——————————————————–

Lesley Jones (left) and Laura Hickey (right) enjoy some sightseeing in Washington, D.C.

I was privileged to visit one of the USA’s first Eco-Schools, Churchill Road Elementary School in Fairfax County.  So much work is going on there to reduce waste, particularly food waste through composting and sharing as well as recycling and upcycling.  The children learn so much in practical ways through growing their own fruit and vegetables – it was very inspiring.

I was also very interested to learn more about the history and development of NWF from Kevin Coyle and Laura Hickey and spend time in their beautiful offices.  I managed to find time to take a walk in the woodlands around the office and was very excited to see a cardinal.  (We just don’t have such beautiful and colourful birds in the UK.)

I had such a great time and wonderful hospitality from Laura and NWF.  I hope I can visit again some day.

——————————————————–

We thank Lesley for her kind words and guidance in support of our programs!

Here at the National Wildlife Federation, we feel that every child is important and that they represent our future. There are many things that threaten their existence – poverty, hunger, illness, lack of quality education, climate change, extreme weather events, and unspeakable crime among others.  But there are also many things that support their existence – love, families, caring teachers and adults, friends, medicine, superior education, and communities.

As we approach the New Year, my NWF Eco-Schools USA colleagues and I wanted to wish you the very best of the season, and to know that our hearts, thoughts, and prayers are with you all during these holidays, and especially with the families and friends of those who perished in Newtown. For most of us, this will be a time of joy – I intend to hug my nieces and make sure that they know that I will always be there to support them in whatever way that I can.  For truly, as Angela Schwindt wrote, “While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about.”

Carrick-a-rede in Northern Ireland. At the recent Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE) General Assembly in Dublin, 70 countries were represented. (photo by Laura Hickey)

The General Assembly is where all the participating host countries that run FEE’s education programs gather to make decisions on the group’s direction.  NWF is the FEE host organization in the United States for the Eco-Schools USA program and the soon to be launched Young Reporters for the Environment program.

This year’s meeting was especially important, as decisions were made regarding where FEE will be located and how it will be structured in the future.

Coming Together as a Family

It reminded me of Thanksgiving in many ways. For my non-American friends, Thanksgiving is a traditional U.S. holiday held in November, and it is often highlighted by friends and family celebrating together and giving thanks for life’s many blessings.

An Taisce was our host for the FEE General Assembly. (photo by Laura Hickey)

An Taisce was our host for the FEE General Assembly in Ireland. An Taisce is an incredible organization that has a tremendous staff and leader in Pat Oliver, the head of their Education programs—one of my favorite people ever (I so want to be her when I grow up). Her amazing staff, Dr. Michael John O’Mahony, Anthony Purcell, Annabel Fitzgerald, and so many others arranged a well-orchestrated meeting, travel logistics, and fun cultural events that would be difficult to eclipse.

One of the items that was in our “welcome” bag was a lovely bottle of perfume called Inis.  Even more sweet was the sentiment on the packaging:

Inis is Irish for island,
But no one is an island:
We are all connected,
By seas, by oceans, by dreams,
Through keeping the channels clear.
A sea change – for all of us.

An Taisce's Pat Oliver and colleague. (photo by Laura Hickey)

I’m lucky in many ways: having two Thanksgivings in one year, being connected to such a fantastic extended family, and getting to visit incredibly beautiful countries like Ireland.

Centreville Elementary School is one of only a few Green Flag Eco-Schools (Laura Hickey)

Elaine Tholen, Fairfax County Public Schools’ environmental coordinator, greeted me at the school, along with at least 30 students and several teachers.  They displayed for me their great Eco-Code, and ran through the Code’s meaning, which they will be doing as an online announcement for the school.

It’s such a joy to see the enthusiasm of young students and their teachers, and really absorb how much they have learned in their journey to become a Green Flag school.  The school grounds at CES—featuring a certified Schoolyard Habitat—are amazing.  The students have planted native species, along with vegetable and herb gardens, and a sensory garden for their special needs students.

