Environmental Education Symposium Will Teach Parents, Educators, How To Go Green

Keep Rockland Beautiful will host the third annual Rockland Environmental Education Symposium on Wednesday, March 2 at Fieldstone Secondary School, 100 Fieldstone Drive in Thiells. The event is an opportunity for parents, educators, and administrators to discuss the best strategies and available resources for environmental education.

“Everybody wants to go green, but they don’t always know what to do,” said Andy Stewart, Executive Director of Keep Rockland Beautiful. “This conference is to share ideas and information.”     

Keep Rockland Beautiful is a non-profit affiliate of Keep America Beautiful that aims to motivate volunteers to clean up and beautify their communities.

The schedule of events includes:

• 8:45 – 9:10 a.m.—Registration
• 9:15- 10 a.m.—Morning Welcome and Keynote Speaker
• 10 – 10:40 a.m.—Healthy Breakfast and Sustainability Fair
• 10:45 - 11:45 a.m. & 11:50 a.m. - 12:50 p.m.—Roundtable Sessions: Integrating Environmental Education into Classroom Curriculum and School  Culture
• 1:00 - 1:30 p.m.—Afternoon Wrap-Up: Highlights of Environmental Education in Rockland and Next Steps Towards Education for Sustainability
• 1:30 - 2 p.m.—Light Lunch and Sustainability Fair

This year’s keynote speaker will be Bronwyn Mitchell, Director of the Maryland Association for Environmental and Outdoor Education. Mitchell has helped lead an effort in Maryland to add environmental literacy as a requirement for high school graduation. Maryland also currently as a statewide Green School Award program that recognizes schools that include environmental education as part of their curricula.

There will be also 10 different roundtable discussion topics during the event, each of which will be run by professionals or educators:

• Community Service and Service Learning for the Environment
• Concepts and Practices of Interdisciplinary Sustainability Education
• Effective Green Team Building
• Engaging the School Community in Energy Conservation
• Exploring Nature Trails and Schoolyard Habitats
• Farm to School and Seed to Salad- Connecting Kids to Fresh, Local Foods and Gardens
• Grant Writing for Environmental and Sustainability Education
• Healthy Green Fundraising and Environmental Awareness
• Integrating Place-Based, Experiential Environmental Education into the Curriculum
• Recycling Across the Curriculum

The Sustainability Fair will allow visitors to meet exhibitors with various resources, including:

• Beczak Environmental Education Center
• Cary Institute of EcoSystem Studies
• Cornell University Cooperative Extension’s School Garden Network and 4-H Youth Development Program
• Hudson River Sloop Clearwater
• Rockland County Solid Waste Management Authority
• Scenic Hudson
• Steps to a Healthier Rockland

“There’s really no other place that [people] can learn about these things,” Stewart said. “They’d have to go pretty far, and then it wouldn’t be relevant to the local schools. So this is the only environmental education conference around. So if you’re a mom, or a dad, or a teacher, or a principal, and you’re itno environmental stuff, then you’ve got to come, because you’ll get more connections and more information in half a day than you’d get anywhere else. There’s no other event like this anywhere around here.”

The event is free, but organizers ask that you sign up for the event in advance. To register, go to www.keeprocklandbeautiful.org.