April 16th, 2009
“What’s exciting is that 50 to 60 percent of the state’s environment and ecology standards are aligned with social studies,” says Wallace. “There’s a natural blend between social studies and environmental studies. So for a unit on coal mining, students are learning about the extraction of coal in Pennsylvania, immigrants, child labor laws, and reading historical fiction.”
The school has met its Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) each year (a statewide accountability measure that public schools must meet); been awarded “Exemplary Status” for its curriculum; received a 2007 Governor’s Award for Environmental Excellence, and, last year, a “Best Practices Award,” from the Philadelphia School District.
Through the development of their award-winning curriculum, Wallace and her staff have also helped support the opening of an environmental school in Pittsburgh, at Frick Park and Growing Up Green – a charter school in the Bronx, NY.
Green Woods is currently lending their expertise to founders of the Seven Generations Charter School located in the Lehigh Valley.
Green Woods has 200 students and the waiting list is long. At a recent charter school fair, they received 108 applications for just 13 kindergarten openings. After allowing current students’ siblings first preference, Green Woods, like all charter schools, selects its enrollment through a lottery.
Gail Craighead, with two daughters at the school, enrolled after hearing so many positive comments from other parents.
“The 24-students per class creates a warm and nurturing atmosphere. This was particularly important to me as the mother of a child with a learning disability,” says Craighead. “What I think is invaluable is the breath and scope of all aspects of environmental awareness. This knowledge is something my daughters will have for the rest of their lives.”
The school was recently featured in local public service announcements and on two television stations, including WPVI-TV in Philadelphia.
Green Woods, in conjunction with the Schuylkill Center, numerous community groups, and the Philadelphia Police Department, is part of the Toad Detour Committee. Each year in Roxborough, a Philadelphia neighborhood, hundreds of toads migrate from nearby woods to the Roxborough Reservoir. To do this, the toads must cross several streets; more than a hundred are killed each year.
The school’s eighth grade students and their partners created a Toad Detour brochure, detailing the problem. This Earth Day, seventh and eighth graders will hike to the detour site to clear trash from the migration routes. The committee will then continue to monitor the routes to ensure safe passage on nights of heavy migration.
“The toad migration project has allowed our eighth grade students to get a real ‘jump start’ on civic engagement, ” says Wallace. “They should be very proud of their efforts.
Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media
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