This post is part of ACE’s Teacher of the Year blog series.

Chemberyle Simoneau could split herself in two and each half would still lead a busy life.  She is a high school chemistry teacher, soccer coach, police officer’s wife, mother of three, and a faculty sponsor for Ecovision, the environmental club she started three years ago at Foothill High School in Henderson, Nevada.

Chemberyle juggles her many responsibilities by adhering to a time tested formula that’s worked in raising her family. “I believe in empowering kids. [My students] devise the plans themselves and I serve as their adviser.”

The accomplishments of Ecovision’s fifteen members prove that Chemberyle’s adviser role works. Recently, the club ran a two-week water bottle recycling contest that inspired a cross-section of ten Foothill sports teams to collect 2,000 pounds of recyclable bottles altogether.  Earlier this school year, Ecovision’s members conducted an earth fair where they taught 500 students about carbon footprint, the albedo effect, and glaciers while also sharing Earth trivia designed to teach young people environmental solutions.

Thanks to Chemberyle’s leadership, Ecovision has impacted students and teachers alike. “The pressure of knowing they had to present to 500 students forced [Ecovision members] to know their stuff… Skye became a better presenter… [other students’] organizational skills emerged.” Similarly, Ecovision’s participation in last year’s ACE energy competition (Unplugged) changed teachers’ habits. Many of them are still conserving their energy consumption during and after school by unplugging unused devices and limiting light and power usage.

Starting an eco-club isn’t feasible for ever everyone. Still, Chemberyle believes teachers can support students by adding environmental discourse into their general curriculum. “I squeeze environmental activities into my chemistry class. We’ll talk about acid rain during acid and bases discussion. Kids may not know the relevance of why they should be part of an eco-club.”

This post if from Alicia Wong of the Reed High School Eco Warriors. 

From April 29 to May 3, our school, Reed High school, held an Earth week. The Eco warriors put up two trees in the hallway with water bottles hanging. We also had sanitized trash taped onto a poster. This was from the trash cans at our school. Also, we hung up cans in our hallway. We wanted to bring awareness to the students showing them how much they could be recycling.

For fundraising, we sold baked goods and reusable water bottles. Leadership also helped us raise money by making the baked goods and selling them. We are proud to say that we raised $958.92! With this money we plan to get a water refill station put into Reed High School. This year’s eco-week was a success!

Reed Eco Warriors

Educating students on water usage

Trash Posters

This post is part of ACE’s Teacher of the Year Blog series.

To say that Paul Sawyer’s journey towards being an educator has been an unconventional one would be an understatement. A native of Houston, Texas, Paul spent a significant chunk of his childhood in Monterrey, Mexico before being relocated to the DFW Metroplex. There he remained in the Dallas public school system for the rest of his education and went on to become a geologist and a business consultant for a good portion of his adult life.

Having been deeply exposed to different cultures from birth (Spanish was his first language), Dallas schools since childhood, and advanced science and mathematics in his collegiate and professional career, Paul eventually realized he possessed unique insight into becoming an effective inner-city educator. And considering all of the opportunities that he had been provided with, he felt that he owed his community whatever services he could provide, especially when his talents could be used for such a good purpose. Thus, for the next twelve years, Paul worked as a science and math teacher in the heart of Dallas. Even after retiring he found himself to be too committed to stop and accepted a position with the Dallas branch of Harmony Science Academy (HSA – a Texas-based charter school program) in 2012.

In only six months with HSA-Dallas, Paul has made a deep impact, invigorating the STEM programs with a series of speakers, including “industry and education-minded scientists, engineers, and technologists,” a design that is being considered as a model by the Texas Education Agency. Among this premier group was Matt Varvir, DFW Educator for ACE, who gave the ACE presentation to his students this past February.

After working with the ACE program, Paul knew that he had to capture the same energy they produced and focus HSA towards a larger environmental goal. He contacted Dr. Frank Camp, head of Environmental Projects for the city of Dallas and challenged his small group of students to take part in a larger reforestation effort. Within a month they had already cleaned a local park and planted ten trees.

