Schools in the News

Youth groups create new oyster gardens for Ocean Pines

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Teachers work, play on the bay
Sept. 3 - Newport News, Va. Daily Press

POQUOSON - — In their search to find new ways to bring the surrounding Chesapeake Bay into their classrooms, teachers from Poquoson Elementary School found themselves sloshing around in shorts, sneakers, Crocs and sunglasses Tuesday.

Trust they won't be clad this way when school starts next week. But the knowledge they gained kayaking along the nearby shore and kicking around ideas will carry over into their students' lessons.

Teachers busily prepare their rooms for students' arrival this time of year. But Tuesday, oysters were in a bubbling tank in the school's library and teachers were on a scavenger hunt in the natural area out back.

The line of teachers kayaking along the shoreline looked a far cry from those who will soon keep order in the hallways.

The day served a dual role: Incorporating the watery surroundings even further into the lessons at the environmentally themed school and bonding teachers. Everything about the earth-friendly new elementary school, which opened last fall, was designed with the surrounding water and wildlife in mind.

"It was fun; it was a good time," said fifth-grade teacher Kortny Walters, who was apprehensive about kayaking at first, but returned to land smiling broadly. "It was nice to be out of the classroom for a while."

Even before the new school opened, teachers formed a committee at the old school to talk about how to use areas nearby as an outdoor classroom. An osprey nest on a light pole and Canada geese in among the native grasses students planted are all part of what's available there now.

Last September, Poquoson City Schools received a $60,000 grant from the state Department of Conservation and Recreation Water Quality Improvement Fund to be used toward the wetlands restoration project and outdoor learning space created behind the school.

Now the task is making that outdoor classroom and the school work together, said Pam Camblin, a third-grade teacher who is on the committee.

"We felt that by the teachers actually experiencing the habitat around Poquoson, that they could do a better job teaching the students," Camblin said.

"And that they would feel more comfortable actually bringing their students outside and being able to identify the species that we have right in our backyard," added Julie Dashley, a fourth-grade Spanish teacher and committee member.

She pointed out that this isn't just for science class, either. Dashley is thinking of ways she can incorporate the information into her Spanish lessons.

Bill Portlock, senior bay educator with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, said environmental education for elementary school age children is "extremely valuable."

Studies show that environmental education has improved scores on standardized tests as well as student behavior, attendance and attitudes, Portlock said. It also exposes children to future possible career choices.

Tuesday's outing was run by Chesapeake Experience, a Yorktown-based non-profit educational foundation that provides seminars and eco-field trips locally.

Jill Bieri, who runs the organization, said she trains 24 teachers each summer and is inundated with requests for school trips once students return. Some of her information about the bay is tailored specifically toward the state's Standards of Learning tests.

Tuesday's indoor activity for teachers included brainstorming ways to incorporate the Chesapeake Bay into their classrooms and what type of field experiences they would like students to participate in.

Teachers spent the other half of their day launching their kayaks at Owen's Marina and paddling around. New Poquoson Elementary Principal Barbara Wood emerged wringing wet, but officially part of her new school community.

"We're just like kids, we want something exciting and if we throw kayaking out there to them, not only is it a team-building sport, but I think that it does create excitement and it does create the desire to want to have the (teaching) capability as well," Dashley said. "It's seeing it for yourself."

Poquoson Elementary School

Poquoson Elementary School's motto and logo reflect the environmental theme of the school and the coastal community that surrounds it. The logo has Environment, Education and Excellence in a circle formed by the recycling symbol. The Environment is on top. Inside the circle: Preparing Every Student.

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Schools going green big-time
Sept. 7 - Baltimore-Sun

CALIFORNIA, Md. Approaching Evergreen Elementary, it's clear right away that there's something different about this new school. A pair of silo-like structures squats in front of the two-story brick building - cisterns storing rainwater for flushing the toilets. Then there are the cactuses and other plants growing atop the entrance canopy - put there to soak up more rain.

Evergreen represents the latest in green school design in Maryland. The $20 million elementary school, which started classes last week in this woodsy, suburban community in St. Mary's County, has been designed and built to save bundles of energy and water, and to reduce the building's impact on nearby streams and wetlands. It's also been planned to hammer environmental consciousness home to its 600 students. It is, contends county School Superintendent Michael Martirano, the greenest school in the state.

