The best teachers inspire. Their grasp and excitement of a subject is contagious. Talking to Bertha Vazquez, Susan Vincent and Patrick Curley, you can’t come away without absorbing at least a sliver of their passion for the environment.

This month the National Environmental Education Foundation recognized Vazquez, Vincent and Curley for their innovative approaches to environmental education. Bertha Vazquez, a middle school teacher at a magnet school in Coral Gables, Fla., won the Richard C. Bartlett Education Award, named after the chairman of the Nature Conservancy of Texas. Patrick Curley, a middle and high-school teacher who works with at-risk students in Jacksonville, NC, and Susan Vincent, an earth and marine science teacher in East Harlem, NY, won certificates of merit.

“Kids have always related to the environment,” says Vazquez, who teaches at George Washington Carver Middle School in the Miami-Dade school system. “Teachers need to look for real-life connections that kids can relate to.”

Showing kids how caring for the environment affects them at home or in school is something they can understand, she says.

Vazquez, a biology major, says that today people feel the same about the environment as they did in the ‘70s. “The difference is,” she says, “that this time there’s a more practical side that people can relate to such as installing compact fluorescent light bulbs, driving a hybrid car or using cloth bags for grocery shopping.”

Vazquez, for instance, drives a Volkswagen that runs on biofuel made from chicken fat.

Vincent, who teaches earth science and marine science at the Young Women’s Leadership School of East Harlem, says she sees kids changing their habits. “We go to Central Park, walking from 110th street to 59th street. They can’t believe that people trash our parks. Despite the fact that our inner city students have had little experience with nature, once you turn them onto the environment, they become passionate.”

Vincent also has taken her students (see photo, above right) to such places as Orchard Beach in the Bronx. “They do clean-up projects where they take the train to the beach, pick up bags of trash, and see firsthand the effect that plastic trash has on marine animals. The kids see the trash and become indignant,” she says.

Vincent’s college prep public school is 100 percent minority girls. “They view the environment as the underdog and this resonates with them,” she says. The Young Women’s Leadership School is one of five urban all-girls public schools supported by the YWL Network.

Curley works with kids who have been taken from their regular high school because of behavioral or academic issues. This past year he was hired as an ENVISIONS coach for the entire Onslow County Schools. He brings students to a 66-acre pine forest at the county’s Learning Center where he teaches them to become “citizen scientists.” In this role, the kids learn how to monitor the local creek and track bird breeding.

In one of Curley’s projects, his students built a nature trail for the Izaak Walton League, one of the country’s first conservation organizations formed in 1922 to maintain America’s outdoors for future generations. The trail project included planting native plants and building and maintaining an oyster shell recycling station.

With the Environmental Protection Agency back in full action again after years of humming in neutral, things are happening, and some important beneficiaries could be America’s school children.

USA TODAY reports today that the EPA is expected to run tests of the air quality outside some 62 schools in 22 states to see whether the sites are polluted beyond healthy thresholds. (See the list of schools.)

The EPA’s sampling comes in response to a USA TODAY investigation that found many schools were located in “toxic hot spots.” The newspaper’s investigating reporters used government records to determine that some 435 schools across the nation were surrounded by air more polluted than that found at a school in Ohio which had been shut down because of its poor air quality.

“Your stories raised important questions that merit investigation and that’s what we’re doing,” EPA administrator Lisa Jackson told the paper on Monday. “We want parents to know that the places their children live, play and learn are safe.”

The testing will take place at schools in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas and several smaller cities and will cost an estimated $2.25 million.

Many of the schools identified in the USA TODAY package as being in high air pollution zones sit near busy freeways or freeway junctions, or near industrial polluters like steel foundries and cement plants. In some cases, the schools have been located in industrial zones for years; in others, they were recently sited there because no better land could be found or because the land was less expensive. Needless to say, the series pointed out that air laden with smog, heavy metals and other pollutants can be especially harmful to kids whose lungs are still developing.

And that school that was closed? It was Meredith Hitchens Elementary, in Addyston, Ohio — shut down in 2005 after the Ohio EPA found levels of carcinogens 50 times above what the state considered acceptable.

Sure there will be people who say the EPA will just be spending money for naught. Actually, there are already people saying exactly that in comments on the USA TODAY website. We Americans love to trash our federal government.

