Nine Anne Arundel County schools are setting the bar for the rest of the county with innovative green ideas ranging from raising turtles to maintaining a bog.
“It?s just a creative and innovative way to teach, and it?s effective,” said Nancy Merrill, executive director of the Maryland Association for Environmental and Outdoor Education.
“In the age of Internet, iPods and texting, students are losing their connection with the real world and nature, so programs like this are really critical.”
In the Maryland Green School program, schools must demonstrate they have incorporated green concepts into instruction ? by using the outdoors as a context for learning ? or into the school building itself, she said.
Projects can be anything from English teachers asking their students to write nature poems to science teachers taking a class into a forest to do analysis on leaves or streams, Merrill said.
Since 1999, the association has recognized 201 green schools. This year, six of the 36 newly dubbed green schools are in Anne Arundel County, said Carol Thompson, the association?s green school coordinator.
Schools newly green this year are Benfield Elementary, Broadneck High, Chesapeake Bay Middle, Hebron-Harman Elementary, Mayo Elementary and St. Andrew?s United Methodist Day School.
Also being recognized are three schools being recertified: West Annapolis, Severna Park and Shipley?s Choice elementary schools.
At Benfield, first-grade teacher Gina Fisher helped with a habitat restoration garden at the school meant to catch water runoff. Her class also raised two terrapins to foster their growth and health.
“The kids are thrilled,” she said. “It really has made them care more about animals outside of school too.”
Chesapeake Bay Middle School became green by sponsoring a green carnival after school to raise student awareness of environmental issues, Principal Jacques Smith said.
The students also planted native species in a Chesapeake-themed outdoor learning area and maintained a bog with another school that serves as a storm-water retention area.
“The whole point is to make it a part of what we do every day,” he said.
All schools will be recognized at an awards ceremony at 1 p.m. Thursday at the Community College of Baltimore County at the Catonsville Campus Theater.
