, cognitive, and social emotional health of children.
Register Here: Zoom Webinar with Sharon Danks & Yalda Modabber
Environmental city planner, Sharon Danks, MLA-MCP, is Founder and CEO of Green Schoolyards America, a nonprofit based in Berkeley, California. Since 1999, her professional work and passion have focused on transforming asphalt-covered school grounds into park-like green spaces that improve children’s well-being, learning, and play while contributing to the ecological health and resilience of our cities. She is working toward a future where all children will have access to the natural world in the places they already visit on a daily basis at school. Sharon is an Ashoka Fellow, a co-founder of the International School Grounds Alliance, and author of the book Asphalt to Ecosystems: Design Ideas for Schoolyard Transformation.
Yalda Modabber, Golestan Education, Co-Founder, Executive Director
Yalda, is a former molecular immunologist, and later consultant to for-profit and nonprofit organizations. As an undergraduate, she majored in Psychology, with an emphasis on Child and Developmental Psychology, finishing a dual degree in Experimental Psychology and Human Biology. Yalda went on to pursue a career in biomedical research and spent 8 years at Harvard Medical School, first as a research associate and later as a graduate student. In 2000, Yalda changed career paths and became a consultant for startups, Fortune 50+ corporations and non-profit organizations as a strategist and evaluator.
In 2005, Yalda posted an ad on a local listserv in Berkeley, in search of a Persian language immersion program for her first-born son Kian, then two years old. She received a response from another mother that led to a weekly parent playgroup and eventually became Golestan, a non-profit with the mission to support educators to create their ideal learning spaces for children. Golestan uses its multilingual IB school for prek-grade 5, with an K-12 after school program as a model for this work. Yalda has worked with hundreds of educators worldwide with a focus on integrating nature into schools' learning spaces (inside and out), language immersion, and redesigning school playgrounds to be more engaging and dynamic. She is also an active board member for several organizations in the education, human rights, and humanitarian sectors.