Training GreenSchools! Student Leaders
About 70 students and teachers from 10 middle and high schools from the greater Tulsa area are attending a two-day professional development training workshop in Owasso, OK learning how to conduct school-wide investigations in five areas: energy use, waste and recycling, water, school site, and environmental quality (such as indoor air quality, school transportation, and use of chemicals).
As one of the facilitators of this workshop, I’m teaching teams of middle- and high-school students, alongside their teachers – and this is what makes Project Learning Tree’s GreenSchools! program so unique.
The usual target of professional development workshops are teachers. However, the Green Teams from PLT’s GreenSchools! are dominated by students – and also feature community members. This creates a high-energy atmosphere for the workshop and provides a new opportunity for the students to take a leadership role.
Yesterday, day one of the training, teams shared their perspective of their schools’ current environmental performance. This provides a starting point for each team.
“We rated ourselves a 1 but we believe we have endless possibilities for improvement,” said Sarah Ghazi-Moradi, a student at 8th Grade Center, Owasso, OK.
Today, day two of the training, I’ll help lead the teams more deeply into each GreenSchool! investigation.
Service-learning is the foundation of PLT’s GreenSchools! program. When the Green Teams return to their schools, the students will start a process to investigate their schools’ environmental footprint in the five areas and, based on their findings, design and implement an action project designed to improve the health and environmental quality of their own school — and measure its impact.
Thanks to Learn and Serve America and the US Forest Service for helping to make this program possible.
