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News from Lisa

In Support of Getting Dirty

In his essay Beyond Ecophobia: Reclaiming the Heart in Nature Education, David Sobel (who studies environmental education and kids) makes the case that kids who are exposed to environmental education in the classroom might not end up being the ones who care the most. According to Sobel, caring about something in abstraction, especially for a young person, can create anxiety and despondency rather than action. And, when children do act, they are not acting to directly solve a problem; more often they are raising money to save a problem that is a world away—which has its own issues.

Instead, the most important thing might very well be the easiest—children should spend as much time outdoors as possible. I'm pleased to be able to say that this is the case at The Girls' School. Mostly out of necessity (no gym, no dining room) and somewhat by design, our girls spend a lot of time outdoors getting dirty and interacting directly with their environment. Check out, if you haven't already, the stick construction under the picnic table near the swing set, the constantly changing rock and pebble designs under the playscape, the face painting (applied by middle school girls to any available lower school girls) after school this past week, or the large number of "alters" memorializing the former bamboo patch.

I don't know about you but I spend a lot of time looking at schools when I am out and about in Austin (and parking lots, but that's another story) and I rarely see children outside. Drive by The Girls' School at almost any time of the day, and you will see girls outside.

I grew up in a time when weekends and summers were spent outdoors. Just around the block from our house was a creek. It formed one edge of an exclusive country club, so part of the fun was hiding from the grounds crew who—rumor had it— would catch trespassing children. We were not sure what happened to them after that, which only added to the mystique. That creek was mysterious, muddy, and full of alligators, crocodiles, leeches, and pirates. This was on Long Island, where none of those features actually existed, except maybe the baby alligators flushed down all of those toilets in Manhattan (or so we heard). In those days, a "play date" consisted of walking outside where, seemingly out of nowhere, other children would appear for a game of tag, or to climb trees, or to visit the creek.

In the early grades, caring for the planet is as simple as caring for the spaces around you—cleaning up after yourself (at school, at home) and helping maintain the classroom and grounds. Furthermore, children are great observers, so opportunities to model sustainable practices abound. Eating well, showing respect for people who grow and prepare the food, and avoiding waste (of all kinds) are probably more important teachable moments than purchasing packages with endangered animals printed on them (although I will admit that they are cute).

Doesn't sound expensive, does it?

How are we doing with environmental education at The Girls' School? We are making progress in learning how to take care of our place. Our waste stream is down considerably from last year (and even with more students on campus). The large trash cans in the courtyard are rarely more than half full by the end of the day compared to overflowing most of last year, we have own our paper recycling system (thank you to Certified Shred for donating this service), and we are recycling plastic containers and cans. We take our cardboard to Ecology Action every few weeks or so, and I am seeing fewer single-use plastic bottles on campus. (By the way—there is a large supply of water bottles and other reusable plastic containers in the Lost and Found. Please help yourself.)

So you can see, we have a quite a dedicated crew of student recyclers on campus! Maybe next year we'll plant a vegetable garden.

Lisa K. Schmitt
Head of School
(04/09)