1. Do you think the BLS YouthCAN has had on impact on the sustainability awareness and behavior
at Boston Latin School?
Response
Response
Percent
Count
5 - an amazingly
powerful impact
44.3%
31
4 - a strong impact
45.7%
32
3 - Some impact
10.0%
7
2 - Little impact
0.0%
0
1 - Little to no impact
0.0%
0
0 - do not know
0.0%
0
2. Please list anything that you do with students that pertains to sustainability, large or
small, whether it's part of the Annual Teach-In, or something else. We're seeking to
establish a comprehensive picture of how we are engaging students on this issue at BLS.
Please provide a one sentence description or a title of your lesson(s). Examples: Reading
Henry David Thoreau in English class. Social Justice of environmental practices in a history
class. Home energy audits in a physics/math class. Analyzing indigenous cultures for
sustainable practices in language classes. Designing and construct an instrument composed
of all recyclable material in fine arts.
- Annual Teach-In Planning cluster wide project
- Learning a lesson about China's great chan a lot people used to ride bike, but now driving
cars, discussing about pulotion
- In Latin class I constantly remind students about how low impact classical civilization was
compared to ours and how there was conservation of most everything. Most everything
was organic and locally grown. Industries exported themselves, not their products because
transportation was difficult. Cities did not outgrow their resourced but new colonies were
sent out to keep populations sustainable.
- My students are working on science fair projects that have a "green" theme.
- We do lessons on environmental issues that affect Hispanic countries in Spanish for Spanish class.
- Recycling
- Discussing the impact of climate changes throughout World History.
- Recycling paper and plastics in Guidance Office
- Always participate in Annual Teach-In. Students complete 6 "energy interlude" projects
where they research and share various issues relating to energy and society. Our Electricity
- Chapter final project is a complete Home electricity analysis.
- Resource conservation and energy management in technology.
-I use The Lorax by Dr. Seuss as part of the Annual Teach-In.
- Just recycling.
- We do a unit on transcendentalism and the importance of nature.
- Reading Thoreau in Humanities class and making collages from recycled magazines and
other materials. Connecting the making of ethanol from corn instead of using it for food
compared to various ancient practices/inventions around the world and analyzing
positive/negative. Looking at how societies in World History have damaged their - environments and then collapsed.
- reading articls in the newspaper pertaining to the topic
teach-in recycle all materials that qualify
- I help to organize the annual sustainability assembly for the 7th graders. On the day
before Thanksgiving, representatives from the Alliance for Climate Education offer a
presentation to the grade 7 students outlining the impact of global climate change and what
the students can do to affect change.
- Environmental unit in AP Spanish comparing issues in the US with Spanish-speaking
countries.
- We compare and contrast sustainability efforts in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and the
US. We talk about when kids start learning about sustainability in Germany at a young age,
and how Germany has been a leader in funding research for green technology.
- n/a
- The annual teach in. In grade 12, discussed the depiction of nature in Heart of Darkness. In
11th grade AP L and C do a timed writing on the locovore movement.
- Discuss composting. Read Wendell Berry interviews. Discuss consumer impact on
environment via Fahrenheit 451. Suggest Muir, Leopold, Atwood, Berry for declamation
sources.
- plug load testing climate change data analysis
- We recycle in all my classrooms.
- annual teach in--economic inequality and clean water
- There is a whole unit in Italian 2 dedicated to the environment and atmosphere where we
will research statistics in America and Italy, and compare how various countries approach
sustainability. We will discuss efforts made and efforts that we can make in the future to
maintain and even improve the environment.
- I wish I did more but I don't aside from using teachable moments that arise in class as
tools to teach about climate change and sustainability.
- Invedtigate energy and society issues throughout the Physics 1curriculum.
- I teach 2 lessons related to sustainability. The first: considering water usage in Las Vegas.
The second: considering carbon emissions associated with cheeseburger consumption in
the U.S.
- Support recycling program Participate in Annual Climate Change Teach-In Teach many
concepts in ecology, evolution, energy/matter, through the lens of sustainability. For
example, comparing energy consumption in herbivores vs. carnivores.
- Constantly talking sustainability in my AP Environmental Science classes
- Environmental Science students perform service learning projects, conduct independent
scientific research on the urban environment and follow a year long theme on
sustainability issues
- energy output from fuel, and calculation of carbon emission
- Teaching green chemistry, both in class and during labs. Recycling. Three sustainability
related projects with chemistry 1 (nuclear position paper, environmental investigator,
climate change position), term 5 project with CAP is environmental
chemistry/sustainability focused.
