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Posted on 05/04/2006 8:25:18 AM PDT by goodnesswins
Teaching students to care By Kayla Webley Seattle Times Eastside bureau
MARK HARRISON / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Fifth-graders Harleen Sran, left, and Samantha Grandy wash lunch trays at Henry David Thoreau Elementary School in Kirkland, the result of a lesson by Marie Hartford, foreground.
Her elementary students dubbed her "the recycling fairy."
With her fairy costume — black garbage-bag skirt and shirt, mini-silverware earrings and a spatula wand — Marie Hartford makes recycling fun for students at Henry David Thoreau Elementary School in Kirkland. Hartford established a recycling program for bottles, cans and milk cartons and inspired students to start using — and washing — reusable lunch trays instead of plastic foam trays.
She and 17 others will be honored by King County Executive Ron Sims today in the fifth annual Earth Heroes at Schools ceremony at the Mercer View Community Center on Mercer Island.
Other Eastside Earth Heroes
Teachers
• Kay Moilanen, Hazelwood Elementary School in Newcastle, integrated environmental programs into her curriculum for more than 10 years, including development of a native-plant garden.
Staff members
• Dave Holbrook, Newcastle Elementary School in Newcastle, increased recycling by collecting data, setting up visuals in the lunchroom on proper recycling and modifying equipment to make recycling more accessible to all students.
• Wanda Peters, Waskowitz Outdoor School in North Bend, established an Earth Tub using six worm bins for all food waste. All students participate in a worm class to learn how to use what they learn at school in their homes.
• Selim Uzuner, Tolt Middle School in Carnation, led the school district's recycling program for 10 years, starting a recycling club and leading efforts in energy conservation, environmental purchasing and environmental curriculum.
Program
• Environmental Program, Redmond High School. Redmond teachers and others have worked to include environmental education in students' lives through the school's design curriculum, environmental club, organic vegetable gardens and recycling program. The Earth Heroes program was established in 2001 to honor environmental work by teachers, students, staff members and volunteers at local schools. The goal is to recognize model efforts that can be adopted by other schools and organizations.
Hartford said she didn't want to force students to care about the environment; she wanted them to discover the importance on their own. So as part of a fifth-grade science project, she had them save their lunch trash and spread it on large tarps outside the school. They were amazed at the amount of trash, and specifically noticed how much of it was plastic foam, she said. She then provided information about plastic foam and the length of time it takes to break down into the Earth.
"Once the kids could see how much garbage [they generated] and know it wasn't a good thing, they were really upset," Hartford said.
The result: Students made a presentation to the Lake Washington School Board, got approval to switch to reusable trays, and committed to teaching younger students how to recycle their trash. Fifth-graders and vocational students volunteer to wash the trays each day.
The in-school effort is part of King County's Earth Legacy Initiative that recognizes programs, people and companies that work to improve the region's environment.
Earth Hero ceremony
What: Earth Heroes at Schools awards ceremony
When: 4:30 p.m. today
Where: Community Center at Mercer View, 8236 S.E. 24th St., Mercer Island Among other Earth Heroes being recognized today:
• Darin Detwiler, math and forensic-science teacher at BEST High School in Kirkland, who organized a schoolwide program to integrate environmental curriculum into home-room classes after the school's environmental-science class was discontinued.
"I was not satisfied with the fact that students were going to be missing out," Detwiler said. "This is the next generation of consumers and voters, and if they don't understand the cause and effect of their actions now, when are they going to learn this?"
• Bellevue High School senior Lynn Spishak, who took over the school's Earthbound club as a sophomore and built the dwindling program into an active group of more than 20 members. As president for the past three years, Spishak has organized recycling drives for cellphones and used batteries, and started a "car-pool to school" day.
"We are trying to create an awareness of environmental issues at the school," Spishak said. "Maybe someone will notice what we are doing and think twice about what they are doing."
Kayla Webley: 206-464-2391 or kwebley@seattletimes.com
Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company
I am so glad the GOP has decided to massively increase spending on the publik skewls.
Who cares where Louisianna is?! When your feet get wet you know you're there.
The important thing is that kids learn about the dangers facing our society because of thing like global warming and landfills. Students must also learn about tolerating things like fairies.
Why don't teachers actually teach reading, writing, history, math - that old-fashioned stuff which could actually be useful in GETTING A JOB and EARNING A LIVING. With all this cr*p about recycling plastic forks, it's no wonder the only 18-year-olds who know where Iraq is are our Marines, God bless them.
Since they won't know much else, learning how to wash things will probably be a useful job skill for them.
Then I read on. Earth heros??? Ha!!! They'll need to be tree hugging, earth lovers, because when they can't read or do simple math or find Louisiana on a map, they might be living closer to that earth than ever imagined. Kind of like our early settlers did. While the teachers (I know, not all) who instructed them thusly retire on their union fed pensions. What a shame.
YES.....OUR Tax money at work....
pingy
You know, as a teacher (volunteer, one small group, once a week) and a parent, it galls me that subjects teachers should be teaching, things they were themselves taught at a young age that enabled them to attend college and become teachers themselves, are not being taught, depriving kids from the opportunity to reach that same position themselves as adults, or at least stunting that growth. These adult teachers seem to be thinking like the children they teach and teaching what they wish they were taught as kids, instead of the things they were taught, even if they didn't appreciate it then. What will these kids be qualified or able to teach? Recycling? Well, the need for remedial or basic adults courses will soar, just so they can catch up.
I tell my relatives who are in public schools...."YOU are being CHEATED."
The young don't need to be taught to care. They are naturally idealistic. They need to be taught to think.
Say WA? Evergreen State ping
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'Gay History' Pushed in Calif. Textbooks
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/5/4/105903.shtml?s=us
Why should students know where Lousiana is when they can learn all about alternative lifestyles that are just as equal as other lifestyles?
Our gubmint schools are not there to teach the three Rs anymore. They are there to indoctrinate them in multicultural perversion.
This story serves as a wake up call for people to pull their children out of the indoctrination system and place them into private, parochial, or homeschool.
What our gubmint schools are doing is teaching these young skulls full of mush to worship the Earth and nature which is what the pagan relgions used to do. And I thought there was supposed to be a separation religion and state.
Give me that old time religion, it's good enough for me!
People
Against
Goodness
And
Normalcy
Well, public schools need to teach students to care...
because otherwise, they try to simply turn out uneducated amoral sociopaths.
That have a great future working for one of George Soro's organizations.
Ha! It reminds me of this Christmas with my liberal family. My nephew (2 1/2) was playing with his new garbage truck. Good, I thought - a sufficiently manly activity for a little boy (much better than his "Baby Elmo" - that thing scares me). Then my brother walks over and starts "teaching him to recycle". My folks were fawning over how he's learning such great things. And I'm thinking - isn't it about time for him to start learning his letters? How about learning about the real world - what garbage men do.... Sigh...
My homeschooled kids know about recycling. They know, "Take the newspapers and plastic jugs and stick them in the recycling bin." Lesson done.
It's a combination of sympathy and hatred for children like this. They know not what they do. I had a friend whose 10 year old niece like this. She would yell at family members if they drank beer, yell at them for not recycling, chastise them for just about anything you can think of. The most unbelievable thing is that they didn't smack this little girl on the behind and tell her children should be seen and not heard.
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