>>ANNOUNCER: More than eight hundred people with one mission - Promoting a Healthy Environment.
We are the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection.
>>KATHY COSCO: Two West Virginia elementary schools and one school district have joined
a select group of schools recently honored by the U.S. Department of Education as Green
Ribbon Schools.
The program, now in its second year, recognizes schools for their commitments to reducing
their environmental impact, improving health and wellness for students and staff and incorporating
environmental and sustainability into the curriculum.
The DEP's Sarah Alford joins us now with a profile of one of the winners and Sarah, the
staff at Petersburg Elementary say even before the program began they were already well on
their way to a greener future.
>>SARAH ALFORD: That's right Kathy.
Petersburg Elementary in Grant County is working towards becoming a living lab -- empowering
students to make real and positive changes in the community.
<> >>JULIE COLAW: This is the environment where
these kids live and grow and they need to learn about how to take care of it so it's
here.
I want a nice world for my daughter when she grows up and I want the kids to understand
where they're living and how it benefits them and how they have an effect on their ecosystem
and their environment.
>>NARRATION: Julie Colaw teaches fifth grade at Petersburg Elementary.
Her students are getting some hands on experience -- learning about the environment through
some real world problem solving.
What was once unusable outdoor space -- a soggy, litter filled area between two sections
of building is now a rain garden.
>>Bianca Wingard: It's kinda fun watching it grow and stuff and being changed by change
and you never know when the flowers are going to grow big and bloom.
>>Julie: These kids come out every day and they pick the trash up off the playground.
They have a sense of pride in this area and they own this garden.
This is theirs and no one is going to mess with it and I think the same is true for these
other grade levels that are doing things out here they have the sense of ownership and
pride in their school that should be here all along but it's not something you can really
teach.
It's something they have to grow it themselves.
>>NARRATION: Loretta Rose's first graders helped plant twelve new trees around the school.
>>Seneca Kimble: It helps our earth and it helps us breathe and since we're here, the
trees can breathe because we breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide and trees breathe
carbon dioxide and we breathe oxygen!
>>Loretta Rose: Sometimes that's hard to fit that in when we're so pressured to have good
scores, good test scores so it's hard to find time to fit it in with all of our other curriculum
but really when you look into it, you can find a way to make it fit.
You can read about what you're doing.
You can make it part of your math lesson.
You can find science standards that it fits with, even if it's not specifically one of
the standards.
>>NARRATION: And clearly, it's working...
>>Seneca: Earthworms help our soil, they do...
They help soil by -- well, they eat all the bad stuff and spit out some good stuff.
>>JULIE: Really it's hard to motivate the kids sometimes when it's just from the book,
you know, but when you have a real problem to solve then the kids say wow, we can do
something about this and then they understand that they can be part of the solution and
I think, you know, in the past we've always wanted to give the kids so much and they have
a question we want to give them an answer and I think it's better for them to find out
the answers on their own doing something like this.
>>NARRATION: And it's helped these students look to the future...
>>Sierra Arbaugh: Mrs. Colaw says once we're in our senior year we have an elderberry bush.
She's gong to let her fifth grade class make us elderberry jam for our breakfast...
>>Bianca: It's been like a great experience for me and it's been amazing.
I love it.
>>Sarah: Kathy, Petersburg is just one of forty elementary
schools selected for the Green Ribbon Awards this year.
In Charleston, I'm Sarah Alford for Environment Matters...
>>KATHY: Pretty impressive company.
Thanks, Sarah.
In addition to the rain garden and the tree planting, students at Petersburg also have
active composting and cardboard recycling programs.
They've taken part in helping to remove garlic mustard, a non-native invasive plant species,
from the nearby Monongahela National Forest and worked with the Save Our Streams water
monitoring program.
Also honored this year, Hometown Elementary School in Putnam County.
Already named a West Virginia School of Excellence, Hometown was recognized for its efforts to
reduce its energy use.
The school also participates in a farm to school program along with several other initiatives
to promote student health and wellness.
Students also participate in numerous hands on projects like recycling and gardening to
give them a broad base of knowledge in sustainability principles and environmental science....
Coming on the heels of last year's national award presented to Hilltop Elementary School
in Marshall County, the entire Marshall County School system -- all 13 schools and 47-hundred
students received a National Green Ribbon Schools Award.
Marshall County is one of the most energy efficient school districts in the entire state
and was recognized for its use of green building principles in the construction and renovation
of its school buildings.
Marshall county is home to the state's first LEED certified school building and the district's
entire school bus fleet runs on bio-fuel.
The district offers Environmental Science as an elective and plans to offer advanced
placement classes next school year.
All together, the US Department of Education awarded National Green Ribbon School status
to a total of 64 schools and 14 school districts nationally.
Coming up -- judgment time.
Selecting the winners for this year's Youth Environmental Program awards -- plus a preview
of the 50th edition of Youth Environment Day.
We're back in a moment.