- Discuss consequences of the conservation of matter Compare energy and products of
various fuel sources Student projects have investigated renewable energy sources Home
energy, water, fossil fuel audits Cost-benefit analysis of CFLs versus incandescent light
bulbs Students tracked their trash generation for 1 week and analyzed ways to reduce,
reuse, or recycle more MWRA came in to discuss municipal water source and treatment
- either the Effect of Global Warming & Sea Level rising on the neighborhood around BLS or
Greenhouse Gases effect atmospheres
- 1. D.O.T - do one thing to be more green. Bulletin board is on the 3rd floor 2. Plant growth
unit and garden care with Bio II 3. environmental /health concerns with Bio II Infectious
disease curriculum 4. Pollution of muddy river
3. Please list any school partnership that you work with including and not limited to: local
academic institutions, businesses, informal science programs or other schools that help
advance sustainability education.
- none
- Attended summer CELF training at Simmons. As we spread our physics curriculum that
centers on Energy we are constantly advocating for energy's central role in physics
education circles.
- Developing a relationship with the Double Sided Printing initiative.
- N/A
- none
- ACE (Alliance for Climate Education)
- n/a
-?
- CLEAN DLESE
- I am a member in sustainable Braintree.
- Sharing the Energizing Physics curriculum with others.
- I am partnered with Tufts, MIT and Museum of Science, in particular, for sustainability.
- I have worked with the BLS YouthCan and attended Children's Environmental Literacy - Foundation's (CELF) Summer Institute two years ago to develop sustainability lesson plans
which I still use today.
- Whitehead Institute Boston Harbor Assoc
- Boston College College Bound Urban Ecology Institute Emerald Necklace Conservancy Arnold Arboretum
- Boston science partnership, Tritech, UMass Boston, Northeastern, Boston Public Schools
- MWRA, Knowles Science Teaching Foundation
- 1. Green city growers 2. Tufts
4. Boston Latin School has had a Sustainability Teach-in for the past several years. If you
participated in this event, please check off all years that apply.
2012- 13 (I plan
Response
Response
Percent
Count
96.8%
30
on it)
2011 - 12
58.1%
18
2010 - 11
51.6%
16
5. Please list any Professional Development opportunities in environmental or
sustainability education that you have experienced?
-Workshop at Simmons College
-I am a member of The American Chestnut Foundations and have given lectures on the the
importance this tree species for humans and the Appalachian mixed hard wood forest for
the last 20 years.
-Have taken classes through UCAR - University Corporation for Atmospheric Research Have
taken sustainability class at Simmons College
- Global Studies Conference in Colorado
-Various workshops at the UNiversity of Berlin, Germany
-Attended summer CELF training at Simmons. It was a rich and varied experience and
allowed us to revamp and improve our energy interludes.
-None
- N/A
-Summer weeklong course on teaching sustainability at Simmons College
-A program with Hale Reservation on the environment A program with Thomson Island Ed.
Center on the environment
-Oil politics at Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies
- I developed a unit for the AP class around environmental education in German.
- n/a
- Attended a seminar at the Pilot Schools Conference by a pair of teachers who created a
large garden outside of their school and used it to teach students science, math, and of
course, gardening. Then I actually had the opportunity to help out in the very same garden
and work with the students there.
-CLEAN - Climate Literacy Education
- workshops led by Cate Arnold
- none
- Summer Institute.
- I worked in a workshop with YouthCan over the summer to write the Las Vegas water
consumption lesson.
- see #3
- Weeks workshop training for AP Environmental Science
- Urban Ecology Institute
- reducing toxic waste in chemistry experiments
- Earth Science 2, Northeastern U
- AP Environmental Science training
6. Please list and describe any outdoor learning activities that you use in your course.
- None at this time but would like to take classes outside to learn about nature in Latin.
- none
- Creating sensory images for poetry
- We go outside to the parking lot to measure the students' speed in the first week. Not
much else.
- N/A
- N/A
- During our transcendentalism unit, we spend sometime outside working on nature
journals.
- Studying nature outside and recording it artistically in Humanities class (painting, collage,
drawing etc)
- none currently
- n/a
- Observations
- The football band plays outside at football games.
- none
- I use the Fens as a general model for ecosystem interactions for Introductory Biology.
- In the past my Biology classes have used biological and chemical indicators to test the
water quality of the muddy river. We also use the school's courtyard to look for examples of
ecological interactions (predation, competition, mutualism, parasitism, commensalism)
- Muddy River environmental assessment, including terrestrial species accounting and
water sampling(PO4,NO3,O2,Cl2)
- Scientific Analysis of the Muddy River Ecosystem Lesson on observation vs. inference
takes place in the BLS Quad
-None
- Parking lot diversity lab Soil analysis
- Look at local rocks Compare the length of shadows through out the year Look at lunar
phases
- Muddy river - water quality lessons