He might get some argument on that - Montgomery County has built or rebuilt four schools now with enough energy-saving and environmental features to qualify for the second-highest rating given by the U.S. Green Building Council. But there's no doubt that green schools are starting to spread across the state.

St. Mary's school officials say Evergreen, like the Montgomery schools, is in line to get a "gold" rating under the green building council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, rating system. Among other features, it boasts a geothermal heating and cooling system, waterless urinals and low-flow faucets, and a white reflective coating on the flat portions of the roof to keep the building from needing as much air conditioning in warm months.

Small patches of the roof also sprout plants - with the cisterns, part of a system meant to capture 90 percent of the rain that falls on the school. There is a bank of photovoltaic cells mounted on a sloped portion of the roof, and even a small wind turbine that powers one outlet. Though their contribution to the school's energy diet is tiny, the gadgets are meant to be teaching tools, not just bells and whistles.

"This is more than just a school," said Martirano as he showed a reporter and photographer around, giving what he estimates was his eighth tour of the new building. "It's a full immersion in the energy conservation issues [students] are going to experience as adults."

Signs about water and energy conservation have been posted along the hallways, and there's an interactive "energy kiosk" near the entrance that, once completed, should enable students to track their energy consumption and learn about the school's environmental features.

On the second story is a walkout patio connected to the science laboratory, with another plot of plants to soak up rainwater, helpfully collected in a rain barrel.

Natural light streams into the cafeteria, gymnasium and second-story classrooms through high clerestory windows, reducing the need for artificial lighting. Some first-floor classes are lit by the sun, via "light tubes" extending down from the roof.

"We've added all of the most recent energy-efficient items that could possibly go into it, from the positioning of the building on the site to exposure to sunlight," Martirano said.

Starting this year, all new schools built with state funds must incorporate enough energy- and resource-saving features to qualify for the LEED silver rating. But even before the state mandated that in legislation passed last year, first Montgomery and then St. Mary's opted to exceed what would be required.

Montgomery built the state's first LEED-rated public school, Great Seneca Creek Elementary, in Rockville in 2006. Since then, it has built another new elementary and rebuilt two old schools, incorporating enough energy-saving and environmental features to qualify them all for a LEED gold rating.

Martirano said green building is especially important in St. Mary's because of its proximity to water, on a peninsula bracketed by the Chesapeake Bay and the Patuxent and Potomac rivers.

The Evergreen school also had an extra responsibility to limit its environmental impact, because it was built on land bordering wetlands that harbor the Eastern narrow-mouthed toad, an amphibian so rare in Maryland that it is classified by the state as endangered. To protect the toads, school officials have pledged to leave untouched most of the 54 acres on which the school sits, and have taken extra steps to keep polluted storm water from washing off the building and its parking lot. The school's two stories help reduce its land consumption.

In a nod to the state's Smart Growth policies, the school was built in one of the county's designated growth areas, a planned community called Wildewood carved out of the woods north of Lexington Park and the booming Patuxent Naval Air Station. But in a planning breakdown that's all too typical in sitting new schools in the suburbs, there's no sidewalk along the parkway that connects the school to the neighboring houses - though there are marked bicycle lanes.

That's about the only glitch in the green-ness of Evergreen, but it doesn't seem to faze the students, faculty or staff.

"Pretty awesome" is the grade Nathanial Vibar, 9, gives his new school. His favorite feature? The bathrooms, particularly the jet-loud hand dryers.

Fourth-grader Madison Lootens likes the school having a second floor, where "older kids" like her can study apart from the youngest students. Her favorite room is the science lab.

Green school building is not as far along in the Baltimore area.

In Harford County, school officials are seeking LEED certification - the lowest ranking from the green building council - for an addition and modernization of Joppatowne Elementary School. The school system's new headquarters also was constructed to LEED silver standards, according to spokeswoman Terri D. Kranefeld.

In Baltimore County, Vincent Farm Elementary School, which opened last year in White Marsh, has a geothermal heating and cooling system, among other energy-saving features. But county officials opted not to seek the green building council's rating, said spokeswoman Kara Calder, because of the costs and paperwork involved in certifying the efficacy of what they did.