And after all, what can be done? It’s not like the U.S. could fine air polluters, say under the Clean Air Act. Or cause them to pay for dumping into the atmosphere, through a cap-and-trade or carbon tax program. Or build more public transportation, or cleaner cars, or buses with reduced diesel emissions.

Seems this one issue does raise “important questions” — dozens, or even 435, of them.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

When David Kilbourne picked up his 8-year-old son from Lake Travis Elementary in spring 2007, he noticed smoke billowing from idling buses parked in queue behind the school. The exhaust fumes his son was breathing each day as he waited to be picked up, he says, were contributing to his son’s migraine headaches. “My son is the quarterback for his youth football team,” said Kilbourne. “Because there’s only one quarterback, when he gets these headaches, it affects the team.”

Kilbourne remembers noticing the bus exhaust during the school’s bus safety week. “They were talking about how buses are safe when it comes to traffic accidents,” he said, “but there’s more to a bus’s safety than traffic accidents, like having air that’s safe to breathe.”

The coincidence spurred Kilbourne to take action. Not only did he write several letters to his local newspaper, but Kilbourne approached the head of his district’s transportation department to discuss air quality in and around its buses. After he spoke to Rick Walterscheid, the transportation director at the Lake Travis Independent School District, the school system put a no-idling policy into effect.

Walterscheid didn’t stop there, either. Later that year the 79th Texas Legislature adopted House Bill 3469, which established and authorized the formation of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to administer a statewide clean school bus program.

With the goal of reducing diesel exhaust emissions, TCEQ offers grants to all Texas public school districts and charter schools that operate at least one diesel-fueled school bus. The TCEQ’s grants offset the cost of school district’s sometimes daunting costs to retrofit school buses, as well as other projects that reduce emissions of diesel exhaust.

Lake Travis ISD, located in a Hill Country suburb of Austin, Texas, was among more than 50 Texas school districts that were eligible for TCEQ’s funding in 2007. That year, Walterscheid’s district applied for and received more than $80,000 in grant money to retrofit a portion of its fleet of buses.

Walterscheid, who manages a fleet of 76 buses that shuttle about 2,500 students each day, said the district’s students are all breathing a little easier these days with help from the TCEQ and its grant program.

“Looking back, the process wasn’t that difficult,” he says, explaining that the district put diesel particulate filters on nine of its buses last year, resulting in “a 90% improvement (in emissions).”

Lake Travis ISD is certainly among the trend setters; one of several districts nationwide that have made firm commitments to clean the air its students and others breathe. This growing national trend includes school districts adopting no-idling policies and those moving to alternative fuels as well.

Nationally, several large city school systems have retrofitted many of their school buses to reduce harmful emissions, according to the Environmental Defense Fund, which is leading a campaign to clean up school buses nationwide.

The non-profit environmental group reports that the entire fleet of New York City’s 4,070 large buses is scheduled to be retrofitted by 2008; Atlanta has installed passive filters on 353 long school buses and Boston has retrofitted 328 school buses.

Environmental Defense points to the NYC plan and Texas’ program, which is better funded than many, as model projects. Parents and educators can get up to speed on the basic steps to take at ED’s Four Steps to Cleaner Buses.

FIXING THE PROBLEM

In recent years, several environmental groups have documented that exhaust from diesel-fueled buses make the safe ride to school a truly unhealthy one. Diesel exhaust comprises a cauldron of cancer-causing agents: particulate matter (or soot), smog-forming nitrogen oxides, and a complex mixture of gases. Studies have found that those gases don’t stay outside the bus, either, but permeate the interior.

This “indoor pollution” problem has wide implications: An estimated 24 million children get to class by riding school buses in the United States.

In Texas, with some 1.3 million children hopping on its more than 36,000 buses each school day, the pollution problem for the children is compounded by their sometimes lengthy commutes.

Many school buses in Texas haven’t been making the grade. More than a third of the school buses in the state are more than 10 years old. Not only do these older buses emit more pollution than newer models but they expose children unnecessarily to diesel exhaust, which has been found to make breathing even harder for children with asthma and other respiratory problems.

