Schools in the News

Westtowne Elementary students learn value of green
Hatch and release: Hamburg High School students release trout they raised from eggs
Decatur Middle puts wind to work
The Power is in Their Hands
South High student sees forest for the trees
Program Teaches Schools How to be More Sustainable

Westtowne Elementary students learn value of green
Explore Baltimore County
6/3/09

Westowne Elementary School was one of a record 69 Maryland schools recognized as Maryland Green Schools in a May 29 ceremony at the Community College of Baltimore County's Catonsville campus.

The school was one of 11 from Baltimore County, and the only one from Catonsville.

Only two other schools in the Catonsville area, Hillcrest Elementary and the Western School of Technology and Environmental Science, have been named Green Schools.

Hillcrest was awarded the status in 2006 and Western was named in 1999 the first year the status was awarded to schools.

"Being a Green School really shows our children we're concerned about the environment," Westowne Principal Patricia Vogel said.

The school on Harlem Lane is now one of 269 Green Schools certified by the Maryland Association for Environmental and Outdoor Education statewide and one of 52 in Baltimore County.

The association is an umbrella group that provides resources for teachers to instruct students about environmental issues.

Westowne was recognized for undertaking several programs, such as starting a Green Club and shutting all the power off in the school for an hour on Earth Day, to help students understand their impact on the environment.

The past two years, during the school's annual holiday gift program fundraiser in which students purchase Christmas presents for their family, the Parent Teachers Association has asked parents to donate lightly used items instead of hiring a firm to sell trinkets to the kids.

The event has raised $3,000 the past few years for the PTA at the school, Vogel said.

The process of obtaining Green School status takes two years. Schools must demonstrate that they have incorporated lessons on the environment in to the curriculum, reduced the school site's impact on the environment and involved the larger school community in the process.

"It's not like 'Oh, we're going to screw in a few light bulbs and we're a green school," said Bronwyn Mitchell, the association's executive director.

Once a school is designated as a Green School, it must be recertified every three years. So far, 80 percent of the schools that have undergone review have maintained it, Mitchell said.

Mitchell said the process involves everyone in the school, from the janitor to the principal, if the school is going to be recognized and keep its status.

She said becoming a Green School isn't just about conservation, but that it is also has an educational component.

For example, the school invited a chef from Atwater's restaurant last month to help the third-grade students understand the importance of healthy eating habits.

"Part of being a Green School is helping connect the school with our environment," said Sarah Montgomery-Walsh, a parent who has two children at the school. "There are many ways to do it.

"We need to reconnect our kids and families to what we use and what we eat.

"This helps kids see where their food comes from, that farms are a vital part of the cycle of life," she said.

Mitchell noted that a study by the association reported higher scores on the standardized Maryland Student Assessment test for fifth-graders in reading and eight-graders in reading and math by students who attended Green Schools compared to students that did not.

The study's results are posted at the group's Web site www.maeoe.org.

"Environmental education is unique because it can be integrated throughout the curriculum," Mitchell said.

She theorized that the Green School students did better on the tests because the activities and the ability to practically apply classroom lessons in the real life keep students engaged.

Students were exposed to environmental issues at Westowne in their health class, where they were taught about the effects of smoking on their bodies as well as smoking's impact on the environment.

More schools are applying for Green School status than ever, Mitchell said.

The 69 schools awarded the status this year were the most in the program's 10 year history.

There are, however, still educators skeptical about the program, Mitchell said.

She said the program has received "mixed" reactions from educators, not because they doubt the program's value, but because there is so much already required of them.

Once teachers see that working to be designated as a Green School isn't something extra, they quickly come around to it.

Vogel said at Westowne that some teachers expressed reservations, but eventually all of them bought into the concept when they realized it wasn't too intrusive.

"Now that we have Green School status, they're OK with it," she said.

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Hatch and release: Hamburg High School students release trout they raised from eggs
Reading Eagle
5/13/09

The waters of Wolf Run were cold and the stream bank was a mud slick, but Rachel Magrowski was thrilled to wade in.

She and fellow Hamburg High School classmates came to this tiny mountain stream in Upper Bern Township to release brook trout. The students had grown attached to the 13 trout, even giving names to a few of them.

The students had raised the 4-inch-long fish from eggs.

The trout release was the culmination of a hands-on environmental science lesson that involved raising trout and monitoring habitat.

Teacher Cheryl Bucheit's class at Hamburg was one of 93 in the state, including a class at Oley Valley, to participate in the project.

Months of lesson plans on trout, their habitat, water quality and pollution were put to the test when students released the fish and then spent the day searching for bugs in the stream and exploring mountain springs.

"I came out of the water and I couldn't feel my feet," said Magrowski, a 15-year-old freshman.

