US Science Teacher Bill Hilgartner on Stream Restoration

Here at Friends School, US Science teacher Bill Hilgartner teaches classes ranging from biology to geology to ecology and evolution; he also conducts his own research that challenges widely held ideas about best practices in sustainable stream restoration. Here's a great article in Collection Magazine about how Bill Hilgartner's work changes the way some conservationists are thinking about that question. Friends School published the article a few years ago, but it's still worth your attention if you're curious about how Friends School teachers keep busy outside our campus; how their work shapes their classes here and the scientific community at large; or how scientists confront complex scientific and economic questions regarding sustainability.

Time to get dirty in the Friends Community Garden

These pictures and the details below come from the Community Garden webpage on www.Friendsbalt.org. You can donate time or money to this project; you'll be joining a great group of students and community members who care for the space, beautify our campus, and provide fresh vegetables to the CARES pantry.

Purpose of the Garden

Educating students and their families about the connection between growing food & healthful eating Sharing community activities between the School and the Meeting Caring for the earth and its resources Involving students in creative, productive, hands-on outdoor activity Providing a role model and opportunity to learn from other school and faith communities Supplying nutritious, fresh food for our neighbors served by the CARES food pantry Again, many more details about the garden, including volunteering details, can be found on the Community Garden webpage.

Butterflies and the Connections between divisions, Friends School and Mexico

Our Sustainability Mission Statement emphasizes that sustainability at Friends means combining curriculum ("deep thinking"), collaborations, and meaningful action. Hopefully meaningful action can both enhance our understanding of the environment and allow us to play a part in restoring or protecting parts of the ecosystem. When a project does all of those things, we need to celebrate it! And that's why it's worth cheering for what happens when a middle school teacher's class joins up with a pre-primary class, participating in citizen science that helps us cross divisional borders here at school and even bridge international borders. Read more in the original post about how Andy Spawn's and Miriam Fleury's classes  help scientists study monarch migration when they hatch and release tagged monarch butterflies onto their journey to El Rosario, Mexico.

Nitrogen and Native Americans

Here students in Ms. Jenkins 9th Grade Environmental Science class are planting the Native American "Three Sisters" (corn, beans, and squash) by the Middle School carpool right here on the Friends campus; Native Americans traditionally planted these together in a sustainable use of the nitrogen cycle. On our campus, they get students out of the classroom and we all benefit from the greenery.

Author, Professor and Friends School parent McKay Jenkins visits "Literature and the Land" US English class

McKay Jenkins speaking with "Literature and the Land" students

McKay Jenkins, Author, Journalist, Professor of English, Journalism, and Environmental Humanities at University of Delaware and Friends School Parent, talked with Mr. Ratner's US English "Literature and the Land" class. The course considers nineteenth century Romantic notions about the role wilderness plays in shaping civilization and twentieth century texts regarding naturalism, environmental activism, and the choices we all make concerning land use and climate change. As part of the class, we read McKay Jenkins' book Bloody Falls of the Coppermine and then McKay came to talk to us about this book and other more recent work he has done on pesticides and the EPA. It was a great visit and a real highlight of the course for the students. 

Not just a fishing expedition: Aquaponics 9th Grade Environmental Science field trip

Ms. Jenkins sends along this photo of her 9th Grade Environmental Science field trip:

Aquaponics Field Trip to Cylburn Arboretum

Hmmn, but what IS that? 

That's the aquaponics system at Cylburn Arboretum. 

The aquaponics project at Cylburn is the result of a research grant initiated by Hopkins' Center for  Livable Future, which is housed in their School of Public Health. This spring Ms. Jenkins' and Ms. Kinder's 9th grade science classes spent some time discussing the nitrogen cycle in the agriculture unit.  The aquaponics system at Cylburn harnesses different aspects of the nitrogen cycle in its closed loop system in order to grow fish sustainably in the big tanks. The leafy greens then thrive on the nutrients produced by fish waste. Neat stuff!

Sustainability Council Subcommittee Work for 2014-15

This year, Sustainability Council will complete most of its work in small subcommittees. At our first meeting this year, we agreed to focus on the efforts described below. If you're interested in joining these subcommittees or have ideas you'd like to share with them, you can find their names below and contact them using the Friendsbalt.org directory; general comments and inquiries can be sent to sustainability@friendsbalt.org.