Every class at CES spends at least one hour in their outdoor learning areas each week. Among their other projects:

• Fourth grade teacher Mrs. Settlemyre and her class are researching the Eastern bluebird, building nesting boxes and using technology (iPads and QR Codes) to connect visitors and students to information on the bluebirds that visit their school.

• Second grade teacher, Nia Manoleras, and her students educated me on the lifecycle of Monarch butterflies—they planted milkweed especially for these winged beauties, and have a space in their classroom where they can watch the metamorphosis from caterpillar egg to chrysalis to butterfly.  The students knew the answer to every question posed about the insects, proving how effective a learning method this hands-on approach really is.

The school grounds at CES--including a certified Schoolyard Habitat--are impressive (Laura Hickey)

Congratulations, Centreville Elementary School, on your many accomplishments.  We look forward to awarding you the prestigious Eco-Schools Green Flag and including you in the ranks of the other USA Green Flag schools!

You can read more about monarch butterflies or our Schoolyard Habitat program or find out how your school can become certified through NWF’s Eco-Schools USA program.

It’s also the reason that I came to work for the National Wildlife Federation in 1986.

In 1974, I was 17 and a senior in high school. A National Wildlife Week poster was distributed to our school, and I fell in love – right then, right there – with both the gray wolf and the thought that as an individual, I could actually do something about endangered species and other conservation issues.

My major in college was Biology, but I actually started working in the business field after school. I moved back to northern Virginia (where NWF’s headquarters is located) when I got married, and after a few years of somewhat interesting, but not really challenging, work in the private sector, I applied for a job at NWF in 1986.

I loved what NWF did and stood for, and I thought, “How cool it would be to be able to actually work there?” When I came in for my interview, you won’t believe what I saw! In the hallway leading to the lobby, there was a National Wildlife Week poster from every year hanging on the walls. The one that caught my eye, of course, was my old friend, the gray wolf. It was like his eyes were telling me, “Welcome home – where’ve you been?”

I got the job at NWF, and have loved every minute since. After I’d been at NWF for about 10 years, we had a brown bag lunch, which is where one of our staff gives a presentation on a specific topic. On that day, Tom Dougherty, our Missoula, MT office director at the time, was in the office with a live wolf! I could barely contain myself! As I sat through a wonderful presentation on the reintroduction efforts of the endangered gray wolf to its native lands, I remember thinking to myself that this was a perfect example of the importance of the National Wildlife Federation’s work.

At least 25 years had gone by between the time of the 1974 National Wildlife Week poster and when wolf reintroduction occurred, and it really brought home to me that one of the strengths of NWF is its constancy and “never give up” attitude, especially when it comes to safeguarding wildlife and habitat, and educating people about the importance of doing so.

I am so incredibly lucky – I get to live my dream of helping to make the world a little better place, and I’m so very proud to work at the National Wildlife Federation. My wish is that every kid, parent, and citizen can be inspired by the National Wildlife Week posters, themes, or activities, and take an action that makes a difference for us all.

Celebrating National Wildlife Week

• Visit this year’s National Wildlife Week website for educational materials, posters, trading cards, and other wildlife fun.
• Help support National Wildlife Federation’s conservation and education work through the National Wildlife Week Razoo cause.

Laura Hickey, Ben Franklin students, US EPA's Director Jane Nishida and Justin Harris (Photo by Justin Harris, US EPA)

But this wasn’t just any trip.

Director Nishida and Justin Harris will be part of an EPA delegation that is visiting Taiwan next week, and our New Jersey trip was scheduled so that she would have a better understanding of what Sustainable Jersey and NWF’s Eco-Schools USA program are trying to accomplish by working with Taiwan: helping them to develop a ‘sustainable communities and schools program’ based on our US programs.

The highlight of the trip for me was the visit to Ben Franklin Elementary School.  Ben Franklin is one of our registered Eco-Schools and is a Silver Award school in our program.  Their motto is: “If I work hard enough, I will succeed.”  Ben Franklin is a Pre-K-3 school, and the students are incredibly engaging.  They also have a ‘sister school’ relationship with Jian-An Elementary in New Taipei City, Taiwan, and their principal, Mr. Christopher Turnbull, has been on a former EPA delegation to Taiwan to visit with his sister school counterparts.  Even Amos the Mouse – the school’s mascot – has been to Taiwan!

