Earth Day Network Blog Updates

In what is perhaps the biggest demonstration of support yet for the green schools movement, over two-thirds of the nation’s states formally signed up to participate in the U.S. Department of Education’s Green Ribbon Schools program.

The American Frozen Food Institute stole them.

For years, people inside and outside of the environmental education movement have been asking a series of similar questions. For example, what does environmental education look like in the 21st century? What does it mean for my classroom or my community? Or, how do we adequately assess environmental literacy?

We thought we fixed this when Ronald Reagan declared ketchup to be a vegetable and most of our country laughed out loud.

Does your school provide nutritious, well-balanced meals for its students? Or, does your school promote fitness initiatives or allocate outdoor time for students during the school day? Maybe your school is reducing its footprint through energy efficiency measures, solar panel installations or geothermal efforts? Well, if you answered “Yes!” to any or all of these questions, YOUR school has the chance to receive a prestigious, national award from the U.S. Department of Education for its sustainability efforts.

“Elmo never has to think about where his next meal is coming from,” he says, but he does not represent the other 16 million kids that live in food insecure households (according to the USDA). Food insecurity means that these children have limited access to affordable and nutritious foods.

Intuitively, we all know that children learn best in a healthy environment, but sometimes it can be difficult to measure exactly what a healthy environment looks like. Here at Earth Day Network, we constantly strive to make the vision of green schools as clear and straightforward as possible. Recently a study has bee published that makes our task a bit easier.

Tuesday was a very exciting day not only for Earth Day Network, but also for nonprofit organizations and college universities all over the country. In Pittsburgh last week, The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education held a conference to publicly announce the Billion Dollar Green Challenge Campaign. The challenge calls for colleges, universities and non profit organizations to invest one billion dollars to support a nationwide campus sustainability movement.

This past Monday and Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Energy’s 2011 Solar Decathlon was more than just a competition on the National Mall; it was also the host for Education Days, an exciting combination of tours, presentations and fun attended by over 4,000 middle and high school students from across the Mid-Atlantic region. The goal? Teach students about solar energy in an exciting way.

On September 26-27, middle school students from across the Mid-Atlantic made their way to the National Mall for the U.S. Department of Energy’s 2011 Solar Decathlon. This competition between university teams to design and build cost plus energy efficient (and attractive!) solar-powered houses. I was assigned as a mentor to thirty-three students from George Washington Middle School in Alexandria, VA.