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Buildings That Teach

August 28th, 2007 by Diana

Presentation by Diana Porter from the Green and Healthy Schools Network to the Cincinnati Board of Education   (August 27, 2007)

As a CPS educator and an officer of the Cincinnati Federation of teachers, I have had the privilege of representing the teacher’s union on the Growing Green and Healthy Schools Planning committee.  This last year,  I have attended a series of forums and workshops and visited green and healthy schools buildings in Kentucky, Maryland and Washington DC and have learned so much. I have seen beautiful school buildings that not only conserve energy and water but support improved academic achievement and wellness through improved air quality and increased natural daylight.   We in CPS are building schools that will also contain many of these green aspects.  What we are not doing yet is creatively using our school buildings as a teaching tools to actively engage and motivate students in their math and science education.

Growing Green and Healthy Schools sponsored a technical assistance workshop for school planning teams last week at the Zoo Academy, our first LEED certified school building. We learned that making the building a teaching tool is a part of the LEED certification process.  More than 100 planning team members, architects, teachers, community and environmental groups came to talk about building LEED certified schools. At the workshop, a number of civic and environmental groups stepped forward to offer their services to schools to be partners in launching such an initiative which would create hands-on, standards-based science and math experiences using the green aspects of our school buildings

For example, The Metropolitan Sewer District would like to partner with us to ensure that our schools are examples of best practice of storm water management.  A hands-on lesson could begin by estimating and then calculating the area of a school’s roof multiplied by the volume of water per square foot that would fall on the roof in an inch rainfall.  With this new knowledge, students and teachers could work with MSD to plan and build rain gardens, right-size rain barrels and cisterns or construct living roofs so that that is water can be diverted from the storm sewer.   This could really make science come to life for our students and make them a part of improving the environment for all citizens in Cincinnati.

This is just one example of what would be possible.  I hope that you will support this unique and timely opportunity to make our schools teaching tools, for our curriculum councils and the GE math and science initiative to build hands-on science and math lessons with community partners who have the resources to use aspects of our new and renovated buildings as a teaching tool.

In my travels this summer, I went to Seneca Creek Elementary school in Maryland.  It is a LEED Gold rated school.  As you enter the building, there is a mural of the water cycle that shows how water ends up in Seneca creek.   When students guide classes and visitors around their school, their first stop is the lobby where they explain the water cycle.  I am convinced that student in that school will never miss a question on their state assessment about the water cycle!  I want to see the same success for the students of Cincinnati Public Schools.

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6 Responses to “Buildings That Teach”

  1. Jeanne Says:
    August 28th, 2007 at 7:24 pm

    As a member of the Woman’sCity Club, I was so pleased to see such a geat turnout at this Board meeting and hear suvh positive response. I am particularly interested in the concept of using these new green buildings as a tool to be integrated into the math and science curricula. I hope we also keep in mind what a rich tool this would be to teach children the broader lessons about sustainablity and stewardship of the earth.. We need not only remodel our math and science curriculm but also our art and culture curricula, Our Cincinnati area is a geographically fascinating place that invited the native Americans to find a home in the Miami-Ohio watershed. This knowledge engenders a pride of place, a keen sense of responsibility to the land thatwe shared with peoples who occpied this land before us. Let a Green Cincinnati lead our state to a Greening of Ohio.

  2. Diana Says:
    August 28th, 2007 at 7:29 pm

    I think that there are many ways to teach art and culture through environmental studies. CPS, however, has raise its science and math scores in order to survive. Once teachers have had a chance to work with the math and science standards and assessments for a few years, there may be more acceptance of working on these “broader lessons”.

  3. Diana Says:
    August 28th, 2007 at 7:44 pm

    There is an excellent brochure from Innovate Design that gives many practical ideas about how to design a green school that makes science accessible and hands-on. (http://www.innovativedesign.net/pdf/03bldgteach.pdf)

  4. Diana Says:
    August 28th, 2007 at 7:57 pm

    Making your green building a teaching tool

    I. A green school building can be a demonstration site for students, parents and community to learn about environmental science:

    a. Develop a User’s guide for the building highlighting sustainable aspects

    b. Develop walking tours of the building and grounds

    c. Train student Docents to lead tours of the building and grounds

    d. Develop a Power Point or video of the sustainable features

    e. Write articles for newsletters, newspapers and community press about sustainable aspects of the building

    f. Create environmental signage pointing out the sustainable features

    g. Place a clear, large-capacity rain barrel on a down spout

    h. Expose mechanical components so that their function is understood

    II. A green school building can support and encourage hands-on student experiences with sustainability:

    a. Construct a rain garden and/or wetlands to deal with storm water

    b. Landscape with native plants which don’t need watering

    c. Mount rain gauges and thermometers outside of classroom windows

    d. Design a recycling center into each “Pod” so students break down boxes, recycle white paper, plastic and metal

    e. Compost food scraps from the cafeteria and use on the school garden

    f. Create a School Garden with the Civic Garden Center

    III. In a high performing school building, teachers can integrate sustainable aspects of the design into the academic curriculum K-12

    a. Create environmental signage of plants and trees on the school grounds

    b. Design an interactive computer (Smart Board) in a central location to monitor real-time energy and water usage and/or production

    c. Graph depth of sunlight into the room in various seasons

    d. Measure amount of paper recycled in each pod and calculate how many trees were saved

    e. Measure plastic recycled and figure out how much plastic fence could be produced

    f. Measure rainfall and calculate amount of water from the school grounds that goes into the storm sewer after a rainstorm. (Sq. Feet of roof x 623 divided by 1,000=gallons of water per 1 inch of rain). Invite in MSD to show where storm water goes in this neighborhood.

