Teacher Grants: Public Schools & Green
Posted on January 3rd, 2010 by ASEE
The National Education Association (NEA) Green Grants for K-12 teachers invites public school educators to apply for individual grants worth up to $5,000 for the development and implementation of ideas, techniques, and approaches for teaching “green” concepts to students. The Green Grants program targets environmental education as an area of great promise in helping students develop a sense of environmental stewardship.
Filed under: For Teachers, K-12 Outreach Programs, Web Resources | Comments Off on Teacher Grants: Public Schools & Green
Tags: Environmental Engineering, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Grades K-5, Grant Opportunities, Green, Teacher Awards
With a $5,000 grant from Project Learning Tree and help from an engineering company, a supervised team of eighth graders at Brownsburg East Middle School in Indiana has installed a “green roof,” removing 8,000 pounds of river rock ballast from the surface and replacing it with 196 planting trays.
In this lesson, students in grades K-5 learn how decaying organic matter can be harvested as a source of energy. After brainstorming as to how old metal, plastic, and paper can be a resource, students find uses for an old piece of fruit. They view an informative video on harvesting organic material for energy. Once their their investigation is complete, students observe conditions that promote the most rapid decay of a piece of fruit.
Students work in small teams to design a heat- and water-conserving “green roof” of plant material for an urban apartment building. This is a multimedia project for grades 9-12, involving Web and library research, hand drawings, creation of exhibit boards with text, photos and data graphics, and a final presentation of findings.
In this lesson, students in grades 6-8 learn what causes a tsunami, the physics behind its movement, and how scientists know when one is forming. They study its impact on a model town and learn about a 10-year-old girl credited with saving dozens of lives when a tsunami struck Samoa. 
Move over, NASA. Remy Dou’s high school students are developing plants that can survive in space. They are learning to master aeroponics, an engineering process in which a nutrient-rich mist is sprayed on the roots. Requiring no soil and very little water, the plants can grow even inside the International Space Station, though Planet Earth is also an option.
Students in grades 3 to 8 use a table-top tsunami generator to observe the devastation of these huge waves. They make villages of model buildings to test how different material types are impacted, and they learn how engineers design buildings to survive tsunamis.
An attractive website offering teacher resources for grades 6-8 to study green roof and related environmental technology. Includes interactive online presentations and downloadable lesson plans and activities, a student workbook, and teacher guide.
