Explorer West Sustainability Initiative – Year Three!

Last school year, 2006-2007, was the second year of the Explorer West Sustainability Initiative. We enjoyed campus wide progress in the form of green advisories, curriculum integration around the theme of “family”, and our third annual sustainability festival.

The Sustainability Initiative brought Explorer West regional honors in the form of the King County Earth Hero Award, as well as national recognition through the National Association of Independent School’s Leading Edge award for environmental sustainability.

For the present school year, 2007-2008, we intend to deepen our understanding and practice of sustainability. After all, it is this current generation of students whose careers and lives will sway our success with major issues such as global warming.

Already this year, in addition to preparation for fall trips and regular classes, significant new efforts have taken place to further the Sustainability Initiative. During August In-Service sessions, the faculty benefited from the expertise of Kim Bernier and Dave Wilton from Facing the Future. Kim and Dave led the faculty through a history of sustainability education and core concepts.

With impressive team spirit the faculty also arrived upon Sustainable Design and Structure as the theme for 2007-2008. We helped each other get a jump on this by brainstorming possible curriculum and projects around this theme in each subject area.

Then, in the first two weeks of school, in advisory students completed a set of core lessons on sustainability. They mapped ecological footprints, defined and analyzed the sustainability of objects and activities, explored how global issues are interconnected, played systems thinking games, and envisioned what a spaceship would need to survive for thousands of years as a closed system. We intend for our students to be the architects of a bright future for this planet – which is also a closed system, gaining nothing from outside except for solar energy.

Each advisory also spent over three hours conducting audits on either garbage, recycling, energy or water use at Explorer West. They tracked uses and logged data, then set goals and suggested methods for reducing usage, reporting their findings to the whole school. As the year evolves we will keep you posted on our progress with the “greening” of the campus.

Finally, you can look forward to the establishment of a small native plants demonstration garden in the circle of maples planted last fall just south of the upper parking lot. Students will vote on their own student-generated design of choice. Work will begin in earnest this fall so that plants can take root this winter and spring. As our garden takes shape, look for shrubs, benches, walkways…

We are happy to report that all twenty trees planted by students last spring are happy and healthy, thanks to attentive weeding, watering, and mulching by students, as well as a devoted team of families that watered the young trees over the summer.

The Sustainability Initiative is a work in progress at Explorer West. We are glad to report that, in just the first two weeks of this year we’ve seen both work and progress in substantial measure!

Coming Soon: Native Plants Garden!

Ben Wheeler, History and Global Studies