    g. Write a grant for a solar panel for the school. Calculate amount of Kilowatts of electricity produced and consumed by the school.

    h. Create a list of ways to save energy in the school.

    i. Demonstrate airflow in the classroom and diagram how air born germs are carried in this classroom vs. a traditional circulating air system

    j. Teach heat transfer and create problems using R factor of wall insulation vs. windows

    k. Monitor passive solar gain using thermometers near the windows and away form the windows.

    l. “Greenmap” the school and the surrounding area. Map the pedestrian walkways, bike paths, public transportation and parking lots. Survey students as to how they get to school and calculate petroleum use for each method.
    Environmental Lesson plans and Resources

    The AMBIENT Project is focused around the four environmental themes of air, water, soil and food, as well as an additional emphasis on ethics and toxicology. This health-science problem-based learning approach is being delivered by trained teachers to the ethnically diverse population of high school students: http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/groups/niehs/ambient/modules.html

    Lesson plans are available in many curriculum areas based on the Illinois state standards:

    http://www.greeningschools.org/resources/curricula.cfm

    An Inconvenient Truth Study Guide: http://www.aninconvenienttruth.com.au/truth/guide.htm

    Greening School Grounds, Creating Habitats for Learning, Edited by Tim Grant and Gail littlejohn, New Society Publishers, 2001 (http://www.greenteacher.com

    Last Child in the Woods, Saving our children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, Richard louv Algonquin Books. 2006

  5. Randall T. Ball, Community Health Minister Says:
    August 29th, 2007 at 4:25 am

    As a former health care professional highly trained in medical diagnostic testing technology (biological “science” of the most technical degree), including clinical laboratory quality control (a highly “math” driven specialty), I am concerned with this focus on Math & Science standards and requirements in the schools. That is unless we are going to focus this teaching of our children on the many fundamental distortions and erroneous assumptions much of what modern science is based in (for instance that the earth is not a living being and that our own bodies are simply machines); and how statistics (math) are consistently creatively used to manipulate our perceptions of reality and what is supposedly so (for instance: medical laboratory statistics of what’s “normal” are based on overweight, unhealthy, and toxic medical personnel). We truly do need to teach children how to see through the science and medical propaganda claims bombarding all of us by the media and through much of the dysfunctional politically correct scientific dogma of our culture. It has taken me years of “recovery” from the dysfunctional arrogance and extensive fundamental assumptive errors of my medical and scientific training, as well as the overconfidence and blindness we as a culture have to this technology; to finally learn (for instance) just the simple true secrets to health. These fundamentally simple health principles, by the way, are all based in a harmonious relationship with the Earth, its inhabitants both human and otherwise, and in the “intelligent design” exhibited throughout all natural systems - not in our high-tech, disease management focused, cut, burn and drug medical science. The bottom line is that America has the most elaborate and expensive medical system on the planet (getting close to 20% of total national GNP) and among the worst health (and getting progressively worse) of any 1st world nation. Furthermore, our technologically (”science” based) driven consumer culture (with its military/medical/agribusiness/processed food/etc. industrial “complexes”) is the primary threat to all life on earth, including our own. For humanity’s survival as a species, it seems imperative that we re-shift our focus back on to the humanities - the arts, philosophy, social sciences, history, etc. to relearn how to live and function in balance with the earth and all its inhabitants, including our neighbors. Furthermore, I remind you that the totalitarian Soviet Union focused their education on math and science as well, for much the same reason that the NeoCon and bible thumpers want us to now - these educational disciplines are primarily based in learning rules and reductionist thinking, not in creative, expansive holistic thinking and intelligent discernment - which are politically threatening to those who seek the control of others. Furthermore, the most appropriate of all places to learn how to live in harmony with the earth and all the life on it is to study those native cultures of every area of the planet (including the Shawnee right here in our back yards and the Wicca of our European roots) who lived in stable harmonious relationship with the earth for untold millennia. These cultures are the “experts” who can truly teach us what it really means to be “green” and how to live in harmony and balance with this spiritual and energy based universe that our own leading edge science is now just beginning to discern for itself. What arrogance we have to call our culture’s head long technological (read in “math and science” here) rush to planetary death and destruction, superior to these “primitive” cultures who knew and “lived” the interconnections between energy, art, nature, human harmony, and joy - not just sustainability, but thriveability. Let us ponder, consider, and seriously discern what we might actually choose to pass on to our children, given that “our way” has given us what we’ve got and if we don’t make a radical change in direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed - over the proverbial ecological cliff. I love that part in the movie, “An Uncomfortable Truth”, where Al Gore is weighing in the balance those luscious gold bars in one hand and the entire planet in the other. Choose!

  6. Wahoo Says:
    October 6th, 2007 at 12:48 am

    Thank you for sharing!

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