“Mr. Kilbourne raised my awareness of how we can affect a student,” said Walterscheid. “Talking to him brought to the forefront the issues that we needed to address and made the decision to apply for retrofit funding with the TCEQ that much easier.” <!–nextpage–>

“The school buses we run are the only mode of transportation for many students whose parents both work,” says Walterschied. “So, some parents don’t have a choice of whether or not to put their children on the bus. We are here to serve and we have the duty to improve the situation that students have to be in.”

A handful of organizations fund the effort of retrofitting school buses to make the drive to and from school healthier for children. The TCEQ is the primary organization that heads up bus retrofitting in Texas. The Texas Parent Teachers Association, through its Supplemental Environment Program, helps fund retrofitting, as well, but at a lesser extent.

The Texas Emissions Reduction Plan (TERP) has set aside money for retrofitting expenses, but the organization is primarily focused on funding replacement of school buses, which can cost up to $85,000 apiece.

“It’s ideal for school districts to ask for and get as many new buses as they can,” says Hazel Barbour, program manager for Clean School Bus Program of Central Texas, which is run through a partnership with Clean Air Force and the Capital Area Council of Governments. Barbour’s program assists several Texas counties, including Travis, Williamson, Hayes, Caldwell, Bastrop, and others. As part of her role with the Clean School Bus Program she assists districts in filling out the necessary forms to apply for retrofitting grants and getting the necessary bids for the work to be done.

Retrofitting work is bid on and performed by contractors approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the California Air Resources Board, which together ensure that retrofitters meet certain standards.

Four retrofitting options have been approved for funding through the TCEQ. These include:

• Diesel particulate filters, which can cost from $6,500 to $8,250, are ceramic devices that collect particulate matter in the exhaust system and require a high temperature to break down the matter in the exhaust system. These filters must be used in conjunction with ultra-low sulfur diesel (ULSD) fuel. The combination of particulate filters and ULSD fuel can reduce emissions of particulates, organic compounds, and carbon monoxide in the exhaust gases by 60 to 90 percent. They work best on engines built after 1994.

• Closed crankcase filtration systems, allow a diesel engine’s crankcase to be closed and use an air filter to trap blow-by aerosols consisting mainly of oil droplets with some carbon and traces of “wear debris” and all particles that are smaller than 10 micrometers in diameter. These particles are considered “inhalable”, because they are small enough to pass into the lower airways. Blow-by gas emissions can be as much as 25 percent of the total emissions from a diesel engine. The filtration efficiency of crankcase filters averages between 80 and 97 percent, but the crankcase filter must be changed at every lube oil change or every 500 hours of operation. Crankcase filters are inexpensive and are best used in conjunction with some type of filtration system in the exhaust stream. These systems may be more effective at reducing children’s in-cabin exposures to pollutants than control systems fitted into the exhaust systems alone. The devices are reimbursed at $800 per bus.

• Diesel oxidation catalysts, which cost from $600 to $1,500, chemically break down pollutants in the exhaust stream to reduce particulate matter in emissions. Diesel oxidation catalysts can reduce emissions of particulates by 20 to 40 percent, hydrocarbons by 50 percent and carbon monoxide by 40 percent and can be used with regular diesel fuel.

• Partial flow-through filters comprise a fitting on tailpipes that uses a two-stage filter to accumulate and reduce particulate matter emissions by 70 to 75 percent. This type of retrofit can also reduce total vehicle emissions by up to 80 percent when paired with a closed crankcase filtration system. It is designed to be maintenance-free and can be used with ultra-low sulfur diesel (ULSD) fuel. This type of retrofit costs $5,000 to $6,000.

Costs for retrofitting can be daunting for school districts without the help. However, emissions from school buses drop by as much as 90% when engines and exhaust systems are retrofitted. <!–nextpage–>

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency maintains a list of vendors who sell retrofit devices. Companies the likes of Caterpillar, Clean Diesel Technologies, and PUREM North America supply school districts with diesel particulate filters, for example.

In Texas, about $8 million worth of grant money is available for the 2008 application period, according to TCEQ officials. Districts have through November 14 to apply and until March 31, 2009 to complete retrofits. School districts can make as many grant requests as they like up to $250,000 per grant request. For more info see the TCEQ FAQ.

