New Perspectives in Science Education

The international Green Schools movement continues to grow, but it takes root locally, one school at a time.  Learn how one established county-level program increased local Green School participation by over 30% in two years with the help of an innovative Ambassador program to mentor new schools. In 2015, the Green Schools Recognition Program at Florida Atlantic University’s Pine Jog Environmental Education Center initiated a “program-within-a-program” to help new schools go green: the Green Schools Ambassador Program. The purpose of this program was to grow more Green Schools in the two counties Pine Jog serves by providing new participants with experienced mentors to help them navigate the challenges of their first year: to develop green initiatives, find resources, make community connections, and successfully apply for recognition. In recent years, FAU Pine Jog’s Green Schools Recognition Program (GSRP) has grown by about 10% annually, from 21 schools when it started in 2008 to 89 schools in the 2015-16 academic year. Coordinated in collaboration with two south Florida school districts (Palm Beach and Martin Counties), the GSRP recognizes both public and private schools in these counties for developing cultures of sustainability and environmental stewardship in their classrooms, on their school grounds, and in their communities. The program recognizes schools at three levels, Promise, Quality, and Excellence, and supports participants at every stage of their Green Schools journey. After piloting the Ambassador Program in 2015, the GSRP implemented the program for the 2016-17 and 2017-18 school years. The program provided each school with a trained mentor who had prior experience with the GSRP. It established guidelines for meetings and communications between Ambassadors and schools and provided additional resources for both. This initiative resulted in 33 new schools successfully joining the program, raising the total number of schools to 122, and contributing to over a 30% increase in overall program participation from the previous years. 68% of new Ambassador Schools entered the program as Schools of Quality or Excellence, bypassing the program’s first-tier recognition level and providing these schools with solid ground for ongoing Green Schools participation. This presentation will share strategies and successes of the GSRP’s Ambassador Program and provide recommendations for other programs interested in growing Green School participation through mentoring initiatives. It will also consider the role of such “grassroots” Green Schools initiatives in the context of the (inter)national Green Schools movement.

Keywords: Green Schools; K-12 education; sustainability education;