Eco-friendly Tips For Teachers
"It's Not Easy Bein' Green"
"It's Not Easy Bein' Green"
Or is it?
While Kermit the Frog's immortal words were obviously not intended as referring to the environment, they still hold true for anyone who wishes to be eco-conscious. It's not always easy bein' green. And for our teachers, who are our first line of defense in ensuring that the next generation has a healthy planet to live in, bein' green can sometimes seem downright difficult.
It doesn't have to be, though. Here are some tips and ideas to help make aspects of "green habit" education smoother and easier, and even fun.
1) Reduce Paper Consumption
This is a number one issue in schools, which - for obvious reasons - are major consumers of paper. Notebooks, tests, worksheets, handouts, notices, internal correspondence and forms all gobble up astronomical amounts of paper goods. One basic green habit is to teach your students to use both sides of the paper. The first way to accomplish this is, of course, by example. Giving a two page test? Use both sides of the page and make it into one. Ditto for notices and handouts. When checking notebooks, add extra points to children who consistently write on both sides of the paper. Incorporate oral tests into your curriculum (an added bonus - some children find oral testing easier).
Make an art project of decorating boxes (such as large shoe boxes) and designate them as scrap boxes for all the little pieces of paper that somehow always seem to "fly" around. And try to communicate with parents via phone or email as much as possible.
2) Change the Lightbulbs
According to the EPA, if every home in the U.S. would replace even one incandescent light bulb with an Energy Star compact fluorescent light bulb, enough energy would be saved within one year to illuminate three million homes. That's a lot of energy saved. Added bonus: Lower electric bills for the school. If your school has not yet changed its lightbulbs, you can use an English lesson to draft a letter from your students requesting that the administration switch to CFLs, thereby giving a hands-on lesson in proper letter-writing. For higher grades, the above EPA statistic can be used in math to teach about averages and even fractions, demonstrating to them that when everyone makes a small effort, large strides can be made in energy conservation.
3) Who Turned Out The Lights?
Turning off unnecessary lights is another major way to conserve energy. Designate "electricity monitors" to make sure that all lights and computers are turned off at the end of the day, and whenever possible throughout the day. Going to the music room for music class? Turn off the lights. Leaving for gym class? Turn out the lights. Find out from your electric company just how much electricity is used up in an hour, and perform an "energy audit" with your students to see how much electricity your classroom uses in a day. Pair up with a sister class, and run a healthy competition to see which class saved the most energy at the end of a month. This idea can also be coordinated with the math teacher, who can use the information when teaching about graphs, thus making math come alive for the students.
4) Fun Power - and Power Fun
The social board games we grew up with have largely been replaced by electronic games. The result? Not only are kids missing out on the social skills that "family" type games teach, they are becoming total couch potatoes (or computer chair potatoes, as the case may be). Use board games in class to inculcate social skills, and encourage them to play these games at home, too. Make a wall chart of how much time students used to play electronic games and run a competition to see how much they can reduce that amount of time. Encourage them to engage in physical activity as well. Not only will these conserve energy, it will help give students a positive outlet for their own energies.
5) Transportation Transformation
When the weather permits, organize an (at least) once a week "walking bus" to school. (A walking bus is a group of students who walk together to school, accompanied by a responsible adult.) Turn it into a club in order to help motivate children to participate. Students who live too far away from school to walk can meet the "walking bus" at a certain point on the way. If, as the teacher, you yourself can be the responsible adult who walks with them, so much the better. Use the time to point out the natural beauty of our world, such as the leaves turning colors, the blue sky, interesting shapes of clouds. Talk about how pollution destroys these gifts. These kind of informal conversations will help demonstrate to your students just why it is so important to take care of our planet, and what we stand to lose if we fail to do so.
Bein' green just might be easier than Kermit ever thought.
by: Lee Griffin
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