School Garden Bounty!

One of the challenges with a school garden is what happens during the summer months.  At many of our schools, this means teachers come in to take care of things during the summer months and many times they try to enlist the help of students and parents.  At Glacier Park last week they had a work day in the garden.  One of the students who worked that day wrote a few words to share her experience.     

Today on August 8th, my mom, sister and I went to the school garden.  Mrs. Haws and  Mrs. Davidson helped pick food for the Maple Valley Food Bank.  We picked kohlrabi, string beans, read and white onions, cabbage, and potatoes.  We also pulled weeds.   It was a really hot day, so we watered the plants.  We took the food to the Maple Valley Food Bank; the food weighed 35 pounds.

Thanks to Green Team Leader Cathy Haws and student, Maya C. for this post!

Tahoma Green Ribbons - State Awards

Four schools, including Tahoma Junior High, were honored today by State Superintendent Randy Dorn for their commitment to environmental leadership.  The award-winning schools, honored at an award ceremony at Bainbridge Island’s IslandWood, all incorporate health and energy management into academics through connections between science, technology, engineering and math, civic skills and green career pathways.

Today’s recognition was an extension of a national competition, open to public and private schools, at the U.S. Department of Education, which named finalists from several states as “Green Ribbon Schools.” Washington had three public-school winners and one private-school winner among 72 schools that won the national award:

Camelot Elementary, Federal Way SD

Secondary Academy for Success, Northshore SD

Tahoma Jr High, Tahoma SD

The Overlake School (private)

 “Their enthusiasm, hard work and creativity demonstrate that we can provide an excellent environment for a well-rounded education with an emphasis on addressing the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century,” Dorn said. “Criteria for this award were rigorous. I applaud the winners for their dedication to making the world a better place.”

State-level awards were given in three categories:

Pillar 1: Environmental Impact and Energy Efficiency

Bryn Mawr Elementary School, Seattle SD

Creekside Elementary School, Sammamish SD

Issaquah Middle School, Issaquah SD

The Jewish Day School, Bellevue SD

Skyridge Middle School, Camas SD

Pillar 2: Healthy School Environments

Bertschi School, Seattle SD

Tahoma Sr. High, Tahoma SD

Pillar 3: Environmental and Sustainability Education

The Evergreen School, Shoreline SD

Glacier Park Elementary, Tahoma SD

Sacajawea Elementary, Vancouver SD

Skyview Jr. High, Bothell SD

The U.S. Department of Education Green Ribbon Schools award honors schools that are exemplary in reducing environmental impact and costs, improving the health and wellness of students and staff and providing effective environmental and sustainability education. The program is part of a broader effort by the Department of Education to identify and disseminate knowledge about practices that are proven to result in improved student engagement, higher academic achievement and graduation rates, and workforce preparedness.

For more information
National Green Ribbon website
National Green Ribbon award-winning applications
Washington Green Ribbon website

      

Last Day - Camp Snowball

Today was our last day at Camp Snowball and it started out with a general session live chat on Skype with David Coleman. He talked about the common core standards, and the importance of elementary students building reading skills essential for building vocabulary and reading skills and also about deep reading of text for secondary students. 

Later on in our core modules, we made a skit summarizing some of the things we had learned. This helped us show our learning in a more visual way for others because it was filmed and every member played a role. Before we left we got all of our fellow student's email addresses so we could connect with them later on and discuss some of the actions they plan to take during this new school year.

Overall, camp snowball was a great learning experience and I look forward to applying all that I have learned in our school and community.

Post by Green Team Student Leader, Kathryn

Biosphere 2

Partial view of the Biosphere Ocean

Snowball included a chance to select a learning journey from the many great places to visit in and around Tucson.  Our first choice was going to the Biosphere 2.  This was an attempt to create a completely sustainable system that could support humans and other plant and animal life.  It was an amazing experience.  