Wearing wading boots, Arielle Derr, 14, also a freshman, came prepared to stock fish.

One by one, students took buckets, each containing a wriggling fish, and found a quiet pool to release the trout.

"It was really interesting," Derr said, moments after watching a fish swim away. "You are so used to seeing them in the classroom."

Last year, Bucheit received a grant from Trout Unlimited to buy a tank and other equipment to raise trout provided by the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission.

She learned of the program through the Berks County Conservation District and felt it would be a good lesson for students.

Trout are sensitive to pollutants and need cold, clean water to live in, Bucheit said. Finding brook trout in a stream is a good indicator of healthy water quality.

After receiving 300 fertilized eggs in November, students had to care for them by cleaning the tank, feeding the fish and testing the water for nitrates and ammonia.

Brian Bailey, a 17-year-old Hamburg junior, was among the students who helped care for the fish in Bucheit's class. The experience has given him a greater understanding of trout habitat.

"Trout are really sensitive," he said. "I've had goldfish at home, but trout need to have better water quality."

Most of the trout did not survive in the classroom, an outcome that Bucheit wants to improve next school year. A high percentage of trout simply did not feed after they hatched, a behavior that also occurs in the wild, Bucheit said.

Also, ammonia levels spiked over Christmas break, a situation that will need to be remedied next year, she said.

Bucheit said the program was a valuable educational experience. Along with the biology and chemistry involved, students learned about natural stream habitats and how the waters of Wolf Run eventually flow into the Schuylkill River.

"I think it is a great tie-in with what I teach," Bucheit said. "Critters in the classroom also help draw students in."
Contact Darrin Youker: 610-371-5032 or dyouker@readingeagle.com.

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Decatur Middle puts wind to work
DelmarvaNow.com
May 14, 2009

BERLIN -- Shielding their eyes from the sun, Mr. Romano's seventh graders stared at the fast spinning object placed atop a 45-foot pole.

"How fast do you think it's going?" said Doug Romano, a science teacher at Stephen Decatur Middle School who coordinated efforts to install a small wind turbine on the school's property this week.

"It's really fast," said Savanna Grayson, 12, whose classmates shouted numbers as high as 45 miles per hour.

Romano led his students back inside to the weather monitor located in the Tech-Ed classroom. The device calculates the speed of the wind generator, which at the moment read "13 mph."

"The turbine will hopefully help students be more energy-conscious, so they will become better future consumers," said Romano, who began securing funding for the estimated $2,000 project more than two years ago.

The Wind for Schools project, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy's Wind Powering America program at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, installs small wind turbines at rural elementary and secondary schools to teach students and the community about wind power. Although this program is only supported in Midwestern locations, schools in more than 25 states across the country have educational wind projects.

A growing interest in wind turbines has prompted Wicomico and Worcester counties, along with Ocean City, to look at guidelines for wind energy use in residential areas. Romano said the wind generator -- the Optimist Club of Worcester County donated funding and Choptank Electric provided free labor during the two-day installation -- is currently "off-grid." For now, energy released from the wind turbines will be stored in batteries.

But the science teacher hopes it will eventually be used to power computers or even a copy machine.

Tech-Ed teacher Patrick Lieb, who joined forces with Romano to get the turbine up and running, said it can easily be incorporated into lesson plans.

cevans@dmg.gannett.com

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The Power is in Their Hands
Washington-Post
May 7, 2009

Project Teaches 6th-Graders They Can Help the Planet

Most middle school students who fiddled with the school's electrical wires and turned off the hall and bathroom lights would probably wind up in the principal's office.

But over the past week, sixth-graders at Seneca Ridge Middle School in Sterling have roamed the halls in semi-darkness.
It's part of an experiment designed by their science teacher, Rick Peck, to teach them how they can help reduce their carbon footprint by conserving energy.

"If we save energy, we'll, like, help the world," said Kurt Funkhouser, 12. "So we won't be killing the world, basically."

The experiment focuses on the school's C wing, which houses the sixth grade. Electricians tapped into the wing's transformer and put a doughnut-shaped meter around the wires to monitor how many kilowatts were being used at a given time.

One morning, teachers plugged in every electrical appliance they could, and students monitored the usage. The students also checked to see how much they were using on a typical day, then turned off the hall and bathroom lights and some classroom lights, and checked again.

"We were able to see the actual kilowatts at a particular moment being used by us, and not by PE, not by the seventh grade and not by the library," said Peck, who received a $5,000 grant from Dominion Virginia Power for the project, as well as $500 grants from the Chamberlain and Hrdlicka law firm and the Loudoun Educational Association. The school PTA has promised $2,000.

The idea took two years to bring to fruition, and its goal was to enlighten students about the source and consequences of the energy they consume.