But that wasn’t enough for Paul. Considering the technology focus of his campus, he encouraged his students to proactively begin work on a digital DOT campaign for the HSA-Dallas website. Soon they will have a link to the United Nations global climate change petition, which aims to have a billion signatures by Earth Day 2014. Beyond that, Paul has used his previous professional connections to contact members of the Dallas Water Department and Principal Solar to consider starting his students on projects involving water quality, solar energy and energy reduction in the near future.

On first look, Paul Sawyer may look like an unusual nomination for Teacher of the Year, especially since his school has only been working with ACE Dallas-Fort Worth (one of the newest ACE regions) for a couple of months. But Paul possesses many traits that any ACE teacher should strive to have: he is knowledgeable, passionate, committed, engaged, and willing to go above and beyond to connect with his students. For him, ACE is not a necessity—he will transform HSA into an even more impressive campus no matter what resources he has available. Instead, it is a great supplement that allows his teaching to be more effective, his students’ goals to be higher, and both his and his students’ impact in the Dallas community to be that much stronger. Paul Sawyer is everything that a teacher should be and ACE Dallas-Fort Worth is proud to honor his abilities and achievements.

This post is part of ACE’s Teacher of the Year blog series. 

I am pleased to nominate Greeley Central High School’s Liz Mock-Murphy for ACE Teacher of the Year.

Liz has been an amazing ally of ACE’s from the very beginning.  Most importantly, she has been an incredible teacher, faculty sponsor, and general support system to her students at Greeley Central.

Liz began teaching 21 years ago and was hired at Greeley Central in 2007 after taking time off to raise her two young children and then doing a stint as a Trim Carpenter for a year while she waited for the right teaching job to open up in Greeley.  Teaching is a passion that she was introduced to over twenty five years earlier while doing a service project at a Palestinian girls’ school on the West Bank of Israel for a semester.  Liz has a knack for educating and mentoring young people; a knack that the students of her Earth Systems, Geology, and AP Environmental Science classes can attest to.

No one is more appreciative of Liz than the Green Cats – Greeley Central’s Action Team. When Liz first invited ACE to Greeley Central in the spring of 2010, some of her students approached her after the saying they wanted to start an Action Team. With the help of ACE, Liz organized all of the interested students and helped them complete their very first project: an end of the year sustainable locker cleanout! – recycling over 25 bins of paper and saving numerous pens, clothes, and rulers from winding up unnecessarily in the landfill.

But Liz and the Green Cats didn’t stop there! The team only grew stronger! They took on a myriad of projects including systematically reducing waste in the school’s cafeteria, implementing money-saving, low-flow toilets in the bathrooms, selling reusable water bottles to their peers, and, along with other Colorado high schools, organizing a student-led rally in Denver aimed at banning single-use plastic bags. Perhaps most notably, the Green Cats also won ACE’s 2011 national Biggest Loser Energy Competition and were awared a $1,000 grant.

The Green Cats aren’t the only ones with an impressive resume. Last school year alone, Liz was awarded the school’s Outstanding Scholar Sponsor award, the school board’s Shining Star Teacher Award, and the City Council’s Environmental Stewardship Award. Yet even with all of these accolades, it is obvious that Liz’s greatest source of pride is her students.

Speaking about the Green Cats, Liz admitted, “My favorite part about my job? Easy. It’s working with these amazingly passionate and creative students.” She insists that not only are they amazing kids, but they’re also incredibly humble. And perhaps most importantly, they’re also like family. Liz fondly remembers the group’s Christmas party, which included a gift exchange, food, and an intense popsicle stick war. “This is precisely why the group works”, explains Liz. “It’s not all about business; it’s about relationships.”

Liz understands that a happy team equals a healthy team. And in addition to always supporting her students, she also helps them keep their goals realistic, reminding them that “it is not necessary to save the world, only that you do what you can to help.”

Liz is surely doing her part to help her students, her school, and her community, and for this, I am thrilled to nominate her for ACE Teacher of the Year. Thank you so much for everything you do, Liz!