Life was was tough for the 8 person crews that inhabited the Biosphere 2.   We learned that they couldn't use pesticides to control any pests that potentially threatened their food supply.   If they had used pesticides they would have polluted their entire world (the biosphere).   At camp, when learning about systems thinking, we learned that there were two types of solutions to problems: often one might be a short quicker one and often a more difficult slower solution. Often times, the solution that you invest time and thought into is planned better and takes into consideration more factors of the system, thus making it more likely to work.   In the example for the biosphere the crew knew that dealing with the bugs manually would be better in the long run, although it was certainly a lot harder for them. 

Standing on the Biosphere beach

We have many choices for attacking the problems we have - do we try for solutions that are good for just today or do we try to attack them for the long term (forever!).  What choices do we make? The biosphere is very similar to our planet. Although each of the 5 ecosystems at the Biosphere 2 were unique, they are all tied together. The water and the air is the same across the world. We treat them like they are infinitely replenishing. Water and air,whether we think about it or not, are finite resources that we easily cause to be severely damaged and even unusable.  

Post by Green Team Student Leader, Jayaram

Camp Snowball Day 4

Today, Tony Wagner appeared at our morning general session. He talked about the problems in our education, and that for 25 years, schools were doing the same things and therefore getting the same end results. He explained what was most important, is to pay attention to the time formulation of the problem rather than the solution, and resist the urge to come to a quick answer. He told us the seven survival skills for school, college, and the future. 

1. Critical thinking/ problem solving (competitive)
2. Ability to communicate 
3. Agility and adaptability 
4. Initiative in entrepreneurship
5. Effective in oral and written communication
6. Accessing and analyzing information 
7. Curiosity and imagination 

And that play, passion, and purpose, were all the keys for education

Post by Green Team Student Leader, Kathryn

Trash: To Be or Not To Be?

Our Data Chart

What people see as trash is not actually trash. We collected some trash bags from the hotel, weighed them, and had 40 pounds of trash.  Then we sorted the trash into compost, recycle, liquids, and garbage. During the process I learned a lot more then I expected "digging in the trash cans." Across the nation recycling varies a lot. From what is recycled, to how recyclable materials are separated. I would not like to mess up your minds by telling you what everyone else is doing, but rest assured, we are more advanced in the Pacific Northwest than many places. 

You can't mix trash into your compost!

We got to check out the trash at the hotel and it was surprising for me to find out that a majority of the trash at the Marriott  was compostable. Recyclable materials and trash were about the same, and liquids were fairly small.  If the hotel trash is similar to homes and everyone were to be compost what they could, according to our calculations using this 40 pound sample, our landfills could be about 20% their current size. 

Remember

• You can compost organic and biodegradable materials. 
• Recycle correctly and often. 
• Pour your unwanted liquids down the drain, where it can be treated. 

Save our world by using materials that can be recycled, reused, or composted and try not to use those that have their end of life in a landfill. This is Sustainability 101!


Post by Green Team Student Leader, Jayaram

Crickets are Cool!

Jumping, hopping, dancing in the sun. The life of a solar cricket is the life to have, these little plastic toys use what we call a solar panel to jump and dance in the sun. A solar panel is a panel that takes in the suns light energy and converts it into electricity, it does this by transferring light through a glass sheet, then it gets converted into energy by traveling through a crystal called silicon. This energy then can power a home, a city, or even a cricket! Enough about the science let's talk about the fun and games, when we were introduced to these little toys in our core module we had a cricket race, there were a few tricks that helped you win the race, when the cricket would start to fall off the track you could cover it with your hand and it would stop then when you would let it go it would magically get back on track to the finish. The thing is, that we were not only introduced to a toy but to something much larger than that, we were introduced to our future, the future of renewable energy! We need to jump off the fossil fuel bandwagon and walk the line of renewable energy sources, wind, hydro, solar, and much much more. Fossil fuel won't last us much longer and the resources we need are in front of us, we just need to use them.


Post by Green Team Student Leader, Jon