Walterscheid’s Lake Travis Independent School District applied for $99,700 in ‘08 grant money to retrofit 20 of its buses with partial flow-through filters. When this next retrofitting is completed, Lake Travis will boast 29 retrofitted buses district-wide that will exceed state and federal requirements for environmental standards.

“When this grant funding was announced, there was hesitance with the technology,” said Walterscheid. “We had concerns that the engine wouldn’t get hot enough to burn diesel particulates, so we’ve put those (retrofitted) buses on our longer routes.”

BREATHING DIESEL FUMES

A study conducted jointly by the Environmental Defense, The Clean Air Task Force, and The Conroe Independent School District at The Woodlands, north of Houston, in Texas shines some light on the real culprits of the diesel exhaust systems.

Published in March 2007, Measuring Pollution Levels Inside Texas School Buses points to the bus’s tailpipe and open crankcase as the primary sources of air pollution. (See also this page on the study’s findings.)

The bus’s crankcase is located a few feet from the bus’s front door and vents to the air. When the door opens and closes, exhaust re-enters the vehicle during the course of a daily route.

“Several studies show that air pollution levels inside the school buses can be up to five times greater than levels outside the bus,” the report states.

Children, particularly those with asthma or respiratory problems, are at a greater risk because they breathe more rapidly than adults, they inhale more pollutants per pound of body weight, and their bodies aren’t equipped with a strong defense system. Even if for short periods of time, exposure to diesel exhaust pollution is linked to dizziness, coughing, chronic bronchitis, and increased incidence and severity of asthma attacks.

According to The Burden of Asthma in Texas report, published in May 2007 by the Texas Department of State Health Services and the Asthma Coalition of Texas, “asthma remains one of the most prevalent chronic diseases and growing health concerns in Texas and is one of the most frequent reasons for hospital admissions among children.”

Reports estimate that some 390,000 to as many as 600,000 children in Texas have asthma. (For more info, see this Burden of Asthma in Texas report.)

Multiply that across the nation, and it is easy to understand why there’s a growing trend across the U.S. to retrofit buses to clean up emissions and also to use alternative, cleaner-burning forms of fuel.

Many U.S. schools have transitioned to other forms of less-polluting fuels for their bus fleets. Compressed natural gas (CNG) is used widely in Europe and South America and in the US, this fossil fuel substitute for gasoline and diesel is becoming more widely available, particularly in California, where it’s used to power city and county bus fleets, and now school buses.

Biodiesel, mostly a plant-based fuel, also is growing in popularity. According to the July-August 2007 issue of The Futurist magazine, biodiesel should experience explosive growth within the next 10 years because it can be used in diesel engines without any modifications to the engine: “More than 80% of all commercial trucks and city buses run on diesel gas. This suggests a huge potential market for biodiesel in the U.S.”

The Clark County school district in Nevada has been making inroads into clean-burning buses for several years. The fifth-largest school district in the nation., it serves the cities of Las Vegas, Henderson, North Las Vegas, Boulder City, and Mesquite, and is believed to have the largest fleet of school buses fueled by biodiesel.

The district fuels its buses with recycled cooking oil, sourced from area restaurants. And since Las Vegas is a popular tourist town that never sleeps, the area generates six gallons of oil per resident each year – twice the national average. This clean fleet of school buses saves the environment from untold carbon emissions, according to the Las Vegas Regional Clean Cities Coalition, leaving only a whiff of fumes whose worst offense would be to cause hunger pangs.

Yes, the buses in Clark County smell like french fries.

(Clark County Buses, above. Photo Credit: Catherine Colbert.)

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Other than the intoxicating smell of new text books and notebooks, the familiar scents of back-to-school may be changing. Ammonia-scented hallways, newly sealed and fuming gym floors, odorously painted classrooms as well as lawns with the subtle scents of pesticide treatments, may be a thing of the past.

In today’s more environmentally conscious world, public and private schools are rethinking how they maintain their buildings. Reducing toxic chemicals in schools – as in our homes — is not only good for the environment, but for those who use these buildings.

In Maryland’s Montgomery County outside of Washington D.C., the public schools have long taken a pro-active approach in using non-toxic cleaners.

“We want our buildings to be clean and at the same time healthy for our students, faculty and the person doing the cleaning,” says Larry Hurd, building services trainer for the school district.