Ben Franklin received its Eco-Schools USA Silver Award for addressing the program’s seven steps and three Pathways:  Energy, Water, and Consumption and Waste.  Each class has what they call EPA representatives, and they rotate this responsibility among students over the school year.

Ben Franklin Principal Chris Turnbull, Randy Solomon (SJ), Jane Nishida (US EPA), Laura Hickey (NWF) (Photo by Justin Harris, US EPA)

The best part of my job is being able to visit our Eco-Schools and see what wonderful things that they are accomplishing on the path to sustainability.  Principal Turnbull assures me that Ben Franklin will be applying for the coveted Green Flag award in the near future!  I look forward to being there when they receive that prestigious honor!

Also present at this meeting was Ms. Jane Nishida, Director of EPA’s Office of Regional and Bilateral Affairs, Mr. Mark Kasman, EPA’s Asia/Pacific Program, Mr. Bassanio So, the Hong Kong Director-General for Economic and Trade Office, Ms. Queenie Wong, Assistant Director-General, Hong Kong Economic & Trade Office, Mr. Justin Harris, EPA’s Greater China Program Manager, Ms. Martha Pellegrino, City of Portland, Oregon Office of Government Relations, and several others.

I guess you’re wondering why I was there.  Well, you might say it was about building bridges.

The U.S. EPA and Hong Kong are working collaboratively on improving the environment through several really fascinating sustainability initiatives, and Portland could be considered Hong Kong’s sister city (they share many values and interests).

As Portland is often considered one of the most sustainable cities on Earth, it can serve as a model initiative for many other places.  And education for sustainability is where Eco-Schools comes in!  I was fortunate to travel to Hong Kong on a recent EPA mission where I met with several individuals at Hong Kong’s Environmental Protection Department, and gave an overview of the international Eco-Schools program in the hopes that they might engage in this international program.

Commissioner Tong, Assistant Administrator Jackson and Mayor Adams (Courtesy of Justin Harris, EPA)

By doing so, we can expand student horizons, helping them to collaborate and share school sustainability experiences with each other, and allowing them to develop unique perspectives on sustainability that only exposure to diverse cultures can bring.

The more I travel for Eco-Schools and the more countries I visit, I realize that Eco-Schools can help to build those really important bridges between cultures, nations, states, schools, students, and the broader world community.  It brings to mind this quote from Kofi Annan, “We may have different religions, different languages, different colored skin, but we all belong to one human race.”

How wonderful it would be if all of us could work together to make it a sustainable world!

We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.

This lovely saying from Edith Lovejoy Pierce epitomizes to me what the New Year represents – a chance to take a good look at where we’ve been, and start writing out a plan for the coming year.

For the K-12 schools that participate in the Eco-Schools USA program, January 1st is about a third of the way through the school year, and the holiday break allowed students, teachers, and staff to recharge their internal batteries and get ready to continue their school greening process.

I’m really excited about the prospects for the New Year and very proud of what the NWF Eco-Schools USA program was able to accomplish in 2011.  Here’s a few of our more noteworthy 2011 program milestones:

•    Total registered Eco-Schools (since USA program inception): 784 in 46 states plus DC
•    Students served: 480,788
•    Green Flag Award Schools:  3
•    Silver Award Schools:  17
•    Bronze Award Schools:  54
•    Title I or Free/Subsidized Lunch Program participating schools:  60%
•    Average facility expense savings per school: 10-30%
•    Program fee: $0

Savannah Country Day School (Laura Hickey)

As our Eco-Schools ring in the New Year, I hope that they make a resolution to look back at how far they’ve come, celebrate their successes, identify new opportunities, and apply for an Eco-Schools USA award.

There are new checklists available for the Bronze, Silver, and Green Flag awards so that schools know how close they are to achieving the recognition they so richly deserve.

