About me: My name is Ryan Ariosa and I am the Green Leader for Commodore John Rodgers Elementary/Middle School. This is the fourth year that I have been the Green Leader and I am very pleased to see how much our school has grown in our environmental consciousness within during this time. I have been interested in doing my part to save the environment since I was a youth and now my passion is inspiring my students to become environmentalists. It brings me such joy when I see students in our school making the extra effort to recycle and conserve energy. Commodore John Rodgers's mission statement is 100% for 100%: Commodore to College. If I am able to influence our students to carry the Earth first mentality into their adult life, it will be a tremendous accomplishment.
Green Team Meetings
Throughout the year the Green Team met to discuss and plan out the various GREEN happenings taking place within Commodore. We met on the last Monday of every month but sometime we would meet informally to discuss logistics around certain presentations and events. The Green Team consisted of students, teachers and community members. Everyone in the school community was welcome and every meeting was advertised within the daily bulletin for our school and on the school life calendar. Below are pictures of the messaging and a sign-in sheet.
Commodore's Recycling Program At Commodore we have a very robust recycling program that the Green Team Coordinates. Every Thursday various groups of Middle School Students come together to help with the collection process. There are a lot of logistics that figure in to this process but with the help of teachers and volunteers we are able to make it into a smooth process. Below are some pictures of students caught in the act.
Marker Recycling Campaign This January, Commodore began a marker recycling campaign and it has been a total success. Throughout the year each classroom has been collecting their dried up markers and the Green Team has been counting the amount collected. Since the beginning of the campaign we have collected and sent back over 1,000 markers.
Green Schools Professional Development As the Green Leader I attended the 2019 MAEOE conference. It was a great day of learning and I was able to share the information I learned with the Vertical Science Team (1st-8th Grade) and helped them with lesson/unit plan activities. I was also able to lead a brief professional development to the entire staff which focused around what our renewed Green School status means to our school and how we should message it to our students. Below is my badge from the MAEOE conference and a screenshot of the Green School Powerpoint I used to present to the staff.
Green, Healthy, Smart Challenge Grant
Commodore was awarded the Green, Healthy, Smart Challenge grant by The Baltimore City Office of Sustainability for the 2018-19 school year. We used the grant money to help continue our partnership with Audubon: Patterson Park. Audubon has been providing 3 field experiences per year for all of our students in grades PK-5. These environmental science classes have to do with local eco-literacy problems and interventions. These field experiences have helped to broaden the scope of environmental knowledge throughout our entire school building and local community. They have also help to develop many students into future ornithologists! The pictures below show students involved in some of the field experiences where they planted native plants for the birds that migrate in our area and a student engaged in an activity that discussed bird migration and human impact.
Green, Healthy, Smart Challenge Application
Sustainability Ambassador:
Commodore's Day of Service (4/6/19): This school year I helped to coordinate a school-wide service day, in which members of the staff, students and community came together to cleanup the Commodore campus. During this campus cleanup the vision of Commodore our Green School projects were discussed and shared amongst the students and volunteers.
Day of Service Picture Gallery:
The service day was a total success! I was able to coordinate/lead (during a regular school day) an effort that consisted of 18 community members, 20 students and 5 educators/school volunteers. Before the service day began I coordinated and led multiple planning meetings with the Green Team, members of the Baltimore City Department of Sustainability and the administration team. One of the most important things that I wanted to transpose on the working group were the guiding principles of our core values within Commodore and the work we are doing as a Green School. During each meeting that I conducted I laid out a planned schedule of events and looked to find the best way to ensure that everything ran smoothly. I also attended a meeting at Blue Water Baltimore’s main office around best practices when hosting a volunteer cleanup group. The chair of the Baltimore City Public School Board of Education (Cheryl Casciani) was a highly distinguished guest within the day of service. I know her from my work with the Baltimore Community Foundation. I began the day by leading a welcoming discussion to all of the entire group of workers flanked by Ms. Casciani, Mr. Martin (lead principal) . I described our various roles at the school/with the district and how being a certified Green School has helped Commodore thrive. Various individuals helped with a campus-wide cleanup effort (which yielded 80 bags of refuse/ provided a new learning space for the students that is already being put to use), helped weed/clean up our courtyard garden and also helped us organize a significant portion of our reusable literacy materials.
Campus Clean-Up Every week students in different advisories come together to clean up the Commodore campus. It's so great to see how invested students have become in doing their part to keep their local environment clean!
Recy-queen visits Commodore
As part of our Earth Day (week) celebration Commodore was privileged to have the Recy-queen visit and give presentations to both the 5th/6th and 7th/8th grade community meetings. These presentations revolved around a focus of preventing plastic waste through recycling and reusing. They were very engaging presentations and the students were actively asking questions throughout. I think the presentation gave each student a better realization about the effects of plastic waste on the Earth and what they can do to fight it. Below are pictures from her presentations.
Clean Drain Campaign
I entered Commodore into a competition with other schools called the Clean Drain Campaign. This campaign is sponsored by the Department of Public Works, Blue Water Baltimore, Healthy Harbor Initiative and Ridge to Reefs. In this campaign students have to help spread awareness of keeping drains clean of grease, oils and fats. The more pledges that the school gets from both students and parents the closer we come to acquiring up to $1,500 for our school. Leading the campaign I have enlisted both the Community School Coordinator as well as the science instructional lead for our building. The first benefit of this process was when members of Blue Water Baltimore came into our building and held a FOG (fats, oils, grease) monster workshop. The students learned about wastewater treatment and the effects it has on the environment while they got to create their very own FOG monster. So far we have over 70 pledges and the campaign lasts until May 24th. If we win the $1,500 we intend to use it to replenish the science closet in order for middle school students to have more interactive labs next year. Below are some pictures of students creating their own personal F.O.G. monsters in an eco-literacy workshop conducted by Blue Water Baltimore as well as our pledge sheets.