This post part is a quick update from the Project Greenway and TEENS Summit. 

Saturday’s TEENS Environmental Summit was the biggest yet! Get a first look at some of the highlights here. More to come soon!

Photo by Tabitha Hoag

This post is part of ACE’s Teacher of the Year blog series. 

Laura Lopez immediately left an impression on me. We met in 2012, when she’d arranged a set of ACE presentations at her school, North-Grand High. I was first struck by her kindness and warmth, and quickly recognized her exceptional dedication to teaching. We had an amazing Action Team meeting afterwards that still remains one of my favorite ACE memories.

Laura Lopez (right) with co-teacher.

By the time I left, I knew she was an absolute rock star: the kind of person that you can’t help but want to support.

In the two years that I’ve known her, I’ve learned there are dozens of reasons that Laura is awesome. She is, without a doubt, my Teacher of the Year! But for the sake of this nomination, I’ll share just my top 3 reasons.

1) She wins. Literally. Remember Biggest Loser: Energy? The 2012 ACE competition for school energy conservation? Well guess who won in Chicago? Yep – Laura’s team! In 15 school days, she led the North-Grand Environmental and Gardening Club to reduce C02 emissions from North-Grand by over 4,600 pounds!

And it wasn’t easy. She put in hours of work to support her students and help make this happen: Making sure students were trained, helping recruit and communicate with participating teachers, pulling together all of the data. On top of that, the team also added a community education campaign and created an interactive banner for students, staff, and parents to learn more about common household energy vampires. Her constant devotion to celebrating her students’ efforts and engaging with the larger community not only helped them win, but made it a transformative experience for everyone.

#winner

2) She fights for students’ right to know. She believes that everyone should be informed about global warming and incorporates

North Grand Action Team

environmental education into all of her classes. Additionally, she arranges annual ACE assemblies to make sure every student at North-Grand has seen our presentation at least once.

Why? She understands the dangers that climate changes poses to young people and their futures. But not only does she know about these risks, she works tirelessly to provide young people with the opportunities to understand the problem and be empowered take action against it.

Students often ask her why invests so much time and effort in environmental projects. Her answer, “I do it for you, and your children.”

 #fighter

Laura’s Students at Project Greenway

3) She’s a fantastic youth ally. Whether you want to work on energy conservation or raising public awareness or design eco-fashion collections, Laura will support you. And not only will she share her knowledge and ideas, she’ll also help you recruit more people, plan a timeline, find resources and support, store all of your supplies in her classroom, drive you to trainings and events, work around your schedule and hold meetings 3 nights a week to make sure you can attend at least one, overcome obstacles alongside you, and all the while keep you well fed on pizza and snacks.

Above all else, I want to say how much I admire Laura. It is rare to find people with such contagious warm energy, humble leadership, and such a fierce commitment to young people. I am thrilled to nominate her for ACE’s Teacher of the Year.

#ally

This post is a follow up from ACE’s partnership with the Cincinnati Zoo. 

Hughes High School was proud to participate in the Cincinnati Zoo Zero Landfill Challenge with the guidance and support of ACE. Their creative video submission earned them second place in the challenge, winning them 10 free field trips to the Zoo and a spotlight on the Zoo’s website. Hughes has a dedicated core group of students called the “Green Team” led by faculty sponsor and School Psychologist, Carla Mayo. The Green Team took on this challenge in hopes that their waste reduction efforts will inspire other schools and local communities to take similar actions to reduce waste sent to landfills. Ms. Mayo says, “I was excited to hear about the Zoo’s Zero Landfill Challenge because although we are already recycling, I wanted to branch out our program to do more, and this gave us the perfect opportunity to do so.”