Happy New Year, Eco-Schools!

I was very fortunate to be offered the opportunity to travel on a US EPA mission to Taiwan this week with our partners from Sustainable Jersey, Donna Drewes and Randy Solomon, and Justin Harris from the US EPA International and Tribal Affairs division.  The purpose of the trip was to meet with Taiwanese governmental and private sector personnel to discuss what a sustainable community and sustainable schools program might look like and how it could be implemented.

We met several times with so many incredible people in the Taiwanese Environmental Protection Administration (called EPAT) as well as those in the sustainable development and environmental education communities there. Minister Stephen Shu-hung Shen (the counterpart to Lisa Jackson, our US EPA Administrator) was generous with his time and very dedicated to ensuring that we are able to forge a partnership between the US and Taiwan on sustainable communities and schools through establishing “sister” communities in New Jersey and in key Taiwan cities such as Taipei and New Taipei City.  Minister Shen said on multiple occasions, that he “looks forward to our continuing support, and during the Year of the Dragon, hope to have more partners join us in making our Mother Earth cleaner and more sustainable.”

It’s true what they say that it is, indeed, a small world, with multiple connections through common colleagues in the environmental education community and a shared desire to advance environmental literacy – not only in students, but in the broader community as well.

The work that Taiwan is doing on Low Carbon Communities (big PDF) is truly striking and an example that I wish could be replicated here in the United States.  A good starting point is the amazing work that Sustainable Jersey is doing through a program that they’ve developed on municipality certification that focuses on ways that municipalities work collaboratively in a public, private partnership to go green, save money, and take steps to sustain their quality of life over the long term.

In Taiwan (L-R: Donna Drewes, Randy Solomon, Laura Hickey, Minister Shen, Justin Harris)

I’m excited about the unlimited possibilities that these strategic partnerships with Sustainable Jersey, Taiwan and  the US EPA afford us as we broaden our “Global Dimensions” and make those connections with schools, communities NGOs, and governments country to country and city to city, especially in how we work together to “make our Mother Earth cleaner and more sustainable.”

We held our first professional development institute event last November, and spent the months prior to today refining existing curriculum lessons and adding additional lessons to complete the 21-lesson, four-module middle school/high school curriculum.  We also moved the training from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center into the heart of Washington, DC, so as to allow the participants to experience and see DC. For many this was their first time in the nation’s capitol.

Brian Campbell of NASA Goddard/Wallops (Photo by Laura Hickey)

On Day 1, our guest speaker was Brian Campbell of NASA Goddard/Wallops, and he brought with him a mini globe that displays climate data sets (ocean water temperature, cloud cover, chlorophyll blooms and more) since we did not have easy access to the six foot globe.

On Day 2, our guest speakers were educators from the Landsat mission, Anita Davis and Jeanne Allen, who provided a wonderful overview of how NASA produces such incredibly detailed views of Earth from over 400 miles in space, and the information that they can provide through time series showing changes in landscapes due to development, deforestation, drought and extreme weather events.

In the afternoon, Dr. Amanda Staudt, NWF’s Climate and Energy Scientist, led a session on Albedo and Surface Ice Reflectance, and Sarah Silverberg from the University of New Hampshire led a session on trees and carbon protocols, and instructed attendees on how to measure trees to use in calculating carbon sequestration potential.  In between, there were sessions on citizen science and phenology through the use of Project Budburst, which got everyone up out of their chairs and outside for a much needed Green Hour.

Photo by Laura Hickey

Because Eco-Schools is an international program (now in 53 countries) and NASA reports data from around the globe, we wanted to extend this training to several of our sister organizations.

Mayrelis Diaz from Puerto Rico and Alison Sheridan from Ireland attended and will be sharing this curriculum with their teachers and secondary schools, thus extending the reach of this critical climate change information.  Together with the teachers we trained last November and again this July, our goal is to reach diverse constituencies with not only important information on climate science and its impacts, but also with real, on-the-ground solutions through the Eco-Schools framework, empowering the next generation of environmental stewards.