Classroom Earth Success Stories

Forming environmental education partnerships

Steve Hage, a teacher at the School of Environmental Studies in Apple Valley, Minn., uses partnerships to enrich his students’ learning experiences.

His school has an impressive list of partner organizations that encompasses groups far and wide, from the Minnesota Zoo and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, to the ends of the earth, including Inuit communities near the North Pole. These partnerships help Hage's students connect classroom content to real-world issues.

Environmental education in a special education classroom

Pretrina Mullins, a special education teacher at White Pass Junior Senior High School in Randle, Wash., created a recycling program to help her students and community understand more about the importance of sustainable behavior.

She and her students set up recycling bins around the school. They started first by collecting paper then expanded the program to include bottles, glass and aluminum. Her students were responsible for making posters to promote the program as well as collecting and sorting through the combined bins twice a week.

Connecting language and landscape

Jeff Rennicke, an English teacher at Conserve School in Land O’ Lakes, Wis., wants his students to understand and experience the connection between language and landscape. Prior to becoming a teacher, he was a full-time freelance writer for 22 years, writing 10 books and contributing to more than 300 magazine articles in publications such as National Geographic Traveler, Backpacker and other adventure and travel magazines.

Rennicke emphasizes that nature isn’t limited to national parks and weekend getaways. It is everywhere, all the time. Likewise, the incorporation of English and the environment isn’t limited to certain books or authors.

Andy Milbauer and his Environmental Science students have set up a deer exclusion project to gain a better understanding of the impact of deer on the health of the Conserve School campus forest.

The deer exclusion project is based on a design from the Smithsonian Institute. In the Smithsonian project they constructed a multi-variable study to explore the effects of invasive species and deer browsing on forest regeneration out east. At Conserve School, in northern Wisconsin, they replicated the study with a slight modification to explore the effects of deer browsing and thinning of pioneer tree species to explore forest regeneration.

After teaching my applied ecology students about forestry management methods we toured several regions of our campus. At each place we discussed logging history and indicators of the forest health. To test them on the material the students had to identify which of the forests most needed management. They then had to devise a management plan.