Greening Your School: How One Educator Can Make a Difference
Host: Amy Erin Borovoy, coordinating producer, Edutopia
Presenters: Tim Grant, coeditor of Green Teacher magazine, and Tom Koulentes, assistant principal at Highland Park High School, in Highland Park, Illinois, and cosponsor of the school's Green School Initiative
Target Audience: Ideal for teachers, staff members, and site-based administrators who want to team up with students to care for the Earth while learning at the same time.
When the big challenge of protecting the environment feels overwhelming, we can often do best by looking at the impact we can have in our own backyards -- or, in this case, schoolyards. Educators and students working together can make some real eco-achievements, empowering students and deepening some academic lessons along the way. In this session, Tim Grant and Tom Koulentes highlight some of the best ideas, examples, and strategies they've found.
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About the Host
Amy Erin Borovoy
Amy Erin Borovoy is coordinating producer for Edutopia video. Prior to joining The George Lucas Educational Foundation in 2005, she spent several years line producing television specials for the History Channel. Her experience also includes serving as a freelance associate producer on a number of educational television pilots and working on a media-literacy project for the KQED Center for Education and Lifelong Learning.
About the Panelists
Tim Grant
A former high school teacher, Tim Grant has been the coeditor of Green Teacher magazine for the past 18 years, during which he has helped more than 1,000 American and Canadian educators share their most innovative strategies for promoting environmental literacy with young people ages 6-19. He is also coeditor of the popular Green Teacher books Teaching About Climate Change, Des idées fraîches à l’école, Greening School Grounds, Teaching Green: The Elementary Years, Teaching Green: The Middle Years, and Teaching Green: The High School Years.
For the last 10 years, Grant has served as vice chair of the Canadian Network for Environmental Education and Communication. He is also active in community greening initiatives in his downtown Toronto neighborhood, where he lives with Green Teacher's coeditor, Gail Littlejohn. Read more about their work in this Edutopia.org article.
Tom Koulentes
Tom Koulentes is an assistant principal at Highland Park High School, in Highland Park, Illinois. As an educator, Koulentes has worked to develop curriculum that develops students' critical-thinking skills by challenging them to analyze and solve interdisciplinary, real-world problems. With a passion for environmental science, conservation, and social justice, he has taught classes and led students on educational trips to Costa Rica, Northern Ireland, and the Galápagos Islands.
Three years ago, Koulentes helped students at the high school develop the Green School Initiative, a group of students and staff who meet weekly to transform the school into a more environmentally responsible, conservation-minded institution. The projects conducted by students in the GSI have been awarded grants from BP, the Chicago Botanic Gardens, Jewel Foods, and Loyola University.