Tag: Baltimore County

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Earth Education Green Lifestyle Most Popular Revealing Treasures in your Own Backyard

Clean Green 15 Challenge

As green school coordinator, I took up the Clean Green 15 Challenge to pick up trash for atleast 15 minutes as many times as possible. After picking up the trash, I would go to the website and enter the data. This data was accumulated throughout the year from students and teachers in the school, as well as community members and organizations, coming together to keep their local watershed clean.

Our green club picked up trash around our school yard, almost every Wednesday, for atleast 15 minutes.

I also spread the word via social media and local businesses. If anyone was going to be cleaning up they should input the data for their local school.

Today was the award ceremony for Baltimore County’s Clean Green 15 Challenge, at Chesapeake Terrace Elementary School.

The kindergarteners sang a song called “Going Green”, which was super cute.

After all the data was calculated, 17 schools were awarded for their efforts. Schools that won honorable mention received Samsung galaxy tablets. The other schools won prizes in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place for elementary, middle and high school.

I am excited to share that Ridgely won 2nd place in middle school category! We won a $1,500 grant from the Education Foundation of Baltimore County, that we can use for some awesome green school projects!

It was a very nice ceremony! Thank you Debbie Phelps, County Executive Johnny Olszewski and Baltimore County Public Schoool system doe developing such impactful partnerships!

Check out the news story below!

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Art Earth Education Green Lifestyle Most Popular Revealing Treasures in your Own Backyard

Full STEAM Ahead

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I recently attended the Maryland Association for Environmental & Outdoor Education annual conference in Towson Maryland. This was my first MAEOE conference, and I’m excited to bring more teachers next year!

The conference theme was Full Steam Ahead, Expanding the Potential of Environmental Education.  It was wonderful to see so much integration between the arts and sciences.

I attended a painting workshop, where we talked about how to create art as an expression of ourselves, while learning techniques to be successful in the aesthetics of the artwork.

The Watershed Charter school executive director Jessie Lehson presented Growing Art through Farming, the intersection of art and agriculture. We learned to make pastels from rocks, and cut turkey feathers into quill pens.

There was an amazing presentation called When Wonder Wins, discussing how important it is to intentionally incorporate wonder into our lives.  In doing so, we are role models for our students so that they too will use the world around them to be inspired to keep growing and following their passions.

I really enjoyed the Earth Powers and Forest bathing lightening session.  Two sessions in one hour, where we discussed allowing kids to explore nature and tap in with their creative mind. We also discussed how to take moments our of our day to spend time in nature mindfully noticing our reactions and responses to outside stimuli.

Restorative Practices was by far the best session I attended, and all of the session I went to were amazing.  Dave Dahl,  from NorthBay Adventure Camp, spoke about using restorative practices and teaching out children using the M.A.E.C.E. method. Mindfulness, Awareness, Empathy, Compassion, and Engage. We participated in hands on team building activities to build relationships with one another in our 2 hour session. We discussed the self determination theory, Carl Rogers, and Dr. Dan Siegel who wrote The Whole-Brain Child.

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This conference was a wonderful learning experience and I am excited about next year!

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Celebrating Benjamin Banneker

On September 8th, 2018 The Benjamin Banneker Historical Park and Museum
held an artist reception for their current show that I have artwork hanging in…

 

 

Benjamin Banneker — author, scientist, mathematician, farmer, astronomer, publisher and urban planner — was descended from enslaved Africans, an indentured English servant, and free men and women of color. His grandmother, Molly Welsh, was an English dairy maid who was falsely convicted of theft and indentured to a Maryland tobacco farmer. After working out her indenture, Welsh rented and farmed some land, eventually purchasing two African slaves whom she freed several years later.

 

 

Young Benjamin grew up in Baltimore County, one of two hundred free blacks among a population of four thousand slaves and thirteen thousand whites. He was taught to read by his grandmother Molly, and briefly attended a one-room interracial school taught by a Quaker. He showed an early interest in mathematics and mechanics, preferring books to play.

 

 

While still a young man (probably about age 20), he built a wooden clock that kept precise time. Banneker was encouraged in the study of astronomy by George Ellicott, a Quaker and amateur astronomer whose family owned nearby mills. As early as 1788, Banneker began to make astronomical calculations, and he accurately predicted a solar eclipse that occurred in 1789. In 1791, while working with Andrew Ellicott and others in surveying the land that would become Washington, D.C., Banneker made other astronomical observations. –Encyclopedia Britannica

It turns out Benjamin and I have a lot in common! Both totally interested in astronomy, science, writing… he and I also share a similar background of being of mixed cultures. His story is very inspirational. It shows perseverance through any situation to come out on top and make a better world for everyone.

The show will be up until December 29th, 2018.
Thank you Willa Banks for following your passion for curating this amazing exhibit!
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