We work for GREEN, the Global Rivers Environmental Education Network, which is a program of Earth Force, supported for 20 years by General Motors. In 2008, 7,000 students monitored water quality and took action on their findings with the help of 269 GM mentors in more than 30 GM communities nationwide.
Early on a Saturday morning, nearly 200 students and teachers from eight schools gathered at Jackson Middle School in Grand Prairie, TX to attend the Trinity River Watershed Conference. The purpose of the event was to give both student and teachers a background on the local watershed preparing them to selecting an issue to work on for their Earth Force GM GREEN service-learning project in the Spring. With temperatures plunging to the mid-thirties in Texas, the attendees proved their passion and interest in braving the unseasonably cold weather.
Our teachers and volunteers sometimes tell the stories better than we do. The following post was written by middle school science teacher LeAnn Strate.
Like most educators, I love finding new and interesting ways to engage my students in my curriculum. Not so easy to find, when you’re trying to teach Earth Science to a bunch of 13 to 14 year old 8th graders who figure they already know everything there is to know about it because after all they live on it, right? How do you excite students who think they already have it all figured out? You put them right in the middle of it up to their knees, literally, with the General Motors GREEN program. Read the rest of this entry »
Our teachers and volunteers sometimes tell the stories better than we do. The following post was written by Lowell Bailey, a high school science teacher who shares his classroom experiences learning about water quality and the local watershed in his area with GREEN.
I’m in my 25th year in the classroom and I teach 11th- and 12th-grade environmental science and earth science at Bedford-North Lawrence High School just outside Bedford, Indiana. I am the Science Club sponsor and our Envirothon team has gone on to the state level of the competition four of the last seven years. I love doing anything outdoors, like hiking and camping, and I enjoy collecting rocks, minerals, and fossils. Read the rest of this entry »
Our teachers and volunteers sometimes tell the stories better than we do. The following post was written by Chris Miller, a sixth grade science teacher who shares his classroom experiences learning about water quality and the local watershed in his area with GREEN.
My name is Chris Miller. After 21 years running a child development center, I became a school teacher. I am a sixth grade science teacher at Reagan Middle School in Grand Prairie, Texas. At Reagan, we are lucky to have over 80 acres of undeveloped land adjacent to our school. Our students have worked with GM, the Boy Scouts and other community members to build an Outdoor Learning Center (OLC) in this area. A small beaver population also contributed by building a dam on the stream right next to our water testing station. Read the rest of this entry »
In 1984, a group of students from Huron High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan, were alarmed when a number of their peers contracted hepatitis A. Students were further intrigued when they realized that everyone getting sick was a windsurfer. Why were windsurfers getting hepatitis? Read the rest of this entry »
Howdy! We are very excited to be starting our 20th school year of GREEN programming this fall. Students across the country will be stepping into waders, exploring their watersheds and taking civic action to improve their communities with the mentorship of our amazing GM volunteers.