County officials plan to seek a LEED silver rating for each of the next two schools in the works: the new West Towson elementary to be opened next August, and a new arts and technology school for which ground is to be broken later this month, Calder said.

Howard County hasn't opened any new schools for the past couple of years, so the district hasn't had any newly constructed buildings to submit for LEED rating, said spokeswoman Patti Caplan.

Building green has been at least slightly more expensive upfront, but that may be changing. St. Mary's officials figured they'd need to spend an extra $1.5 million for Evergreen to accommodate all the features they wanted, but found that the project ultimately came in $1.3 million under budget. And now they view it as a model for future schools they expect to build.

For St. Mary's officials, there's an economic incentive to energy conservation. The county's 27 schools, competing in a "capture-the-flag" contest to curb their energy use, managed to save the county roughly $500,000 in energy costs last year, officials said. Evergreen is projected to need 20 percent less energy than conventional school buildings.

But conservation is a habit to be learned, not just a gadget installed in a building, they say. "My green guru, let's make sure all the lights are off," fifth-grade teacher Lisa Lewis called out as her class filed out the door and down the hallway.

"It's easy being green," said Martirano. "It's not an add-on, not a concept. It's a way of thinking, of acting. ... At the end of the day, for all of us, it's about changing behavior for our kids."

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Youth groups create new oyster gardens for Ocean Pines
Aug. 17 – WBOC-TV 16 Delmarva

ASSATEAGUE STATE PARK, Md.- Oysters will soon have a new home in Ocean Pines' waters. Several groups got together at Assateague State Park on Friday to make that home.

"We're really trying to get kids of various ages out to reconnect with nature," said Maryland Department of Natural Resources Secretary John Griffin.

The day's mission was environmental education by means of creating oyster gardens. Griffin said that oysters are critical to the health of the Eastern Shore's ecosystem, but the region's oyster population continues to suffer due to disease.

However, two youth groups, Coast Kids and Coastal Stewards, came to Assateague to lend a hand and give the baby oysters a home, an oyster garden. First, they mixed the concrete. Next, they dug a hole. The concrete was then added to the hole. Lastly, the shells were added to the hole, but still stuck out of the concrete.

The oyster gardens will set for about 24 hours, then on Saturday afternoon will be taken to Ocean Pines and placed on an oyster reef in the St. Martin River.

Joriee' Dorman, one of the Coastal Stewards youth group members, said this experience has inspired her.

"For me, it's more of the education, getting out, interacting with the kids and teaching them about science, what a clam does, what you know an oyster or mussel, how they affect the bay, how they are important," Dorman said.

DNR said oysters are a keystone species because their filtering action cleans the waterways. Maryland's oyster restoration program has rehabilitated more than 1,200 acres of oyster bars, most now actively managed.

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Five area schools join trout program
Sept. 22 - The Roanoke Times

Trout in the Classroom, a national environmental education program of Arlington-based Trout Unlimited, has grown to 100 classrooms this school year. This represents a 54 percent increase over last school year and represents more than 15,000 students statewide.

The New River Valley TU chapter has witnessed an increased interest in the program. Last year, the chapter helped Floyd County High School initiate its first TIC program, which led to the raising and releasing of more than 100 brown trout fingerling into Burkes Fork, a coldwater stream in Floyd County. Another TIC program was already in place at the Christiansburg High School.

Four additional Montgomery County Public Schools have joined onto the program, as well as one Giles County school. Students at Christiansburg, Auburn and Shawsville middle schools as well as Belview Elementary School will raise trout from eggs in their classrooms. The Macy McClaugherty Middle School in Giles County also plans to raise the coldwater fish.

In the program, students work with local TU chapters to receive eggs in the fall, raise them in 55-gallon aquariums until they are 2- to 3-inch fingerling trout, and then release them in a coldwater stream in the spring. In the process, students learn about water quality, stream ecology, conservation ethics and biology.

With each TIC program having a start-up cost of about $1,200, new projects are supported by cooperative partnerships between TU chapters, schools, local businesses and foundations that often provide funding assistance, and the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, which supplies eggs, educational and technical support, and helps with the releases.

Teachers interested in establishing TIC projects at their schools can visit www.troutintheclassroom.org online
or by contacting Angelo Biviano, NRVTU TIC Coordinator, at abiviano@vt.edu.

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