New Washington Green Schools At-Home Certification - Who's trying it and what do they think?

Camas High School 

Ali Coker, forensic science teacher and Green Team advisor

My students are in the beginning stages of signing up for which task(s) they will do at home and conferring with family members about what is achievable and over what time-frame they want to monitor their change. They are also brainstorming about social media posts to get more CHS students outside of our team to participate.

Students overall were thankful for the opportunity to make a difference from home and to challenge their families, friends, and neighbors to challenge themselves as well. Students also really like the visual representation of their actions in the carbon calculator tool. We played around with some of the numbers and they thought it was really cool that a challenge related to decreasing energy usage by 2 degrees over 24 hours equates to tree growth, carbon savings, and monetary savings. 

Lacamas Lake Elementary 

Nancy Stoy, head custodian and Green Team leader

When I first looked at the projects I thought "how am I going to get everyone to agree on one" because some kids don't want to do gardening and some of them have gardens of their own. Some of the students really like to recycle while others are into saving energy, so I let them all choose what project they wanted to do. I think we have someone doing each project except riding your bike to school since there aren't any in-school classes right now. That one is hard anyway because our school doesn't have a bike route right now. 

All of the students have to document their progress from start to finish. For example, if they are doing gardening they would start with the size of pot, what kind of seeds and what kind of soil did they get. Then when did they start the planting process, how many times a week did they water, how long did it take to start sprouting, etc. So each step of every project is documented from start to finish. Then they email me all their data and I will put it into the carbon calculator and then submit all the information to the Washington Green Schools. 

The only problem so far that I have run into is since we are not meeting in-person is getting them motivated. I can totally understand that since everything they do right now is remote. They have until March 1st to have their projects completed, and if everyone doesn't get it done that is okay and I will just submit what we have done and I know we will still get our certification. 

I did have a staff member do the no meat task and it is amazing to look at the carbon calculator facts on not having meat for just one meal. 

I think the at-home certification is great for many reasons but the main one is they can all choose their own project that they feel comfortable or excited about doing instead of having to work on just one. 

So my last thought is if you are having problems with doing a project because not everyone can agree on which one or they are not excited about the one that you picked, just let them pick the one they want to do even if it is all of them.

Pleasant Valley Primary

Angelene Shelton and Julie Horrocks, 2nd grade teachers and Green Team co-leaders 

We haven't implemented it yet but for now, we are going to just use  with our classes and not expand it to the rest of the school due to the logistics of our schedules. We are working on developing a series of lessons to be delivered after the first of the year. Our hope is to build background knowledge first and then roll out the certification activities in February. We plan on using our Seesaw platform to deliver the remote lessons so it is not only adding a layer, but also proving to be a bit of a challenge to create them. We are so used to using a trade book to create lessons around - it is fun to grab a book off of our bookshelf and do an interactive read aloud at the carpet with our 2nd graders. So far, the only activity we have done is for Julie and I to work behind the scenes. However, we believe these foundational lessons are crucial for student buy-in so we are plugging away.