Schools all over the country are developing innovative and exciting ways to implement the Eco-Schools USA program. Here you can read case studies highlighting what existing Eco-Schools are doing to green their school - on the inside, outside and throughout the curriculum!

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Featured Case Study: March 2012
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Environmentalism takes center stage at Thomas Starr King Middle School

In Fall 2011 Thomas Starr King Middle School in Los Angeles, CA became an environmental studies magnet school. This special program (which now has a waitlist) has turned the school into a true laboratory for environmental education. Here are a few examples of what makes this magnet school special:

• The magnet coordinator, Annemarie Ralph, brings in organizations, including UCLA Calpirg, the Alliance for Climate Education, Algalita Marine Research Institute and others, to give assemblies to the entire school population about environmental issues.  

• Sixth grade students participate in Wildwoods Foundation teambuilding program that helps students understand the interconnectedness of the world’s systems.  

• Classes use the school’s garden (which was started by volunteers) as a learning laboratory. One of the magnet teachers uses the space to teach an organic gardening elective class.  

• Students participate in clubs dedicated to greening the campus and encouraging activism.

Involvement in Eco-Schools USA

Kim Jones, a teacher at the school, leads the school’s Eco-Action Team. She signed her school up to participate in the Eco-Schools USA program because the tenets of the program are exactly what the school hoped to incorporate into their environmental magnet. This spring Kim’s students will be tackling three of the Eco-Schools pathways: School Grounds, Green Hour and Consumption and Waste. In the future the school will be expanding its garden thanks to a donation passed along to the school by the National Wildlife Federation. “We want to guide our students to be environmental activists starting with our school site”, says Kim. “We want them to understand, and promote awareness, of how one person’s actions can make a difference in protecting the planet”.

A visit from Nickelodeon

Recently Kim and her students were honored with a visit from the cast of Victorious! from Nickelodeon (Matt Bennett, Ariana Grande, Elizabeth Gillies, Avan Jogia, Daniella Monet and Leon Thomas III). The young stars rolled up their sleeves to help sixth graders paint, mulch and plant in the school's organic garden.

"It was really fun helping out. I was impressed by all of the kids, their dedication and enthusiasm." said Leon Thomas III "The best part of the day is knowing that the garden and the efforts to green the school are ongoing."

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Featured Case Study: February 2012
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Community Connections Transform Education at "New Leaf: A Sustainable Learning Collaborative" in Martinez, CA

Rona Zollinger believes in the transformative power of education. She started her teaching career in a traditional classroom setting. After returning to school to think differently about what education could and should be, created the Environmental Studies Academy in 2003. It was a single classroom and she was the only teacher in this “school within a school” in Martinez, an industrial city in California’s San Francisco Bay area. The program was small, but it was connected to a large network of community partners that supported the school’s hands-on, project-based, environmentally-focused approach.

Three years ago, the program doubled in size and now serves 48 students in grades 9-12. Its name has also changed to New Leaf: A Sustainable Learning Collaborative. The new name reflects that the school’s focus is not solely on science and the environment. Along with the traditional academics required to receive a high school diploma, the holistic curriculum also addresses students’ emotional and physical development. For example, students do yoga weekly and learn techniques for understanding their emotions and managing stress. All activities are conducted through the lens of sustainability and encourage students to develop an ecological view of the world.

Students in the program are very diverse. Some were simply bored in a traditional high school setting. Others were falling behind and in danger of dropping out of school, some dealing with probation, homelessness, and other challenges. They come to New Leaf with a wide variety of life experiences, and the small size and collaborative nature of the program require teamwork among peers who wouldn’t have associated with each other in a mainstream high school. All students attend by choice.

 

Rona explains, “Throughout the years, the program has grown in scope and impact in the community. Now we have two teachers and over 50 community partners.” These community partners are essential. Rona has found that reciprocity is the key to success: The partner organizations must get as much out of the relationships as the students do. It works because the partners get help accomplishing their goals, while students have an opportunity to participate in meaningful work and make a difference in their community. Not only do students satisfy academic requirements, they also develop life skills and even sample potential career paths. The partners, meanwhile, become invested in the students’ progress and work to help them succeed.

Currently, the school is involved in six community service projects focused on environmental and health topics, and five environmental career-focused internships (in which students work directly with professionals). The longest running projects are:
• The Eco-Literacy Peer Mentoring Project, teaching environmental lessons to K-5 students at nearby elementary schools.
• A watershed-based riparian restoration project, removing invasive species, replanting with natives, and improving wildlife habitat along local creeks.
Other projects, past and present, include:
• Working with the City of Martinez to design an ecologically sensitive parking lot.
• Creating several short films about clean water with a professional filmmaker.
• Constructing native plant gardens throughout the city.
• Collaborating with the National Park Service on a phenology monitoring project.
• Working with a professional muralist to create murals around the city, the current one focusing on the life story of John Muir.
• Monitoring wildlife in local open space using camera techniques.

The program evolves organically as new relationships are formed and students delve into new projects and internships. Rona says her job has become more about networking and relationship-building than anything else. She involves the students in the process, and this becomes part of the curriculum. “I always have students with me in meetings with partners,” she explains. She finds that education succeeds best when the focus shifts away from creating reproducible curriculum and toward creating relationships—with people, with the land, and with each student as a human being. Keeping this goal in mind, lessons are co-created by both teacher and students. Rona guides them through the process, asking first, “What do you want to learn?” and then “Who in the community can help us learn this?” and “How do we meet education requirements as we do it?”

Rona completed a three-year case study of “Transformative Education in Action” as part of her Ph.D. dissertation. She identified ten conditions that are essential to the transformative nature of education, which has given her a framework with which she can evaluate current and future projects as the program evolves year by year. She also looked at measures of academic success, such as attendance and test scores, and found that “everything improved dramatically.”

