Teaching green

New Zealand schools are turning green. Programmes are sprouting up around the country to help students get back in touch with their environment – and in some cases students are getting better marks as a result. Green programmes teach pupils important life skills, like how to grow and prepare food – and sustainability is saving schools money too. Since 2010 government funding for heat, light and water has been fixed at a level based on an average of the previous three years’ costs. Schools can keep any savings that they make by being energy efficient and bringing their spend in below the cap.

There to help

For schools yet to begin a sustainability journey there’s lots of help out there; New Zealand has some excellent organisations that can help kick-start eco programmes.

The most prominent is the Enviroschools Foundation, an independent not-for-profit charitable trust that helps early childhood centres through to secondary schools become more sustainable. It provides facilitators and curriculum-linked programmes and has touched the lives of some 230,000 young New Zealanders to date. More than 865 schools are involved in the Enviroschools network.

Also active in the field is the smaller Garden to Table Trust, which has a focus on food. Garden to Table is a New Zealand offshoot of the successful Australian Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program which has been rolled out in 267 Australian primary schools. Affiliated schools receive funding and resources to get seven- to ten-year-olds into vegetable gardens and home-style kitchens each week for curriculum-based learning. There are nine Garden to Table schools in New Zealand, with four more planned for 2013 and the Trust also has a subscription programme that provides resources to schools it can’t fund.

And of course there are some shining examples of green schools out there that have blazed a trail that teachers and parents can follow. Green Ideas spoke to three great green education centres to find out how they do it.

How to start

1. Green schools thrive when parents pitch in. Here’s a step-by-step guide to helping your child’s school start a green programme
2. Get together with other parents. Work out what time and expertise you can offer. Can you weed? Plant? Build?
3. Get inspired by other schools. www.enviroschools.org.nz has local examples and you can see what’s happening overseas at www.greenschools.net.
4. Write a list of the benefits of setting up a green programme. Both www.gardentotable.org.nz and www.enviroschools.org.nz have good information.
5. Meet the principal to explain your ideas and how you can help – sustainability is a key part of the curriculum so they should be receptive.
6. Persuade your school to register with Enviroschools or Garden to Table. These organisations provide support and resources like tool kits, co-ordinators and lesson plans. For Enviroschools go to www.tinyurl.com/anlokc5 and find your region on the left. Click through to find your regional co-ordinator and get in touch.
7. With the school’s help, establish a ‘green team’ with teacher, student, board of trustees and ground staff representatives to decide what you’d like to do. Fancy a chicken coop? Fruit trees? Beach clean ups? The world is your compost bin! Teaching staff can work out how to fit the ideas into lesson plans, and what help would be useful from parents.
8. Keep up your support and enthusiasm – the more you provide, the more creative your school can be in providing exciting learning opportunities.

How it can work

For anyone looking for inspiration for their own green school programme, you can’t go past the environmental award-winning primary, Owairaka District School in Auckland’s Mt Albert. Not only do they have industrial-size sweet-smelling compost, they also have happy chooks, extensive edible gardens, a shade house for seedlings, an orchard and the school’s newest starter is a swarm of bees.

Principal Diana Tregoweth says that her students are more connected to their surroundings since the school started becoming environmentally active nearly eight years ago. The grounds look incredibly well cared-for and there has been almost no vandalism since students began their green journey. The children feel that they are responsible custodians and looking after the school matters to them.

“Inspiring and equipping our students to be environmentally active is a fundamental part of what we do,” explains Diana. “It is included in our strategic plan, which is vital in becoming green.”

Another strategic goal of the school is that all children will have a love of learning and be literate and numerate, and the government has set national standards that children in years 1-8 need to reach in reading, writing and mathematics. Diana says that being green “fits like magic” with these goals and brings the curriculum to life.

For example, a recent kumara harvest from their abundant veggie patch saw Owairaka’s children working on key competencies by:

• Estimating the weight of the ‘purple jewels’ they unearthed from the ground
• Reading the scales and counting in tens to weigh and measure the harvest
• Adding up the total weight of their bounty
• Communicating and using teamwork to record the information and create charts
• Enjoying making and eating kumara pasta and cakes to celebrate the harvest!

Recruiting enthusiastic teachers, getting passionate parents involved and including every child also delivers results, according to Diana. “Our composting system works so well, for example, because everyone in the school has a part to play.”