Ten years ago, the district, which oversees 200 schools, changed from an oil-based sealer for their wood gym floors to a water-based sealer. It works well, says Mr. Hurd, and toxins are no longer an issue. “The oil-based sealer was bad for the students and other visitors to our schools, but it was real, real bad for the person applying the sealer.” That person was exposed to the sealer fumes for as much as four hours.

Another major change in Montgomery County involved switching to a single less-toxic cleaner that replaced seven conventional cleaners that had been used in the schools — one for windows, another for floors, another for restrooms and so on. Starting about three years ago, the school system began using the green cleaner Alpha HP, made by Johnson Diversity, for all their cleaning uses, Hurd said.

The wood floors throughout the district are no longer stripped with caustic chemical strippers. Instead they are top-scrubbed with water and Alpha PH, which removes the two top coats, says Hurd, and involves less time and no toxins.

Alpha HP, a hydrogen peroxide-based cleaner, has been certified by Green Seal, a nonprofit company that promotes products that don’t harm the environment. Hydrogen Peroxide cleaners break down in the environment into basic elements faster and more completely than many other chemicals, such as ammonia or chlorine bleach, used in conventional cleaners.

More and more schools are getting on board with environmentally safe cleaning products, says a Green Seal spokesperson. In fact, schools across the entire state of New York is now going with Green Seal-approved cleaning solutions, and in May the state of Illinois adopted a similar green cleaning program, the Green Clean Schools Act.

In addition to being safe, Hurd points out that the Montgomery County School District saves on water since Alpha HP uses a measured dispenser system. Depending on the job, the Alpha HP powder is measured out and then mixed with just the right amount of water. And the one quart Alpha HP container is also recyclable.

“We’re really proud of our program,” says Hurd. “All our custodians are put through basic training. We take a systematic team approach to cleaning in which we clean all year long, looking for healthy ways to clean around the clock. We detail one quarter of our buildings every day – walls, floors, lights — so by the end of the week, everything has been thoroughly cleaned.” Years ago, Hurd notes, schools spent the summer cleaning to get ready for fall. But with the buildings being used all year long, “you can’t wait till summer to clean.”

No Kids Were Harmed During This Cleaning

At the Northwest School in Seattle, Washington, the environment is one of the three legs on which the school is founded, notes science teacher and environmental program director Herb Bergamini. The private school (pictured at top) was founded in 1980 and one of its key tenets, Bergamini says, is that “the students be invested in taking care of their space, their environment from the get-go.” Taking care of their environment at a young age, he says, will help them take care of it once they enter the “real world.”

Recycling, reducing carbon emissions and composting are not all these kids do. They actually are responsible for keeping their school clean. Scraping gum from the desks, cleaning toilets, vacuuming, maintaining wood floors are part of their day. Led by a senior, each student group is made up of all grades, sixth through 11th, as well as a faculty member who assists the seniors with leadership skills. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, classes stop at 9:40 a.m. and for the next 10 minutes, each team does their assignment. There is also a janitor who oversees the restrooms and dining rooms.

Besides learning responsibility, the students realize that their actions – such as sticking gum under a desk or leaving a half-filled recycled bottle in a bin – have an effect on their fellow students.

In the last year, says Bergamini, “we have switched to the ‘Simple Green’ line of products. We also use Bon Ami scouring powder and Murphy’s oil soap for the wood floors. Because our building is more than 100 years old, we have a lot a wood.” Simple Green cleaners are non-toxic and biodegradeable and meet Green Seal’s environmental standards. The non-toxic Bon Ami , Bergamini points out, has no dye, chlorine or perfume and is safe for the environment.

In the Irving Independent School District, composed of 35 schools and located in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, crews use another Green Seal-approved cleaning product called Stride Citrus Neutral Cleaner. In addition, Irving schools spokesman Tony Thetford says the school district is in the process of taking competitive bids on several green cleaners in hopes of adopting them. “We have gone out for bid on the Aquaria Floor Finish, Freedom Floor Stripper, Alpha-HP Multi-Surface Cleaner, and Glance NA Glass Cleaner that are Green-Seal certified. These products will be added to our inventory as soon as possible,” Thetford said.