Ms. Mayo saw this challenge as a way to remind the school community about the recycling efforts at Hughes and encourage them to re-commit to participating in the program.  The Green Team made great strides during the couple months allotted for the Zoo Challenge, but they recognize that this will be an ongoing effort for years to come. Ms. Mayo says, “What we’ve done so far for this challenge is come up with ideas of how we are going to share information with others. We decided the best way to start was through the ACE “Do One Thing” (DOT) campaign.” Working with the Alliance for Climate Education, the Green Team started with the DOT campaign on Earth Day. Ms. Mayo says, “We asked students, community members, and faculty to do one thing to help the environment. So far we’ve collected over 100 DOTs with over 80 of those pledges being waste related.” The Green Team wanted to branch out beyond their school for this challenge, so they also asked family and community members to pledge a DOT.  After a week of collecting pledges, the Green Team created a mural to represent the pledges made, and it is being displayed in a prominent location in the school to inspire others to make sustainable changes.

In addition to their focused recycling efforts, Hughes works to engage the surrounding community in sustainable actions through their community garden.  With help from community partners like the U.S. Green Building Council, the garden has truly become a collaborative project that engages staff, students, partner organizations, and Cincinnati residents.

Green Team working in the community garden

One of the core values of Hughes High School is to respect the environment. Ms. Mayo explains, “The Green Team is doing an excellent job of living up to this value by acting as leaders and modeling how other students and faculty can get involved in the recycling movement.” The Green Team has also worked to include students with disabilities in this endeavor. These students collect recycling during the school day, giving them a sense of accomplishment while at the same time modeling recycling behavior for other students.

Overall, Ms. Mayo and the Green Team believe their combined efforts will help sustain the waste reduction culture at Hughes for generations to come. Ms. Mayo explains, “We’re in the process of creating a system for recycling that can be passed off to the next generation of staff and students that step in so that the program is sustainable. Hughes is continually growing in our efforts and there are a lot of great things to come out of this program.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

This post is part of ACE’s Teacher of the Year blog series.

Dedicated. Determined. Dependable. These are three words I would use to describe Mrs. Sureka Taylor, the Science Club Sponsor at Champion Theme Middle School. She’s dedicated to supporting students on their environmental projects. Determined to helping them set and achieve new goals within the club, and she’s always dependable when it comes to working with ACE to participate in national campaigns and events.

I met Mrs. Taylor in March of 2011 and since that time she has worked actively with ACE to ensure her students attended our Leadership Trainings and worked on projects from start to finish. Some of the coolest projects Mrs. Taylor has worked on, with her team, included the Spring 2011 Biggest Loser Energy Competition in which her students were awarded the Middle School Grand Prize for reducing more energy than any other middle school nationwide.

Also, in February of this year, the team recreated inventions from African Americans using only recycled or reusable material. This project was featured on the our website during the Black History Month web series.

This blog is just a small token of appreciation for Mrs. Taylor’s hard work and commitment to Science Club students at Champion Theme Middle School. Thank you for all you do for ACE and your school.

This is a guest post from Symone Baskerville a student at Kenwood Academy High School.

The Saturday’s Project Greenway rehearsals went great! We had a great turn out of models and designers. The rehearsals started out with registration of the models and designers.

Than we got down to the fun stuff, the models did a full run through of the show. The models were kind of nervous the first go around but the models were told to loosen up and have fun.  To do this the organizers had the models to lots of silly poses by themselves and with partners, so that the models could get comfortable with posing with and interacting with each other.

One of the main critiques of the first run was that the models were moving too fast down the runway. So after the models got silly hey did another run through of the show and this time it was epic! Each model came down the runway with their own unique style and flair.

It was also a great time for the very proud designers to watch the runway and see their models work it. We also have many more participants than last year so while back stage will be a little bit more hectic… the show will be that much more amazing!

So while you really don’t want to miss the TEENS summit, you definitely don’t want to miss Project Greenway from 7-8 on May 11^th at the Peggy Notebaert Nautre Museum.

I’ll see you there!

For more info, go to: http://teenssummit.org/

To see more pictures of the rehearsal, check out: http://www.flickr.com/photos/95550120@N06/sets/72157633442878862/

The Environmental Club at Druid Hills Middle School are making commitments to TAKE ACTION against climate change this spring. They captured and produced their own video to share their actions with their school and community.

Click here to view the embedded video.