How does this non-traditional approach affect students? Sophia, a senior, cites the Peer Mentoring Project as a particularly memorable part of her experience. Twice a month, she and other New Leaf students teach elementary students about recycling, watersheds, gardening, composting, native and invasive species, and other aspects of environmental literacy. She explains that she struggled with writing when she first came to New Leaf, and this project challenged her as she worked to create lesson plans. Over time, she’s developed both her skills and her confidence, and she says, “Now I’m helping other students write lesson plans, something I never thought I’d be doing!” She credits the project with helping her develop as a person, recognizing her own strengths and weaknesses, as well as opening her eyes to all that teachers put into their work. Seeing the young students grow “makes my heart happy,” she says, and she is considering teaching as a career.

Cheyanna, another senior, also values the relationships formed in the mentoring program. “The fifth graders have seen us throughout their elementary school career,” she says, and both groups of students have learned from each other. An internship with the National Park Service has her working on a phenology monitoring project, noting the “science of the seasons” twice weekly at Mount Wanda and the John Muir stewardship site. She thinks she might like to get a job with the Park Service down the road. Next year, though, she plans to take college classes and work as a graduate intern at this school that has been so influential in her life.

Cristobal attests that this school helps students excel in a way unlike any other school he’s attended. It’s all about the experiences, he says. They do science and math outside, through hands-on projects, in addition to using textbooks as resources. And the students help each other—that’s part of the school’s mission. He’s been involved in watershed restoration work, learning about the value of native plants and their importance for wildlife from a professional biologist, and then working under his direction on a creek restoration project. They are now starting a similar project on campus, and the students—feeling confident in their new knowledge—are taking the lead. Cristobal is also participating in an internship on green media that has him working on outreach activities, blogging, and writing articles for a community newsletter. “It’s helped me develop my writing skills,” he says, and he’s found that he greatly enjoys journalism. “It’s now a career I’m pursuing.”

Currently holding an Eco-Schools USA Silver Award, New Leaf is aspiring to the Green Flag. Learn more about their unique program and find more student perspectives.   

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Featured Case Study: January 2012
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Students at Acton-Boxborough Regional High School spearhead an effort to save energy and green their campus 

In September 2010 Kate Crosby, Energy Advisor for the Acton-Boxborough Regional School District, brought together a group of students at the local high school who were interested in understanding energy conservation. On several Saturday mornings, Kate and the students walked through the school and used  Kill-a-Watt meters to assess energy use in the building. Their goal was to gather basic information about how much electricity was being used by plug-in devices in the school, data that no one in the district had at that time.

 Based on the data, students spent the rest of the school year creating a “Power Down Project” aimed at reducing energy use at Acton-Boxborough Regional High School. Inspiration for the project came directly from the team’s determination to embrace energy conservation. During the initial investigation of energy use at the school, one student sent Kate an email saying that she could not stop thinking about energy conservation and wanted to get serious about it.  Another student spoke to Kate about a light that was bothering her because it was always on and had no apparent off switch.  Still other students drew attention to a computer lab that was running 24/7. Together the students gained awareness and initiated several projects under the banner of the Power Down Project, including:

Power Down Fridays – Students designed and made colorful door tags to hang on classroom and office doors to remind staff to power down equipment on Friday afternoons.   In addition, students wrote emails that went out to all staff, created posters and contributed morning announcements to help promote powering down on Fridays.

Classroom Audits – Students did weekend audits of every classroom and office and left hand-written notes for teachers and staff with tips and advice for reducing their energy consumption.  These audits were conducted three times over the school year, with steady improvement in the number of rooms that were successfully powered down.

Light Bulb Exchange – Students set up a table in the lobby of the school and for two days gave out energy-saving compact fluorescent light bulbs in exchange for incandescent bulbs currently in use at the school. The students worked with teachers and staff to exchange 110 light bulbs, which resulted in $1,000 a year in energy savings.

By the end of the school year, electricity consumption at the school was down by 5.5% which resulted in a savings of $33,000 for the school. The school’s ability to save this much money through energy conservation garnered a phenomenal response from faculty and staff for a campaign powered by students.

In the spring of 2011, one of the student leaders of the group spoke with Kate and expressed her desire to tie together all of the clubs and projects going on around the school that had to do with the environment. Kate was interested in connecting the Power Down Project with a network of other schools working on similar issues. So the team researched green school programs and came across the Eco-Schools USA program. They felt it was a really good fit, and found the international component of the program, including the ability to connect with schools in other countries, very appealing. 

Over the summer, students met with Kate to review the Eco-Schools program. At two meetings just  ahead of the start of school in late August 2011, students discussed what they would need to do to become an Eco-School and work towards an award.  They decided that they wanted to go for it. When the school year started, they established a new Green Council. This organization at the high school brings together groups of students engaged in a variety of clubs, from the Recycling Club, to the Envirothon Team, to, of course, the Power Down Project to focus on green projects throughout the school. Teachers, staff and community members have also joined the Green Council.

Thirty-eight people attended the Green Council’s first meeting. Twenty-two of the attendees were students; the rest of the meeting was made up of community members and school staff. So far this year, the Green Council has been working on implementing the Eco-Schools USA audit and developing their action plans. Ultimately they are looking to apply for a Green Flag award through the Eco-Schools USA program this spring!

Click here to learn more about Acton-Boxborough Regional High School’s sustainability initiatives.

Click here to read Kate Crosby’s guest blog on NWF’s Wildlife Promise where she highlights the school’s very successful (and fun) trash audit party.

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Would you like to read more case studies? Visit our archive page to get your fill!