St. Stephen School is seeking to create an enrichment project to become a Green School according to the guidelines with the Maryland Association for Environmental and Outdoor Education. Our goal is to create and maintain hands-on and inquiry-based instruction to preserve and protect the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed.

St. Stephen has created an outdoor classroom for the school community to explore and learn about natural habitats and the natural environment, but the outdoor classroom needs maintenance and additional resources to engage the students. Teachers of each grade level may have the opportunity to interest students with the outdoor classroom by possibly creating music with windchimes to collecting samples in science investigations, and then graphing the data in math, to name a few.

St. Stephen may also have an opportunity to create an enrichment project for a large garden where students can plant and grow vegetables and fruit. Each classroom can maintain, fertilize, and cultivate the soil to grow and take home the vegetables and fruits that are produced. The skills that will be taught include using perimeter, area, and measurement in math, understanding the processes of photosynthesis in science, showing the history of gardening with early man, tracking data results with online tools, and reading about how to care for a garden, to name a few. All these learning opportunities will engage the students in developing essential knowledge, skills and values that inspire learning and encourage academic success.

Green schools are better for students, teachers and the community. They teach how to lead a changing world, and they support student understanding of sustainable behavior.