GreenNotes
Centering Environmental Justice at the Core of Curriculum: Lessons Learned from Addressing Environmental Justice for a Sustainable Future
By. Kate Bartholomew I’ll admit. I am a neophyte right now. While I’ve been an educator for over 20 years, last year was my first teaching ninth- and tenth-grade science at New Roots Charter School in Ithaca, New York. Before that, my teaching career was spent in a...
The Time has Come for Culturally Relevant Leadership
By. Dr. Floyd D. Beachum Systemic Racism Many people in the United States are calling for the examination and elimination of systemic racism. I define systemic racism here as racism that is historical, individual, institutional, and cultural. In the United States,...
Doubling Down on Coronavirus: How One Pennsylvania School District Facilities Manager Plans to Approach COVID-19 in the Fall
By. Frederick Remelius When my good friend Tracy Enger at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) referred me, a 40-year veteran of facilities management, to do an article for Green Schools National Network about how I planned to handle COVID-19 at...
Plastic Grass Isn’t Greener
By. Rochelle Rubinstein Reprinted with permission from Green Teacher #118, Winter 2019. Learn more about Green Teacher’s nonprofit magazine and books at www.greenteacher.com.
Clearing the Air: An Update on Indoor Air Quality Guidance and Challenges for Reopening Schools
By. Phoebe Beierle The novel coronavirus has disrupted business as usual across the globe, and the disruption of the K-12 education system is having ripple effects throughout the economy. School buildings were abruptly abandoned in mid-March as staff and students were...
Balancing the Three-Legged Stool: Indoor Environmental Quality Drives Healthy Learning Environments
By. Tracy Washington Enger and Mary Jo Errico, Ph.D. Children spend much of their time in schools, which, on average, are more crowded than many other indoor spaces. In fact, schools often have four times the population density of a typical office, which can have a...
Addressing Air Quality: Student-Led Investigations Explore Solutions for Mold and Pollution at School and in the Community
By. Valerie Ziegler The Green Academy Every year, the senior class of the Green Academy at Abraham Lincoln High School in San Francisco is asked, “What environmental problem in your community would you like to address?” When the program began in 2012, the first few...
Using Existing Buildings as Teaching Tools: Investigating Indoor Environmental Quality at Adams 12 Five Star Schools
By. Shannon Oliver Walking the halls of North Mor Elementary School in Northglenn, Colorado, the design advisory group makes note of various building components for bond planning: movable partition walls (some of which don’t move well), operable windows that no longer...
Green Commuting Challenge
By. Duke Davidson Reprinted with permission from Green Teacher #112, Winter 2017. Learn more about Green Teacher’s nonprofit magazine and books at www.greenteacher.com.
Clean, Green Yellow School Bus Machines: A District’s Quest to Adopt a Propane-Fueled Fleet
By. Nathan Graf San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD), located in San Antonio, Texas, operates around 145 daily school bus routes that serve almost 50,000 students. The diesel exhaust emitted by school buses that travel these routes each day is problematic...