• Aquaponics Feasibility
• Researching the possibility of installing a small system on campus to grow fish and leafy greens sustainably.
• Contact Katherine Jenkins 

• Communication/Education: 
• Improve communication with other campus committees, parents, students, faculty, staff, other area sustainability groups 
• Create and mantain sustainability web page and blog 
• Contact: Joshua Ratner and Jane Huth

• Maryland Green School Application Process
• Begin application
• Document completed steps and long-term plans
• Plot timeline, priorities, ways to involve community
• Contact Katherine Jenkins and Joshua Ratner 

• Native Plant Teaching Gardens
• Document designs and intentions of each individual garden
• Continue education and publicity re: gardens
• Contact Kay McConnell

• Responsible energy use on campus, including:
• Building and campus infrastructure
• Waste reduction and composting
• energy use
• future furniture purchasing
• new architecture projects
• Food/drink offerings:
• Contact: Scott Harrington

• Responsible energy use to and from campus (transportation issues) including: 
• athletic transport
• idling
• walk pool
• community web page for carpooling
• Contact: Andy Spawn

Sustainability Statement Announced

At Earth Day 2014, Friends School formally announced a new sustainability statement. Here's the Youtube version of the Earth Day announcement, but if you prefer to read it yourself, this is what it says:

Sustainability Statement

Sustainability is an integral part of the Friends school experience, combining deep thinking about the future of our planet, collaboration with partners within and beyond Friends school, and meaningful actions that facilitate sustainable stewardship of our campus and the environment.

Our statement is the result of lots of work by the sustainability council, with input from parents, staff and students, and we have given ourselves some "guiding principles" to focus our work going forward:

Guiding Principles

Recognizing that this mission statement is only valuable when we meet and expand beyond its premise, the Sustainability Council intends to add continually to this document as students, parents and employees implement existing plans, strategize about future projects, and seek additional input from the community.

The following principles and ideals guide the Sustainability Council and the Friends School community in this work:

• Sustainability at Friends School of Baltimore embodies the Quaker testimonies of Stewardship, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality, and Simplicity and reflects our intention to live in right relationship with people and our environment.

• Shifting our mindsets at the personal and institutional level will challenge us. We acknowledge this challenge as an ongoing process necessary for continued sustainable thought and action.

• As the world becomes ever more interconnected, we strive to build partnerships with schools, community organizations, and others who can help us become better stewards of the environment.

• Engaging and addressing questions of conservation, ecology, and stewardship is an integral part of how Friends School prepares students for their roles as local and global citizens of the twenty-first century.

So, hurrah! We have a Sustainability Statement! And we think it’s a good one, but we know that these statements, on their own, don’t mean that much. And that’s where you all come in. We want to know what kinds of actions you are already taking and how you think Friends needs to challenge itself further in the future. And we want you--students, parents, staff-- to tell us about it, which is why we’ve created an email address, sustainability@friendsbalt.org.  Have a neat idea about reducing paper waste on campus by changing printer settings?Send us an email. Your class talked about the ethics of global resource usage and connected it to environmentalism at Friends? Let us know. You’re going on a service project that combines deep thinking, collaboration in the community and meaningful action AND you’re going to take some pictures of it? Please, Please do! And then send your requests, ideas, stories and pictures to sustainability@friendsbalt.org. With your help, we’ll post developments, projects, plans and concerns here and eventually on a new page on the Friends School website.

A Brief History of the Friends School Sustainability Council

As part of a summer grant in 2012, Scott Harrington, Deb Kinder, and Michael Paulson met to brainstorm ideas about how to make Friends School a more sustainable campus and community. After reviewing various ongoing efforts at Friends, they decided to focus on 3 general areas that have a significant impact on the school: Waste, Transportation, and Energy. In addition, the group talked with RPCS’s sustainability coordinator in order to share best practices,wrote the first drafts of a sustainability statement, proposed a Sustainability Council (now meeting regularly) and met with Dining Hall staff to discuss composting (now implemented in the Dining Hall and around campus). Now, in 2014, the current Sustainability Council has decided that Friends School needs to advertise the work that has been and still needs to be done on campus and in our community. This blog will be part of that; so, we hope, will you. The Sustainability Council will continue to meet, but this year it has also agreed to meet more regularly as smaller subcommittees focused on specific issues; more information about those subcommittees will be included in a future post.