Community service has become a key part of the high school experience, with students eager to set themselves apart from one another on the path to college or to find opportunities to discover and develop new passions, creativity, and leadership skills. The author discusses The Green Apple Day of Service, an annual event that brings volunteers from…

Creating green schools often hinges on administrators. Principals, superintendents, and other school leaders have the authority and skill sets to make important, even if incremental, progress toward creating green learning environments. This article provides background and reference information that will help administrators with their initial…

"Green school" is an umbrella term that covers a number of educational approaches, such as environment-based curricula, environment-integrated curricula, education for sustainability, and education for sustainable development. Green schools enrich the traditional secondary curriculum by relating it to practical issues of environmental…

Green schools have moved into a new era that focuses on building a culture of sustainability in every aspect of learning in schools. In the early stages of sustainability education, the focus was on recycling and turning off the lights. Now, students and adults together are moving into the areas of advocacy and action that are based on a deep…

The green concept has tremendous value in schools, especially when it reflects the central purpose and mission of schools: educating young people to participate and civically engage in society. Service learning, a research-based teaching pedagogy, provides a flexible framework for integrating green concepts across interdisciplinary content areas.…

New school buildings often grab headlines that highlight their green features and LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification, yet nearly 90% of schools in the United States were built before 1985, with the largest portion built from 1950-69 to accommodate the baby boom generation (National Clearinghouse for Educational…

For the past decade, schools throughout the United States have been working diligently to hit the targets set by national and state guidelines for academic achievement. Those targets have helped direct attention on the need to get all students achieving at a high level, but the laserlike focus on the target numbers have led many middle schools to…

For the past two years, eighth graders at Lincoln Middle School have been participating in the STEMester of Service program, which uses the science, math, and language arts curricula to help students improve the environment. More than 70% of Lincoln students receive free and reduced-price lunch, and the school is diverse because it hosts the…