Educator's Toolkit: Be Green This Spring!

Green Schools

"Eco-Renovation," (Green Guide 96, at eco-renovation), tells the story of how homeowners--the Horns--made greener and healthier choices in home renovation, and lists resources for making these choices. Your school or district is likely to be undergoing or planning construction and renovation, too. A typical school district has constant, ongoing needs to expand and improve buildings. Like the Horn's home renovation, these projects can be accomplished in ways that reduce pollution, save energy, and improve health. The news is even better: there often is money to help schools make the greener choice in appliances, materials, or building systems. This help can be needed in cash-strapped school districts, because often greener choices cost more up front, but save money in the long run through lower fuel or electricity bills and lower operations and maintenance costs.

The federal Department of Education and many states offer grants and subsidies to help districts design greener school buildings, install energy-saving lighting and lighting control options (such as motion sensors, which turn lights off if there's no one in the room), choose more energy efficient heating and cooling systems, and operate on-site green energy sources (such as solar, wind, or clean hydrogen-burning fuel cells.) Many states and utility companies even have school-specialist staff, who will work with schools to perform energy audits, decide on purchases, and apply for subsidy grants.

The Alliance to Save Energy's school page contains links to tools you can use to rate the energy efficiency of your school: www.ase.org/greenschools/newconstruction.htm; they also offer a host of links to energy-saving information and case studies at www.ase.org/greenschools/newconstruction2.htm. Also visit rs9.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c106:H.R.3143:, which summarizes The High Performance Schools Act of 1999, the source of Department of Education funds for energy-efficient, or "high performance" school construction and renovation. The Department of Energy's EnergySmart Schools program, www.eere.energy.gov/energysmartschools, has useful, user-friendly information on green choices in construction, operations, buses, curriculum and activities for kids. The "Deciding to Build" link on this page has extensive information and links, including planning and assessment tools and state-by-state information on financing options for green building choices. Help your school and school district make these greener choices in building, renovation and operations; you can help our planet, safeguard your children's health, and liberate more money for learning.

You can also help make sure your school isn't making children sniff, sneeze, and wheeze - visit the EPA's site on Indoor Air Quality in Schools, www.epa.gov/iaq/schools/index.html (which includes a link to a free brochure), and make use of the copious information and detailed guidelines available at The Healthy Schools Network, www.healthyschools.org.

For an overview of how to get involved in decision-making at your school, you can consult a November Green Guide Just Ask!, which offers guidance to a family seeking to get styrofoam out of their school cafeteria; see styrofoam.

Sustainable Wood

Help your students learn more about the USA's extraordinary consumption of trees. See The Green Guide's Paper product report, www.thegreenguide.com/reports/product.mhtml?id=31, for an overview of the many bad consequences of using virgin timber products. You can also investigate the "forest footprint" of the USA and many other countries in the World Wildlife Fund's Living Planet report, www.panda.org/livingplanet/ . This measures the actual forest land that the citizens of a country use in meeting their needs.

Your students can also choose to be forest guardians by becoming involved in school and community decision-making; consult "Five Steps to Sustainable Wood,", for ideas on how to spare the forest and the trees in the furniture purchases that your school and school community make.

How and Why are Our Bodies Burdened?

"Everybody's Chemical Burden," in Green Guide 96, reports on two major studies of human chemical pollution. Both are excellent web resources for further student exploration: www.cdc.gov/exposurereport and www.ewg.org/reports/bodyburden offer great health information, statistics, and general information on humans and exposure to troublesome levels of industrial, health-impairing chemicals. The Environmental Working Group's Body Burden site is more user-friendly, and furthermore offers biographies of the 9 ordinary people whose blood was examined for chemical pollutants, which could inform a role-play or simulation. The CDC site is an excellent research resource on the distressing prevalence of industrial pollutants in our bodies and our lives.

Gardens

Help your school develop some green space on campus: habitat for native species, beauty and serenity for tranquility and artistic inspiration, food gardens for science, multi-cultural and historical plantings, garden-based eco-businesses--the possibilities are many! See Green Teacher's Greening School Grounds (www.greenteacher.com/gsg.html), "Green Entrepreneurship" (on school garden businesses, in the Spring 2003 Green Teacher magazine, www.greenteacher.com/contents70.html), the National Wildlife Federation's Schoolyard Habitats program (www.nwf.org/schoolyardhabitats/), and CityFarmer's extensive school gardening resource page, at www.cityfarmer.org/schgard15.html, for some tips on getting started. Should you already have such a great resource available at your school, Green Guide 96's "Garden Prep" will guide your efforts to maintain your school garden as a healthy, living, productive mini-ecosystem.