An Environmental High School

When you actually see the results of connecting education to the real world in the students themselves, you realize just how on point Alison is in her observation. It also helps to explain why the school she founded— Environmental Charter High School in Lawndale, California—has been such an outstanding success. Of the approximately 450 students, 80 percent are financially disadvantaged; but 95 percent of those graduating exceed the admission requirements of California state universities.

Environmental Charter High School

“When you talk to students about issues clearly visible in the environment, things become relevant very quickly,” Alison continues. “We’re having kids look at such matters, examine best practices that already exist, and discover what they can do to implement a best practice or come up with a solution that hasn’t already been implemented. Doing so provides a landscape in which they can take action and make measurable differences. When they do this, they’re empowered and they want to do it more. They have a reason for learning their course subjects.”

A charter school is a public school operating independently of a district board of education—in effect, a one-school public school district. A group of people—educators, parents, community leaders, educational entrepreneurs, and others—come together and write the charter plan describing the school’s guiding principles, governance structure, and applicable accountability measures. If the state approves the charter, the state funds the school on a per pupil basis. Because they are schools of choice, they are held to the highest level of accountability—consumer demand.

And the consumers are demanding: each year, 300 prospective students apply for the 100 new slots available at ECHS.

Green Ambassador Program

Student hands-on involvement with the community is a vital part of this education, and the school’s Green Ambassador Program exemplifies this involvement. The award-winning program is a class as well as an after-school club and extracurricular program, which teaches about environmental issues facing the planet and challenges participants to find solutions and strategies to address them. Students learn about green alternatives such as systems thinking, composting, water conservation, and organic food production.

The students then use what they have learned to put on events that inspire their communities to become part of these solutions. These “earth positive” events are advertised in local calendars and on community bulletin boards, and parents, peers, and neighbors are all invited. The events include how-to films, photo exhibits, marketing materials, and games. Green Ambassadors fundraise by selling environmentally sound products such as canteens, composters, and reusable bags.

Green Ambassadors are also trained to work with representatives from newspapers, television stations, and other media and learn how to write press releases and blogs.

“High schools have a traditional college preparatory curriculum. You go to your math class and learn math and go to your science class and learn science,” Alison explains. “At ECHS, you have to look in the real world when you examine problems. You have to look at the whole problem in the context of all disciplines in order to find solutions. And so we work in grade-level teams to expose kids to those issues and then to tackle those issues from a variety of disciplines. The Green Ambassador Program starts in tenth grade.”

The program has been so successful that ECHS last year taught ten other state of California public schools how to implement it. Five of those schools are now adopting it as a full year-long course, as ECHS does. Alison is looking for ten more schools to adopt the program this coming year—and seven have already signed up.

Hearing from a Student

A school can look good on paper—but the real tale is told in the students. There are numerous videos on the ECHS website with student testimonials of various kinds, but there’s nothing like accidentally meeting one of the students during a tour of the school and getting it firsthand.

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Her name is Keira Adams, she has just turned fifteen, and she is a tenth-grade student at ECHS. She is bright, happy, animated, and interested—something you see far too little of in schools these days. She talks about the differences between the school she came from and this one. “Here they relate it back to the real world instead of teaching math like `two plus two is four.’ In here they teach you, ‘This is how you buy a car using the math that we taught you. This is how you buy a house. This is how you apply to college. This is how you apply for financial aid’—different things that will help you later in life instead of teaching you just the math thing. It will help us beyond high school.”

She finds the teaching style different as well. “I like how it is easy to talk to our teachers if we have problems. I used to hesitate to ask my teacher questions, but here the teachers are cool. I can just ask them anything if I need help and I know that they will help me.”

Keira also very much enjoys being a Green Ambassador. “I liked that event we put on because I felt as if I was a manager or some big important person. We have to dress professionally and present in front of the community; parents, donors, sponsors, and various organizations come to see us speak.

“We have different topics. My topic was money, and one of issues was how gas prices decrease people’s budgets. We have to look through three different lenses—environment, economy, and health—and how that issue will impact those three lenses.”

Into the Future

Alison is parlaying the success of ECHS into making it available for more students. “We’ve been here for ten years, and we’re looking forward to our next ten years,” she says. “And on the eve of our tenth year we had our middle school approved to open.”

Following the middle school up the line, Alison will also be opening an elementary school. “We started with high school and we’re in the larger community; now we want to work our way down and start teaching kids earlier and earlier so they can make bigger and bigger differences when they’re older.”

The proof is in the results—and it’s that bottom line that keeps Alison motivated. “The students become inspired and they want to be part of the change,” she says. “We have different slogans on our walls that the kids help put up there; one of them is ‘Set any goal; be the change you want to see in the world.’ These are the things I see happening with our students; they are becoming capable of doing those things. That’s what continues to inspire me: seeing the children and what they’re able to do. It’s pretty amazing when you see what kids can do.”

Find out much more about Environmental Charter High School at their website: www.echsonline.org.

Photos by Jessica Pettyjohn