THE GAZETTE
Wednesday, October 30, 2013 d
Page A-13
SCHOOL LIFE For a half-century, sixth-graders have taken to the great outdoors School district celebrates program’s 50th anniversary n
BY
PEGGY MCEWAN STAFF WRITER
Looking for a better way to reach some of his students, Joe Howard, then principal of Four Corners Elementary School in Silver Spring, launched a program that still touches the lives of thousands of students every year. That was 50 years ago. Howard is retired now and Four Corners Elementary no longer exists. But his idea, outdoor education, is still going strong. Montgomery County Public Schools celebrated the 50th anniversary of its outdoor education program Saturday with an open house at the Lathrop E. Smith Environmental Education Center in Rockville. “The motivation came when we were building an out-
door trail at [Four Corners] and found that the ‘problem’ kids were not problems when working outdoors,” Howard said. “So we tried to find things in the curriculum that we could teach outdoors — things like studying the ecosystem, the forest community, ponds and streams and meadows.” Howard took the very first class of outdoor education students, fifth-graders from Four Corners, to Camp Greentop in Thurmont in 1962. About 20 of those students attended Saturday’s open house for a minireunion. A photo of them hangs in the meeting hall of the Smith Center. “It was just one class, a pilot program,” said Kathleen Cochran of Chevy Chase, who was part of the pilot program. “The next year Mr. Howard took about 90 kids, the very first class to do outdoor ed.” Howard eventually became the school district’s first supervisor of outdoor education programs, he said, serving in that position from the mid-1970s
until he retired in 1988. “To me it was a more effective way of teaching, learning by doing,” Howard said. “We didn’t just tell them what was going on in a pond, we showed them.” The school district opened the Smith Environmental Education Center on 10 acres in Rockville in 1974, built to accommodate all the district’s sixth-graders as they attended the five-day residential program. Smith, who lived from 1902 to 1971, was a Montgomery County Council president, board of education president, farmer and conservationist. “[He was the] driving force for the preservation of the Rock Creek valley to save it from mass development of residential communities,” Laurie Jenkins, current supervisor of the program, wrote in an email. Over the years, with budget cuts and population growth, Howard said, the residential program has been cut from five to three days. And the program needs to rent other facilities to handle all the sixth-graders, Jen-
PEGGY MCEWAN/THE GAZETTE
Chris Jansson, a physical education teacher at Cedar Grove Elementary School in Germantown, shows his son C.J., 4, a solar-powered plastic bug at an open house Saturday at the Lathrop E. Smith Environmental Education Center in Rockville. kins said. “We can get about 40 to 45 percent of our sixth-grade schools in but we also use two other sites, Summit Lake [Camp] in Emmitsburg and Skycroft
[Conference Center] in Middletown,” Jenkins said. According to the Smith Center website, the Outdoor Environmental Education Program “serves over 20,000 students
each year in two major programs: the Residential Program in which every Grade 6 student participates and the Day Program in which [pre-K]-12 students explore and investigate the natural environment. At all programs students participate in curriculum-based environmental investigations.” The staff also provides professional development in environmental education to more than 500 teachers annually. Outdoor education was celebrated Saturday by more than 300 people, Jenkins said. The day included a formal news conference, a birthday cake and hands-on activities at 24 learning stations. Brandon Hebert, 8, a thirdgrader at Lois P. Rockwell Elementary School in Damascus, said his favorite activity was the confidence course. “It makes you stronger and you have to think before you use it,” Brandon said. pmcewan@gazette.net
EDUCATION NOTEBOOK Willing to weed: Students clean school courtyard About a dozen sixth-graders, 10 volunteers from Home Depot and a few staff and faculty members worked to clean up a courtyard at Montgomery Village Middle School on Oct. 22. “I think the outside should be pretty. When we are walking through the hall, we should be able to see flowers and all,” said Tamyiah Starnes, 11. “And if there are bugs, they need a home.” The group pulled weeds, cut back overgrown shrubs and picked up trash, collecting 12 large bags of waste for the dump. Then, they planted new plants, spread mulch and swept the walkways. In less than two hours, the courtyard was transformed with plants that would last through the winter, including burning bush shrubs, named for their brilliant fall foliage, and variegated liriope, an ornamental grass showing green and white against the dark brown mulch. “I think it is really cool because this is helping the school, we get [student service learning] hours and it’s helping nature,” said Jade Pinkowitz, 11. Along the way, the students learned about planting, pruning, mulching and even how to use a push broom. “As we go along, we teach them how to plant and what’s a weed,” said John Roberts, man-
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PEGGY MCEWAN/THE GAZETTE
Sixth-graders at Montgomery Village Middle School work with volunteers from Home Depot to clean up one of the school’s courtyards Oct. 22. ager of the Germantown Home Depot store. Roberts spearheaded the project, a repeat of a cleanup at the school two years ago. “The Home Depot Foundation is all about giving back to the community,” Roberts said. “We volunteer because it’s important to us.” Christian Bergman, 11, said he has helped with yard work at home and enjoys it because it keeps the environment clean. “It’s fun getting all the weeds out of the dirt,” he said. “It’s making it look nice.”
