The Highlandtown Elementary/Middle School #237 Green Team
Welcome to our application for recognition as a Maryland Green School by the Maryland Association for Environmental and Outdoor Education (MAEOE) for the period covering September 2014-June 2016. Below is a brief history of our student-driven efforts during this time period. Please visit the subsequent pages of this website to learn more about the many projects and activities taking place at our school as Highlandtown goes green!
Over the course of the 2014/2015 and 2015/2016 school years, the Highlandtown #237 Green Team--with a fluctuating membership between 15-30 students in grades three through six--has led our school community in promoting environmental stewardship in our school, as well as in the larger Highlandtown and Baltimore Highlands communities.
At the time of this application, the Green culture at #237 is strong and growing stronger as the year goes on: over the course of the past two school years, the Green Team has engaged in weekly recycling collection for the entire school building every Thursday afternoon after school, while also gradually building recycling awareness and causing positive behavior change among staff and students through artwork in the hallways and conversations/notes to individual classes. With this practice as a baseline for recycling culture at the school, the students also elected to complete a recycled bottle-cap mural project over the course of the 2015/2016 school year, with a goal of re-using 10,000 bottle caps. This project will displayed on the wall of a business on Eastern Avenue in June 2016, as part of an "Adopt-A-Lot" project undertaken in partnership with the Southeast Community Development Corporation.
In addition to waste reduction practices, Green Team students have also led the school in the creation of a continuously improving structure for environmental learning: the Highlandtown #237 Garden has gone from a vegetable and herb garden with four raised beds during the 2014/2015 school year to a vegetable, herb, and native plant garden (now that the Audubon Bird- and Butterfly-friendly garden has been added to the space) with 8 raised beds. This expanded garden now gives the school space to use the beds for outdoor classroom instruction in the 2016/2017 school year, which will ensure that it is used beyond the Green Team and enjoyed by all of the students in the building in the upcoming years.
Examples of the full slate of projects--and how these projects have pushed our community to be more environmentally-conscious--can be found in the pages that follow. However, the Highlandtown #237 Green Team is much more than these projects. Over the course of these past two years, the team has gone from a once/week activity in 2014/2015 to a twice/week, two-hour after-school program in 2015/2016 with a carefully planned curriculum and a focus on creating student leaders in the building. The move to broaden the focus of the Green Team beyond environmental stewardship to include curriculum focused on leadership-building and creative expression has been student-led, with team members consistently requesting interesting and engaging programming that matches the diversity of their interests. Co-facilitating this experience throughout the 2015/2016 school year and giving Green Team a new depth and richness are Bethan McGarry (a graduate intern from the University of Maryland School of Social Work) and Alanna Rivera (a graduate intern working through the Southeast CDC through a fellowship with the Maryland Institute College of Art).
With regard to classroom-level greening practices, teachers across all grade levels (pre-kindergarten through 8) have increased awareness of a large variety of environmental issues by implementing environmental education lessons in literacy and science classes. Examples of these include: a seed and apple exploration project in our pre-kindergarten class, raising zebra fish in a second grade classroom in order to learn about caring for fish habitats, as well as a fourth grade classroom that learned about methods of reducing oil consumption in order to care for our planet. With staff assistance from Green Team Co-Leaders (full-time staff in the building) Hannah Gorton (ESOL) and Greg Couturier (Community School Coordinator), these practices (outlined under Objective 1) will continue to grow and be supported by the staff's instructional planning.
At the time of this application, the Green culture at #237 is strong and growing stronger as the year goes on: over the course of the past two school years, the Green Team has engaged in weekly recycling collection for the entire school building every Thursday afternoon after school, while also gradually building recycling awareness and causing positive behavior change among staff and students through artwork in the hallways and conversations/notes to individual classes. With this practice as a baseline for recycling culture at the school, the students also elected to complete a recycled bottle-cap mural project over the course of the 2015/2016 school year, with a goal of re-using 10,000 bottle caps. This project will displayed on the wall of a business on Eastern Avenue in June 2016, as part of an "Adopt-A-Lot" project undertaken in partnership with the Southeast Community Development Corporation.
In addition to waste reduction practices, Green Team students have also led the school in the creation of a continuously improving structure for environmental learning: the Highlandtown #237 Garden has gone from a vegetable and herb garden with four raised beds during the 2014/2015 school year to a vegetable, herb, and native plant garden (now that the Audubon Bird- and Butterfly-friendly garden has been added to the space) with 8 raised beds. This expanded garden now gives the school space to use the beds for outdoor classroom instruction in the 2016/2017 school year, which will ensure that it is used beyond the Green Team and enjoyed by all of the students in the building in the upcoming years.
Examples of the full slate of projects--and how these projects have pushed our community to be more environmentally-conscious--can be found in the pages that follow. However, the Highlandtown #237 Green Team is much more than these projects. Over the course of these past two years, the team has gone from a once/week activity in 2014/2015 to a twice/week, two-hour after-school program in 2015/2016 with a carefully planned curriculum and a focus on creating student leaders in the building. The move to broaden the focus of the Green Team beyond environmental stewardship to include curriculum focused on leadership-building and creative expression has been student-led, with team members consistently requesting interesting and engaging programming that matches the diversity of their interests. Co-facilitating this experience throughout the 2015/2016 school year and giving Green Team a new depth and richness are Bethan McGarry (a graduate intern from the University of Maryland School of Social Work) and Alanna Rivera (a graduate intern working through the Southeast CDC through a fellowship with the Maryland Institute College of Art).
With regard to classroom-level greening practices, teachers across all grade levels (pre-kindergarten through 8) have increased awareness of a large variety of environmental issues by implementing environmental education lessons in literacy and science classes. Examples of these include: a seed and apple exploration project in our pre-kindergarten class, raising zebra fish in a second grade classroom in order to learn about caring for fish habitats, as well as a fourth grade classroom that learned about methods of reducing oil consumption in order to care for our planet. With staff assistance from Green Team Co-Leaders (full-time staff in the building) Hannah Gorton (ESOL) and Greg Couturier (Community School Coordinator), these practices (outlined under Objective 1) will continue to grow and be supported by the staff's instructional planning.
From left to right above: A 5th-grade student creating signage for a bottle-cap recycling mural (explained in detail under section 2.5 of the application); students creating the collection boxes for the bottle-cap collection; one of the finished bottle-cap collection boxes (which have been placed all over the school throughout the 2015/2016 school year).