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Success Story: Montessori Children’s House
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This student’s waste free lunch is packed in durable containers. |
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Student artist and her art work about the environment. |
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Student at Montessori Children’s House works with the compost in the school garden. |
School Location: Redmond
Began to participate in the Green Schools Program: September 2008
Level one of the Green Schools Program: Achieved in April 2009
Waste Reduction and Recycling
In just four months, this private Montessori school (infant through fourth grade) increased its recycling rate from 34 percent to 48 percent. Waste reduction methods included the following:
- The school converted to an electronic parent newsletter, issued weekly, after 92 percent of the parents, in response to an on-line survey, indicated a preference for an on-line, paperless newsletter.
- In a few classrooms, yogurt and applesauce cups are reused for seed containers and art projects.
- Each classroom and office now has a paper reuse box so staff and students can use both sides of a piece of paper before recycling.
- The office now makes a concerted effort to edit content on-line, and when copying, to do double-sided copies to reduce paper usage.
- Afternoon snack is now served in durable containers (Tupperware) so that leftovers can be stored and served the next day.
- During National Green Week (February 2 – 9), the school held ‘Waste Free Wednesday’ to promote the practice of packing reusable containers in lunches. This program is being considered as a future policy.
- In classrooms, at parent events and staff meetings, pitchers of water and durable cups are provided instead of single-use water bottles or paper cups. Students and staff use metal silverware and real plates for lunch and snack time.
- Grass clippings are left on lawns (grass cycling).
- Most of the school’s food scraps are fed to three goats and eleven chickens that live on the school property and the rest is put into one of several on-site composters.
- A yard waste bin was added to the school’s Waste Management system to hold pizza boxes left over from special events as well as excess food scraps that cannot be handled by the methods listed above.
- A battery disposal and printer cartridge exchange box was set up in the office.
Recycling promotion and education included the following:
- The school formed a Green Schools Team comprised of three teachers, the director of operations, the director of education, the executive director and a parent. One teacher was asked to serve as the Green Schools Team lead.
- The Green Schools Team used methods that have been effective communication tools for other types of messages to parents, staff and students. These methods include the following: e-mails to staff and parents; the school’s Web site; and centrally located white boards.
- In November 2008, at the Nature Trail Grand Opening, the school held a recycling relay race where families were asked to sort trash from recycling and place it in the proper receptacle. This helped the community see how many commonly trashed items are recyclable.
- The teacher in-service day in February included information about waste reduction, recycling and green school curriculum.
- Several classrooms regularly take a closer look at the garbage and recycling in the classrooms to ensure the process is being done properly.
- Several early childhood teachers have created and continue to implement hands on curricula that includes waste reduction, the science behind composting and the introduction of worm bins.
Energy Conservation
- The leader of the Green Schools team created stickers for light switches, and posted one sticker at each light switch to remind staff and students to turn off lights when they leave the room.
- The school architect has submitted a plan for a series of cascading roofs that intend to connect classrooms. These roofs would collect water; the rain cascades from one canopy to the next, traversing a green roof laden with plants, falling finally into an aqueduct and then into rain barrels. In addition, some of the roof sections would host solar panels to further conserve energy. As of April 2009, the community had raised $3,000 toward this project.
- The school Operations Team is investigating replacing the current overhead fluorescent lights with a more energy efficient lighting system and adding motion sensor switches.
- The school Grant Committee has submitted grant proposals to take the school’s already established gardening program to the next level – sustainability! The grant proposals call for monetary support to establish rain barrels, downspout diverters and worm bins that would further supplement the compost and help garden beds produce a year-round supply of fruits and vegetables for the children’s snack times.
Environmental Education
- This year the school held a community event to celebrate Earth Day. Students and their parents helped prepare a large gardening space for planting and learned the basics of composting.
- A newly developed unit titled ‘Humans as Consumers’ is being taught in the elementary classroom. The purpose is to help students understand the interconnectedness of all living things, and see how their daily choices affect the environment. Students will learn new ways of conserving resources and reusing what they already have.
- The school perceives the nurturing of the child’s spirit through a connection with the outdoor environment as a defining component of a child’s experience. The school offers access to an enclosed nature trail, a meadow, a mixed conifer and deciduous forest, several wetland areas and children’s gardens.
- In alignment with traditional Montessori curriculum, the school implements an integrated approach to education. Children as young as three years of age are introduced to life cycles of animals and plants, parts of plants and animals and the natural elements that make life on earth sustainable.
- Elementary age students are introduced to a much more in-depth study of life sciences including taxonomy, the periodic table, the function and parts of living organisms, and how all parts of the natural world are interconnected with one another.
Comments
The King County Green Schools Program has provided Montessori Children’s House with an essential element that supports the school in fulfilling our mission to bring about a reverence in children for the natural world. While the school has incorporated it’s vision to connect children with nature in its rural setting through access to gardens, varied biomes, and animals, it has been the Green Schools proactive approach of actually making a difference to conserve that has brought the curriculum full circle. It has been a pleasure working with a committed team of adults and children working together towards a common goal of bettering the world around them. We are now experiencing children that see themselves as stewards of positive change.
– Tammy Oesting, director of education, Montessori Children’s House
For more information about this school’s participation in the Green Schools Program, contact:
Jessie Potter, elementary school assistant and Green Schools Team lead
Telephone: 425-868-7805
E-mail: Jessie@mchkids.com
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