Rockland Enviromental Education Symposium: Simplifying Going Green

Did you know...

• Only 30 percent of adults can attain a ‘C’ grade or above on basic questions of environmental knowledge
• Adults graduating from high school prior to 1970 had a better understanding of the environment than did graduates post 1990.
• EPA states that 44 percent of rivers and 64 percent of lakes are still impaired. 

Worried? Many educators are. Teachers, parents and administrators from across Rockland County gathered at Fieldstone Secondary School in Thiells on Wednesday for the third annual Rockland Environmental Education Symposium, hosted by Keep Rockland Beautiful.

“We’re just trying to educate the public that we need to protect our clean water supply in Rockland—our streams, rivers, and lakes,” said Nick Makarenko. “Because that’s where we get our drinking water, that’s where we get our fish from, and we just want to keep things beautiful and protect our water.”

Makarenko was manning the booth for Cornell University Cooperative Extension booth, a non-profit organization that focuses on education about issues affecting the environment, community, youth, and family development. One part of this booth involved storm water, which is rain or snow that flows into storm grates and, ultimately, into rivers and creeks. The booth emphasized that pouring pollutants down these grates could have dangerous consequences.

His booth was one of over 20 booths at the Sustainability Fair. Another booth was the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, which takes students and teachers out on a sailboat to receive hands-on education about the Hudson River.

“We want to show (students on the boat) that the Hudson River is not just a polluted waterway but it’s actually a really dynamic place for a lot of things to live, like fish and wildlife,” said Dave Conover, the Education Director for Hudson River Sloop Clearwater. “So they get to see that firsthand and it kind of changes their mind about what the Hudson River really is.”

The symposium also included 10 workshops during two round table sessions. The workshops were each run by various professionals, including one on “Effective Green Team Building” that was facilitated by Bronwyn Mitchell, a featured keynote speaker Director of the Maryland Association for Environmental and Outdoor Education

“(The discussions), they’re primarily a forum for sharing ideas and practices and then we’re trying to get schools to sit down and talk about the tough issues of actually implementing things, which is difficult, especially now in these times,” said Sonia Cairo, Director of Environmental Education for Keep Rockland Beautiful. “If they can walk out with some specifics it will be a good day.”

But for teachers, like Spring Valley High School environmental science teacher Kathleen Siddi, the best part of the summit was seeing so many environmental groups all in one place.

“Instead of taking years of research to find all these vendors and everything that we can use, we’ve got them all in one room.”

Here’s a sum-up from Keynote Speaker Mitchell.

“Environmental education pulses” over the past 250 years: 3 Movements.

1. Nature Study—late 18th and early 19th century movement "changed the way science was taught in schools by emphasizing learning from tangible objects." The movement eventually declined because it was too touchy-feeling for many people’s tastes, but at the height of its popularity in 1925, 49 percent of the country’s public school systems offered Nature Study in all grades and every system offered it in at least some capacity.
2. Conservation Education—the government ushered this after realizing that the post-Dust Bowl depletion of soil was harmful to society. This “pioneered educational approaches still used in environmental education today, such as learning by doing, lifelong learning, (and) integrated and interdisciplinary efforts.”
3. Environmentalism—Focused mainly on “doom and gloom:” acid rain, rainforest destruction, the hole in the ozone layer, and so on.

While this and the other ages of the movement did create some victories, like the creation of national parks, Mitchell said that it seems like the public still doesn’t know the basics about the environment. She cited a NEETF/Roper Research Study which, “indicates that only 30 percent of adults can attain a ‘C’ grade or above on basic questions of environmental knowledge and concludes that adults graduating from high school prior to 1970 had a better understanding of the environment than did graduates post 1990.”

Mitchell added that America’s lack of knowledge in this area is evident in its actions, as EPA states that 44 percent of rivers and 64 percent of lakes are still impaired. She added that the media is part of the problem, as they mainly focus on large natural disasters like the BP oil spill, when in fact “soccer moms” are just as responsible for today’s environmental problems.

With this background, she then explained the Green School program in Maryland, particularly its four guiding principles.

1. Holism—the idea that the schools in Maryland must meet the requirements of various concentrations: professional development, curricular integration, environmental best management practices and community engagement- in order to become a certified Green School.
2. The program is not proscriptive—meaning each school is free to meet the requirements in different ways. She felt this was important because no two schools are exactly the same.
3. Student empowerment—students must help come up with ways to solve today’s environmental problems
4. Sustained cultural change—the school must maintain its focus on the environment for an extended period of time. In fact, schools in Maryland must re-certify every four years to ensure that they have not only continued the programs that got them certified in the first place, but also added to them.

Positive consequences of this Green School program in Maryland

• Higher standardized test scores
• Increased school pride
• Decreased operating costs
• Teachers, parents, and administrators in the crowd must work together to move forward with environmental education.