"They learned that the actions that they take have physical consequences," Peck said. "Students don't care too much about the kilowatt hours, and they certainly don't care about saving the school money, but they absolutely care about the environment, and they absolutely don't want to be the ones responsible for killing off the last polar bear cub in the Arctic."
Some students had more ambitious ideas for reducing their carbon footprint, such as planting grass on the roof, and Peck said he would have liked to have experimented with turning off the air conditioning, which uses a large percentage of the school's electricity.

But the air conditioning is centrally controlled; for the C wing, monitoring light use proved to be the most practical. Of the 750 lights in the wing, 56 were disabled. According to the students' calculations, it has reduced their energy use by about 4 percent.

At first, the older students at the school wondered why the sixth-graders' halls were so dim, illuminated only by security lights.

"All the seventh- and eighth-graders walk by and they're like, 'What happened to the sixth-grade wing?' " said Meghan Kelly, 12, one of Peck's students. "We're like, 'We're saving energy,' and they say, 'That's cool.' "

On Tuesday, the students will hold a town hall-style meeting about what to do next to promote conservation awareness. But Peck has already seen signs that they are more aware.

"They now know that the leading way light bulbs get powered is by power plants that burn coal," he said. "Most kids had never thought about the connection, that every time they use the TV, the computer, the lights, the refrigerator, somewhere there's a smokestack, and somewhere someone's producing coal."

Kurt agreed. "My grandma has been trying to make us turn out the lights, and we'd always forget to," he said. "But now I turn the lights off more."

Jake Browning, 12, said the program has supplemented what he learned about energy use as a Boy Scout, and Meghan learned that besides turning off lights, she can conserve energy by taking shorter hot showers and unplugging electrical appliances when they are not in use.

"I knew that we were hurting the Earth" with overproduction of carbon dioxide, she said. "But now I know that I can make a difference."

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South High student sees forest for the trees
marlob@herald-mail.com
April 23, 2009

HAGERSTOWN — For a week last summer, Matthew Koebel spent time doing what he likes best — being in the outdoors.

As a bonus, he also was immersing himself in the work of the Natural Resources Careers Conference, which is presented by the Maryland Association of Forest Conservancy District Boards and the Maryland Forestry Boards.

"I want a law degree, possibly in natural resources law," the South Hagerstown High School 10th-grader said. "So this experience was very valuable for me."

Koebel said he felt the camp was a great way to learn about preserving and protecting trees.

“The camp left a very good memory ... everything about it was fun,” he said.

Most of the time, Koebel and the other youths were outdoors working in nature.

"We stayed in a dormitory building," Koebel said. "There were about 50 of us there."
Koebel, the son of Maureen and James Koebel of Funkstown, said he was the only Washington County student at the conference.

The Washington County Forestry Board encourages any local high school student with an interest in natural resources to apply for this summer's conference, which is scheduled for July 19 to 25.

Field professionals and high school students from across the state will spend seven days in intense instruction and fun at the Hickory Environmental Education Center in Garrett County.

The conference is designed for Maryland high school students interested in pursuing a career in forestry and natural resources. Students learn about working in the field of natural resources, educational requirements, employment and career opportunities in forestry, water resources and other related disciplines from teams of natural resources professionals.

Each county forestry board is able to sponsor up to two students from their local area, and the board provides a scholarship for each sponsored student so they may attend the conference at no cost.

Applications for this year’s event are due May 5 and can be downloaded from the group’s Web site at www.wcfb.sailorsite.net.

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Program Teaches Schools How to be More Sustainable
The State Journal
April 24 2009

April 20 was a red-letter day for the greening of West Virginia's schools.

The first Sustainable Schools West Virginia Summit in Morgantown brought administrators from 45-50 percent of the state's county school systems and leaders of half the state's colleges and technical schools together for the first time, said facilitator Greg Adolfson, sustainability officer for the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection.

Attendees heard and discussed ways to practice what they teach by conserving water and energy, reducing waste and designing and building new facilities that are environmentally friendly.

"West Virginia's educational community is incredibly interested in sustainability issues," said presenter and participant Kelly A. Bragg, energy development specialist with the state's Division of Energy. "We heard about real projects having real impact, from Wyoming County's Energy Star Schools to the green roof at Brooks Hall on the campus of (West Virginia University). A conference of this type allows West Virginia to learn what is working as well as showcase our success."
Gov. Joe Manchin gave a 40-minute keynote address at Waterfront Place Hotel in which he talked about reducing waste and pollution from natural resources.

"It was a landmark event for 7 the state of West Virginia," said Matt Earnest, executive director of the Community and Technical College at WVU Institute of Technology Office of Workforce Development, who talked about his office's Riverside Sustainability Awareness Program

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