Dot Earth Blog: Schools Designed With the Environment in Mind

Schools can play an important role in fostering environmental and energy awareness not only through how they teach, but also their physical structures and grounds. I?ve been getting familiar with the remarkable, and growing, range of ?green school? designs and initiatives around the country. Here?s an initial survey, spurred in part by invaluable input from Veronique Choa Pittman of the Green Schools Alliance and from my visit last week to the engaging new Green Schools exhibition at the National Building Museum in Washington.

At the end of this post you will find a sampler from Pittman?s list of schools where teachers focus on energy and environmental education. But first, here?s a short video I shot during my tour of the Washington exhibition, which opened this week and runs until next January:

There are informative conventional indoor displays but also a newly installed Sprout Space modular classroom on the museum grounds.

Some of the featured schools, like the Phelps Architecture, Construction and Engineering High School in Washington, are refurbished. What I particularly like about this school is how the learning, including vocational training, is implicitly echoed in the architecture. (The curriculum reminds me of the fantastic New York Harbor School, where students study marine biology and also boat building.)

Others, like the Kiowa County School in Greensburg, Kan., were built from the ground up with attention to limiting energy and water use and minimizing environmental impacts. (In this case the new construction came after the town was devastated by a powerful tornado in 2007; you may have seen the reality television series chronicling that process.)

Click here for links to background on all 41 schools and here for a photo gallery.

What?s great in many of these schools is the blurry boundary between structure and syllabus. At the museum, curators pointed to displays showing how, at the Manassas Park Elementary School, Manassas, Va., explanatory posters on successive floors of the building echo the layers of the school forest outside the windows ? from the forest floor to the understory and on up through the canopy.

There?s enormous untapped potential to use schools as laboratories for studying energy, the handling of waste and water, and much more. In the 1990s, my wife, a science educator, described a vision articulated by a one-time colleague, Don Cook of the Bank Street College of Education (now deceased), in which the physical systems of a school, from the boiler to the bathrooms, could be integrated into coursework.

I?ve written off and on about innovative environmental education efforts, including ?trout in the classroom? (a personal favorite). But with Cook?s vision in mind, I?ve been sifting for more examples. That quest led me to Pittman at the Green Schools Alliance.

She sent a list of schools where teachers are using the school or campus as a teaching tool. This list is not comprehensive and I?d love it if readers would draw attention to schools they know where this kind of learning is taking place:

Public schools:
Bronx Design & Construction Academy: New York City public school excelling at project-based learning, a finalist for the 2013 Zayed Future Energy prize for Global Schools.

Pine Jog Elementary School, West Palm Beach. Fla.: This is a LEED Platinum elementary school that incorporates the building as as teaching tool.

The STAR School, Flagstaff, Ariz.: A Navajo charter school that is off the grid, uses the land and sky as a teacher and teaches Navajo peacemaking.

High School for Energy and Technology, New York, N.Y.: A ? Career and Technical Education? school in the Bronx that was started through a partnership between the Earth Institute at Columbia University and the New York City Department of Education Division of School Facilities. They are training students in building management systems technologies, HVAC, building commissioning, energy auditing, etc. using the building as a teaching tool.

Private Schools:

St. Lukes School, New Canaan, Conn.: They have students working to clear the St Luke?s campus of invasive species, raise their own food and undertaking many other initiatives, including clearing invasives, in the surrounding community. David Havens, the science teacher, excels in sustainability curriculum.

Ethical Culture Fieldston School, Bronx, N.Y.: Green roof, solar panels, etc., with sustainability integrated into curriculum.

Riverdale Country School, Bronx, N.Y.: The head of school, Dominick Randolph (written up in The New York Times), cares deeply about personal sustainability and stewardship.

The Town School, New York, N.Y.: Kindergarten through ninth grade, with solar panels and the first New York City wind turbine. Recycling is in the curriculum.

Besant Hill School, Ojai, Calif.: Very engaged and proactive community that uses the school as a teaching tool.

Darrow School, New Lebanon, N.Y.: Doing it all, including a ?living machine? to purify water.

This is just a sample from Pittman?s list. You can explore many other schools, in the United States and around the globe, on the alliance?s Web site.

Source: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/schools-and-syllabuses-designed-with-the-environment-in-mind/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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