The US Department of Education announced this year’s Green Ribbon Schools, District Sustainability, and Postsecondary Sustainability Award honorees in April, naming Lutherville Lab Elementary School in Lutherville-Timonium, Maryland, as a Green Ribbon School, among two schools in Maryland, two in Illinois, and a few dozen schools nationwide.
The awards were first handed out in 2012, but about 30 states did not participate this year. Only state school officials can nominate schools for the program, which rewards schools for their sustainability and environmental education efforts.
Both Downers Grove North and Downers Grove South high schools in Chicago’s western suburbs have been recognized as Green Ribbon schools in the past, wrote Sebastian Blanco in South’s student newspaper.
“I come from a background where recycling and sustainability are a big part of a culture in my family,” he quoted math teacher Michael McGinnis as saying. “In fact, my father-in-law actually runs a construction company/recycling company.”
A big part of the Green Ribbon honor is the school’s commitment to environmental education.
“I work a lot with the science teachers, and I know it’s a big part of their curriculum, with elective classes dedicated towards that,” the paper quoted him as saying. “I think students’ awareness, mindset, and intelligence on the matter is amazing. So it doesn’t take a whole lot of selling from our point of why we do it or what we do.”
“The Mission of Lutherville Laboratory is to be ‘an engaged, diverse, and connected community, united in our commitment to nurture in every child harmony and respect in themselves, with others, and for the world around us, thus empowering children with a lasting foundation to pursue excellence in future endeavors.’ Central in that mission is nurturing ‘being in harmony and respect with others and the world around us,’ which has long been a tradition at Lutherville Lab …” the Maryland magnet elementary school wrote in its application.
- In the spring of 2023, each homeroom planted and adopted one of 21 new trees on our campus (three types of Oak, Elm, Kwanzan Cherry, Linden, London Plane, Redbud, and Sweetgum). These trees consume an estimated 462 pounds of carbon dioxide each year.
- As part of a fourth-grade class project, students study renewable and non-renewable energy sources and develop and present prototypes for redesigning common objects or appliances as renewable energy creators.
At Downers South, the student newspaper points out, there’s a bit of an inside joke around the recycle bins in many of the classrooms: Instead of stamping the words “Reduce, Recycle, Reuse” on the blue bins, a printing error resulted in stamps of “Reduce, Recycle, Resuse.”
“We laugh at that too,” Mr McGinnis said. “And we’ve done things in the past — poke fun at that. But it’s humorous. We’re just glad that they’re blue and people know what to do with them.”