Urban Forest Renewal

Urban Forest Renewal Class at Friends School

Govans Urban Forest

The Urban Forest Renewal class, co-taught by Jessica Garman and Josh Carlin, sends a group of Upper School students out to local parks and forests. They've submitted proposals for art projects at Robert E. Lee Park, visited urban green spaces, and read a lot about the challenges and opportunities regarding urban forestry and lumber. There's much more on their blog, Urban Forest Renewal, entirely written by students in the class. You can also read more of their reflections after the jump.

Guest Student Post: Maddy Shay on Environmental Summer Research

I asked Maddy Shay,class of 2015, to  write a post about her involvement with the Environmental Summer Research Experience for Young Women at Roland Park Country School first as a participant in 2013 and then again as a Teaching Assistant in 2014. Even though this isn't a Friends School program, students from Friends School regularly participate.

Maddy writes:

The goal of the Environmental Summer Research Experience for Young Women is to investigate environmental anomalies, particularly ones involving soil, while educating young girls on various scientific skills in both the field and the lab. The program starts with a biota survey that takes about a week and a day out of the three week program. This is when groups divide up between four sites and collect as much data as possible from their site having to do with the chemicals in the soil, plant populations, and presence of arthropods. Keep reading for more details and links to the work she produced after the jump!

Asters and Goldenrod and Beardtongue (Oh My!) or: A Short History of Conservation and Native Plants Teaching Gardens at Friends School

Asters and Goldenrod and Penstemon Digitalis (Beardtongue) on the Upper School Steps

Curious about how Friends has come to have landscaping that is as ecologically sensitive as it is beautiful? Here's a great history (with pictures) written by Kay McConnell & Julie Moir Messervy about their work on campus. Here's a brief sample from that piece in which Kay describes how Friends administrators collaborated with Guilford Garden Club to get the process rolling:

Together, we agreed upon a plan for GGC members to design garden spaces, shop for locally grown native plants, and supervise the school community on planting days. Lower School science teacher David MacGibeny wrote a series of grants to the Chesapeake Bay Trust, and with CBT support and an investment of both dollars and elbow grease by the school, 3,750 native trees, shrubs, grasses, ferns, and perennials have been planted over the past five years. Another 700 have been sold at three campus native plant sales to be planted in home gardens.

And here's a gallery on the Baltimore Sun featuring Kay McConnell and Friends School landscaping. We'll ask Kay to write an update soon--these gardens are still going strong, but there are many new exciting projects as well.

New Logo Announced!

We have a new logo!

We're excited to use this logo around campus and on the web. Many many thanks to Upper School student Nat Werkheiser who created the design as part of Upper School Art teacher Ben Roach's digital design class. After the council approved Nat's design and offered additional feedback, Ben Roach made final adjustments in consultation with Upper School English teacher and sustainability council member Joshua Ratner.

We really like the design. It was important to the council that the design would be recognizable as unique to Friends School (building silhouettes) while still incorporating elements that everyone thinks of as related to sustainability--things like cycles, trees, the color green, etc.... We think the mix of grey buildings and green trees, along with the four arrows in the circle, will convey to visitors and to members of our community that Friends School cares about sustainability. Great job Nat!

If you're advertising an event that has a sustainable element to it, please let us know at sustainability@friendsbalt.org and we can send  you the logo. 

Middle School students beautify Stony Run

Recently, some Middle School students went out to do some clean up around Stony Run, but they didn't stop there:

See the original post on the Friendsbalt Facebook page.

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.