Each class (and the staffroom) has bins for compost, worm food, clean scrap paper (which is sold, with the profits reinvested in green initiatives) and landfill. ‘Waste busters’ manage the process and ‘worm farmers’ deliver citrus scraps to the compost (the worms don’t like orange peel). Other children get involved in making the compost and using it to grow vegetables and food for the chickens.

Green tips from Owairaka

• Get creative in reducing waste: you can replace paper ‘late slips’ with happy-face and sad-face ink stamps.
• Planter boxes in every spare space give kids ownership and supplement main vegetable gardens.
• Get kids harvesting and cooking produce that they’ve tended.
• Establish worm farms for food scraps, tea bags and coffee grounds.
• Reinvest profits from selling eggs, worm tea and scrap paper.
• Use bees as a focus for lesson ideas.
• Encourage insects with scented gardens.
• Capture rainwater for irrigation.
• Run a ‘turn off the lights’ campaign to save power and look at alternative energy sources.
• Turn trash into treasure – Owairaka created sculptures from 15,000 bottle tops they collected.
• Gift new starters fruit-filled lunchboxes to reduce packaging waste.
• Ask parents to help.

Starting small is easy

Heather Graham, the head of Seymour Kindergarten in Blenheim, recommends starting small by looking at green ways you can do the regular activities kids love. Like baking for example – you can buy in bulk and use seasonal ingredients you’ve grown yourselves.

“There are so many benefits: improving the children’s diets and showing families how to get more for less. It is amazing what kids will eat when they are involved in growing it!” says Heather.

Her top tip is to get kids involved in all aspects of becoming greener. Once you start, she says, it takes on a life of its own. “We all think more sustainably now – newsletters go out by email to reduce photocopying and we recycle many items to be used by the kids to create art.

Making it relevant

In rural Northland, Mangakahia Area School teacher Elyne Semenoff finds creative ways for students to be green, have fun and achieve academic and trade-based qualifications. Through their 'education for sustainability' classes, students: 

• Recycle almost all their waste at a self-built recycling centre
• Save food scraps for chooks, local pigs, the compost and worm farm
• Monitor and clean local streams
• Plant native forests around the school
• Built chook houses using timber they harvested themselves

“By getting stuck into outdoor activities that they enjoy, our students learn about things they think they aren’t so keen on like maths and science. Their motivation grows and academic outcomes improve when the kids are engaged in something they feel good about,” explains Elyne. “They concentrate harder and find literacy easier when they are writing about things they have experienced firsthand.

“And we make learning relevant,” she adds. “The concept of kaitiaki for example, and how important it is to return larger tuna (eels) to the river. For many of our kids, that’s on the menu two or three times a week so it’s very meaningful for them.”

Green tips from Mangakahia

• Start small and give kids ownership of the projects.
• Make it relevant to young people – for instance, looking at eel habitats and using timber they've harvested themselves
• Tap outside sources of support (for example councils, Landcare, and grant-giving private organisations)

A green future

The Ministry of Education has included ecological sustainability and care for the environment as explicit themes in the national curriculum, the document that guides education in New Zealand, so it’s clear that green schooling is here to stay.

Much of the detail of how that happens depends on parents and the teachers who guide their children. Obviously education is different at pre-school, primary and secondary levels: at the earlier stages it’s easier to translate hands-on activities into all the learning areas, while secondary schools tend to work sustainability themes into regular subjects, or can offer year-long academic sustainability courses.

Yet across all stages of education in New Zealand, it seems that the greening of our schools is putting the future of the country in good hands. Diana from Owairaka District School says she’s proud that her students have the interest and practical skills to look after themselves and their environment. As she puts it: “We are raising consciousness beyond the classroom door and influencing the kind of parents and people our pupils will be.”

What being green means to the kids...

"Being green to me means I know how to water the plants myself." – Amelia (4), Blenheim

"Being green to me means picking up rubbish and putting it in the right bins." – Faith (9), Auckland

"Being green to me is having a great chook house and hens in our edible forest and collecting their eggs!" – Bella (8), Northland

"Being green to me means looking after trees so we have fresh air so everyone can breathe." – Chantelle (9), Auckland

Helpful links

www.enviroschools.org.nz
Helps schools set up green programmes

www.motherearth.co.nz/62/home
Financial rewards for environmental schools

www.regeneration.org.nz
Young New Zealanders working for positive change

http://efs.tki.org.nz/
Ministry of Education sustainability resources

www.eecabusiness.govt.nz/schools
Shows how schools can be more energy-efficient

www.gardentotable.org.nz
Gardening and food programmes for schools