Beginning with all 20 elementary schools, custodians are using new Pro-Team Super Coach HEPA Vacuums with HEPA filters that remove nearly 100 percent of dirt and allergens from floors and surfaces, Thetford says.

Leslie Reichert, aka the Cleaning Coach, advises homeowners and cleaning professionals on green methods of cleaning. But her advice can also be applied to schools. In fact, she recently assisted the Northbridge High School in the Worcester area of Massachusetts by suggesting they use microfiber cloths, one of the mainstays of her cleaning program.

“The new design of the school was nearly all glass. The janitors were spending a lot of time spraying the class with ammonia-based cleaners. I gave them the blue micro-fiber cloths which they just spray with water. No chemicals are involved. It saves on paper towels and they’re not filling up the students and janitors’ lungs with chemicals,” Reichert said.

Reichert also recommends mops that come with removable and washable microfiber pads or central vacuum systems.

Keeping Critters Out

Pesticide maintenance is another issue that affects the environment. The Northwest School in Seattle recently completed a major remodeling, says Bergamini. Although the Seattle area is probably not a mecca for critters, he says they made sure they removed all points of entries.

In warmer climates, such as Texas, keeping the schools free of bugs is more of an issue and may require some form of pesticide. Andy Garza, the Regulatory Compliance and Training Coordinator at Irving ISD, says Irving “has implemented a pro-active Integrated Pest Management approach. We are conducting structural and landscaping inspections to identify any repairs that need to be completed to prevent pest ingress. We are using monitors to identify pest activity before it becomes a problem. Finally, we use safe, non-chemical control methods (glue boards, light traps, etc.).”

The EPA doesn’t rule out the use of pesticides, stating that they are “powerful tools for controlling pests.” But they advise that they be used judiciously since children tend to be more sensitive to these chemicals than adults – especially young kids who may be crawling or putting their hands in their mouths. Specifically, the EPA suggests that schools use integrated pest management (IPM). As stated in their website: “IPM is a safer and usually less costly option for effective pest management in a school community. A school IPM program uses common sense strategies to reduce sources of food, water and shelter for pests…and takes advantage of all pest management strategies, including the judicious and careful use of pesticides when necessary.”

Among the common sense strategies suggested by the EPA:

• Make sure the problem or pest is identified before taking action.

• Vegetation, shrubs and wood mulch should be kept at least one foot away from structures.

• Cracks and crevices in walls, floors and pavement are either sealed or eliminated.

• Lockers and desks are emptied and thoroughly cleaned at least twice yearly.

• Food-contaminated dishes, utensils, surfaces are cleaned by the end of each day.

• Garbage cans and dumpsters are cleaned regularly.

• Litter is collected and disposed of properly at least once a week.

• Fertilizers should be applied several times (e.g.,spring, summer, fall) during the year, rather than one heavy application. (And, we might add, there are organic fertilizers that help build the soil and don’t produce nitrogen-heavy runoff.)

• If pesticides are necessary, use spot treatments rather than area-wide applications. (See our interview and video with Michael Bohdan of The Pest Shop in Plano for more ideas on organic pest control.)

In Irving, Garza says the key to using chemicals is in the application. “What makes a chemical safe,” he says, “is the person applying it and the way in which the chemical is applied. The IISD strictly enforces appropriate application times and waiting the proper amount of time necessary for safe reentry.”

More and more, environmentally clean schools are becoming the standard. As Montgomery County’s Larry Hurd says “Kids and staff are happier when their school is clean. When the air is good, you feel better. It’s a better experience for everyone.”

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

You’ve heard of No Child Left Behind. Now comes a new program with serious educational goals, but a different approach: No Child Left Inside proposes to re-invigorate environmental education by tapping into kids’ innate curiosity about nature. And communities across America are embracing the fresh, bottom-up concept by holding No Child Left Inside events.

At the Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence, Rhode Island, for example, kids from the Kizarian School recently got their hands dirty with a variety of experiments held along the zoo’s Wetlands Trail, a five acre exhibit surrounding a huge pond.

