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The Civic Education Project

What Is the Civic Education Project?

Ginny Frazier of the Alliance for Leadership and Interconnection discusses green schools with Penny Greenler

The Civic Education Project is a versatile campaign aimed at cultivating every student's sense of environmental and civic responsibility.

The Civic Education Project recruits teachers, along with their students, from diverse urban neighborhoods with the goal of combining classroom civic and environmental education with outside, hands-on learning opportunities that allow students and teachers from different schools to collaborate on an environmental project specific to their community and which they choose.

Working from the inside out, the Civic Education Project is designed to be a nationally effective campaign through local activities that have demonstrable outcomes and outputs. Allowing teachers and students to choose the issue they wish to work on is crucial to the success of the Civic Education Project, for this strategy allows it to be both effective and flexible, giving it wide applicability and allowing it to appeal to a diverse audience.

Kamlesh Jindal and John Dean chat about their projects

The program lasts throughout the school year, culminating in a final project chosen and accomplished by the students and teachers, and approved by Earth Day Network. These projects will be an opportunity for the participants to illustrate to their community what they have accomplished, inform local community groups and leaders about the issue they tackled and its wider applicability, and publicize their work to millions of organizations and individuals around the world through Earth Day Network's website.

For the first year of the Civic Education Project, we are working in Cincinnati, OH and Washington, DC. Descriptions of each project and of the teachers managing them can be found on this page.


Project Descriptions

The Cincinnati group talks about the Civic Education Project

Cincinnati

Cincinnati's school system has allotted $1 billion to rebuild and update its schools. Seeing an amazing opportunity, Earth Day Network, in partnership with the Alliance for Leadership and Interconnection, and the Cincinnati Park Board, has focused its local Civic Education Project efforts on creating awareness of green schools — educational buildings that utilize environmentally friendly construction, interactive learning opportunities, and also have been shown to increase student engagement. Each of the four teachers participating in Cincinnati's Civic Education Project have chosen distinct projects to work on this year, all with a green school theme.

 



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Penelope Greenler

Penelope's school, Winton Montessori, is one of the buildings up for renovation in the next few years. Her students will attend regular planning meetings held by the Alliance for Leadership and Interconnection. This group is focused on incorporating green schools into the city's $1 billion plan. At these meetings, the students will learn how a green school gets approved for construction, the architectural design of a green school, and how these schools aid academic performance. As they learn about the intricacies of a green school, Penelope's students will create a realistic design of the new Winton Montessori as a green school. In the process, Penelope will use her class time to teach the math required for the architectural design and the science that relates to the way green schools use environmentally friendly construction materials, thereby using her project as a means of teaching classroom concepts. In the process, these students will learn the value of civic engagement in the planning meetings they attend, which will show them how they can personally help to build better schools in their community.


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Kamlesh Jindal

At Bond Hill Academy, Kamlesh Jindal is planning to establish an after-school recycling program with her students. These students will construct bins and organize recycling pick-ups with the goal of cutting down on waste disposal by at least 30 percent. In the process, her students will take this experience and will adapt it to the green school theme by studying how these schools use recycled materials in their construction, and what impact it has on the environment. Additionally, students will construct a model section of a green school which uses recycled materials. In the process of this project, Kamlesh's students will learn the science behind what makes recycling environmentally valuable, such as the process by which trees remove carbon dioxide from the air and how they convert it to oxygen â?" recycling helps to curb deforestation and thus to limit the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.


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Erin Morris

Erin Morris, from the Cincinnati Park Board, has a group of students she works with after school. She will use this time to study how the exterior of a green school can be designed in order for it to act as a learning environment. Her students will do work restoring parks around the city and in the process will learn how to design the exterior landscape of a green school so that it has demonstrable environmental benefits (it is possible, for instance, to have toilet water filtered through plants and soil), and can offer educational possibilities, such as learning how topsoil prevents runoff, or how the placement of trees can increase natural light in classrooms and provide extra insulation for the building. This project also shows students how their individual actions can make a difference in their community


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John Dean

John Dean, at Aiken Public Service Learning School is working with his students to build support for green schools. Working outside of the classroom, these students will attend community meetings and will campaign door-to-door to build awareness of the economic, educational, and environmental benefits of green schools. The goal is to gain support not just from local politicians, but from the community at large. Through this project, students will learn how to become actively engaged in an issue, the political steps required to enact change, and their individual power to do so. Additionally, within the classroom students will learn economic concepts by studying the related advantages of green schools, as well as how their actions emphasize the advantages of the democratic process.

Washington, DC


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Tonya Williams

With Washington's wide streets and sidewalks, urban water runoff is a major issue. Additionally, height restrictions on buildings have created a city dominated by architecture which emphasizes a flat, wide design, creating ample surface area on the roof for heat to escape. As a result these buildings require far more energy than tall skyscrapers. To understand this problem and how to combat it, Tonya's students at Kelly Miller Middle School will be building a green roof on their school. Green roofs insulate, keeping energy in the building; they trap rain, preventing it from picking up pollutants as it flows to the sewer; and they beautify a concrete skyline. As Tonya's students build their green roof, they will also study its effects and the potential impact of building a green roof on every eligible building in the city. They will then present this information to the community along with a plan for how to encourage building more green roofs.

For more Civic Education resources see our list of web sites.

For Civic Education lesson plans click here (login required).

Earth Day Network and Civic Education

Earth Day Network boasts a strong commitment to civic education as a means of creating personal responsibility for the environment among students around the world. Civic and environmental education are intimately related and their connection allows students to understand how their actions can influence the environmental health of their communities. Members of the Educator's Network can access Earth Day Network's own civic education lessons on the Teacher's Corner homepage. For further civic education resources, check out these websites.

If you would be interested in participating in next year's Civic Education Project please let us know.