Richard Montgomery student wins green award Jessica Li, a senior at Richard Montgomery High School
in Rockville, won the inaugural
Next Generation Award, one of the 2013 Maryland Clean Energy Awards, at the Maryland Clean Energy Summit on Oct. 15 and 16. As president of the school’s Environmental Awareness Club, Li organized Friday afternoon energy shutdowns during which students go around the school turning off lights, printers, computers and monitors. She has organized presentations during first-period classes on energy conservation and alternative energy, coordinated a T-shirt design contest, an energyfocused “Jeopardy!” game, a “Watt’s Up” poster contest and a “Why Use Alternative Energy” essay contest to boost awareness of energy issues. For the past two years, Li has given presentations at
Rockville Science Day on the benefits of energy conservation at home. She also was invited to present her research on wood batteries at the 2012 USA Science and Engineering Fair and has worked with the county’s School Energy and Recycling Team program to advance effective, local strategies that schools can use to reduce energy consumption. The Clean Energy Awards recognize individuals, companies and organizations that have demonstrated leadership, partnership, advocacy and entrepreneurism in a distinct commitment to advancing clean energy, energy efficiency and job creation, Kathy Magruder, executive drector of the Maryland Clean Energy Center, said in a statement. “When I read the nomination for Jessica Li, I felt as though there is hope for the planet with remarkable young people like her coming up in the world,” Magruder wrote.
Takoma Park, Sadie Isakower of Bethesda and Ivan Reimers of Silver Spring. Each year, the program honors about 5,000 of the highest-scoring students from more than 250,000 Latino juniors who take the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. The students are from the U.S., including its territories, plus Americans attending schools abroad. “I feel honored to have received this award,” Isakower said in a statement. “Being part of the Blair Magnet has been an awesome experience, and I will never forget the wonderful teachers and friends I’ve met at Blair. The Magnet has totally changed how I think about real world problems, and I feel that because of this, my peers and I are at a definite advantage as we enter college.”
Blair High seniors honored by Hispanic program
Montgomery County’s inaugural school food forum, “Creating a Vision of Fresh, Real Food in Montgomery County Public Schools,” will be held from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at the Lutheran Church of St. Andrew, 15300 New Hampshire Ave., Silver Spring. The forum will feature regional and national experts on nutrition and diet, food education, and sourcing fresh, local food for school systems.
Four seniors at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver
Spring were selected Sept. 25 to be honored in the 2014 National Hispanic Recognition Program, which recognizes academically outstanding Latino high school students. The seniors are Sabrina Bradford and Jared Collina of
School food forum is Saturday in Silver Spring
Keynote speaker Tony Geraci is a nationally known school
food reformer, former food director for Baltimore City Public Schools, current director of nutrition services in the Shelby County Schools in Memphis, Tenn., and subject of the film “Cafeteria Man.” Presenters include Marla Caplon, director of the Montgomery County Public Schools Division of Food and Nutrition Services; Lisa Y. Lefferts, senior scientist with the Center for Science in the Public Interest; endocrinologist Shivani Narasimhan of Annapolis; Kathy Lawrence, director of strategic development, School Food Focus; Jill Coutts, science resource and horticulture teacher, Sherwood High School in Sandy Spring; Karla Kratovil, PTA vice president and school garden coordinator at Flower Hill Elementary School in Gaithersburg; and county Councilman George L. Leventhal (D-At large) of Takoma Park. There will be a nutritious, locally sourced lunch, with a talk by Ype Von Hengst, COO and executive chef of Silver Diner. The forum is co-hosted by Real Food for Kids-Montgomery and Montgomery Victory Gardens. Registration, including lunch, is $25. For more information and to register, visit realfoodforkidsmontgomery. org.