“The kids were actually looking for real macro invertebrates in the pond, while another learning station had a watershed model to discuss pollutants and effects on water, and then water-quality sampling and testing were conducted,” says Shareen Knowlton, director of education for the Williams Park Zoo. As the children explored outside, zoo residents, Loki, a red-tail hawk, and Teko, a Screech Owl, were on-hand to help the kids learn about native species firsthand. “Being outside and learning, the kids light up one-hundred percent, and they were so thrilled to be there, discovering dragonflies and such. It was so incredible. And that’s what we experience all the time when we get the kids involved in the outdoors,” Knowlton says.

In Greenwood, Indiana, fifth graders at Clark Pleasant Intermediate School spent four days this past school year outside, learning how to navigate with maps and compasses. Then they took a four-day field trip to Eagle Creek Park, where teams of three to five students navigated through the park, locating checkpoints to solve a puzzle and open a treasure chest.

Getting kids outside is the number one goal of the The No Child Left Inside (NCLI) Act, which could be passed in 2008. If it’s approved, the law would authorize $500 million over five years to states that create “environmental literacy plans” in schools across America.

First introduced in October 2007 by U.S. Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) and U.S. Representative John Sarbanes (D-MD), the eco-conscious politicians have been heavily promoting the NCLI Act this year. In April, during Environmental Education Week and on Earth Day, the senators promoted their initiative at a field hearing in Laurel, Md. (held outside of course) of the Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education subcommittee of the House Education and Labor Committee.

“Teaching children about the environment and giving them a hands-on opportunity to experience nature should be an important part of the curriculum in our schools. This legislation will free up critical funding for environmental education to inspire the next generation of scientists and conservationists,” said Senator Reed in a media release. “This legislation is a smart investment in our children’s future and the future of our planet.”

“Children today spend more time inside watching television or playing video games than they do outdoors,” said Congressman Sarbanes. “One way to get our young people outside is to educate them about the environment; No Child Left Inside seeks to do this by incorporating environmental education and outdoor opportunities into our schools’ instructional curricula.”

The NCLI Coalition, formed in 2006, was created to promote the NCLI Act and expand environmental education. “Research has shown the value that environmental education brings to schools. Kids grow more engaged in their work and perform better on assessments in every subject. We believe that all children should be given the chance to learn more about their world,” said Tom Waldron, spokesperson for the NCLI Coalition.

“We currently have over 235 organizations as members, representing more than 20 million people. But more individuals are still needed to truly make a difference,” Waldron admits.

You can become a NCLI Coalition member by visiting the group’s website, where you can also learn how to hold No Child Left Inside Days in your community. The website also helps you send a note of support to lawmakers, asking them to pass the NCLI Act, and explains why environmental education is important, citing studies like the one that found 45 million Americans think the oceans are a source of freshwater.

Many environmental advocates and educators are pushing for No Child Left Inside because so many schools are being forced to scale back on their environmental programs and cancel field trips. Environmentalists point to two factors: the unintended consequences of the No Child Left Behind Act and a lack of funding for environmental programs.

Because the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) raised the content standards and testing requirements for reading, math, and science, the change translated into more classroom time, and less outdoor time; environmental education got lost in the shuffle.

“Unfortunately, environmental education has not been a priority under the Bush Administration, but this legislation will begin to change that,” Reed said.

Key elements to the NCLI Act will include:

• Funding to train teachers to deliver high quality environmental education and use the local environment as an extension of the classroom.

• Incentives for states to help prepare students for the environmental challenges of the future.

• Encouragement for teachers, administrators, and school systems to make time for environmental education and integrate it across core subject areas.

In addition, the legislation also would re-establish the Office of Environmental Education within the U.S. Department of Education to oversee critical environmental education activities; and authorize the Secretary of Education to award competitive matching grants to nonprofit organizations, states, and local education agencies for activities to improve and support environmental education.

Over 100 leading environmental organizations support the initiative, including the Earth Day Network, Ecological Society of America, the National Wildlife Federation, and the Sierra Club.

Getting Kids Involved

Games are essential to getting your kids involved in the outdoors and the NCLI website can help you get started.

One fun activity the NCLI Coalition suggests is called “Schoolyard Bingo,” a fun variation on the scavenger hunt, where cards are made up with a variety of categories and each student must complete the the bingo card either by drawing or describing an object found in the Outdoor Classroom.

Find out how to have a “No Child Left Inside Day” at your school and see the website’s interactive map to see what U.S. schools are doing coast to coast.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media