Aug 5 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Debra McCown Bristol Herald Courier, Va.

After an in-service training session last week, some Washington County, Va., school teachers are preparing to implement a curriculum on climate change and environmental stewardship.

Developed by a group of educators, the program is aimed at teaching children about the connection between their actions and the wider world -- so they can help save the planet.

"More and more information is coming towards these kids every day," said Deni Peterson, who runs the Learning Landscapes program that has brought educational gardens to county schools. "These are depressing issues, these are hard issues for these kids, so I just try to plant some hope in there."

Her solution has been to focus on fun, simple ways kids can make a difference.

"This is a worm hotel, and it's really cool," Peterson said, pulling the lid off a three-legged gray bin about the size of a large soup kettle that belongs to Greendale Elementary fifth-graders.

"These are castings, this is the worm poop ... you're taking food waste, you're taking paper waste, and you're creating fertilizer ... and a handful of this stuff, you can sell this for $3," she said.

Tammy Smith, a first-grade teacher at High Point Elementary School, presented suggestions on talking trash. She pulled out items that would normally be thrown away and asked teachers to brainstorm ways to re-use them instead.

She said she wants to instill the concept that "thrown away" is not really "away;" items that are tossed instead of recycled or re-used ultimately occupy space in a landfill, where some of them take millennia to decompose.

A driving force behind many of the teachers' lessons is a concern about rising global temperatures, a trend environmentalists hope to reverse.

"I've lived here all my life, and I remember playing in the snow," said Angela Surber, a seventh-grade teacher at Glade Spring Middle School. "The kids today don't even know what snow is."

Going through a PowerPoint presentation on climate change, Surber talked about changes in the chemistry of the Earth's atmosphere that have happened since the Industrial Revolution and the risk to the 53 percent of the U.S. population that lives in coastal areas if sea levels rise as predicted.

Educators involved in putting together the environmental stewardship curriculum say teaching children to take better care of the environment can have tangible benefits in Southwest Virginia.

"There's lifestyle choices that you need to make, such as conserving lights, because it's going to be cheaper," said Laurel Flaccavento, who recently retired after 30 years of teaching in Washington County schools.

"Riding bicycles, if we would get these cities to put up viable walking paths ... so many of these things that are out there to change the global warming trend are opportunities for all families to become healthier [and] save money."

Gayle Stringer, a fourth-grade teacher at Abingdon Elementary School, said renewable energy industries will be "the new high-tech industries of our children's future."

Rees Shearer, a retired elementary school counselor, said energy conservation could eliminate the need for new power plants, and the money spent on them instead could be used to generate electricity in a different way: by reducing demand.

"What would happen instead if we were able to convince the power company to help people conserve energy in their own homes, even pay them or give them money to buy a new refrigerator that replaces an old, inefficient one, and they would pay it off ... in savings on their electric bill?" Shearer asked.

"What would happen if instead of investing in a new power plant, we had local workers installing insulation and water heater blankets and fluorescent bulbs?"

The curriculum, which is designed to meet Virginia Standards of Learning requirements, fills a one-inch binder and runs the gamut of issues that relate to environmental responsibility.

It deals with trash, recycling and composting; water pollution; fossil fuels and renewable resources; energy efficiency; acid rain; climate change; product packaging and consumer choices.

It's meant to be integrated into existing lessons.

"We're trying to stay out of politics and then take advantage of the good lessons of being environmental stewards," said Assistant Superintendent Tom Graves. "I don't think anyone can argue with conserving energy [and] not littering."

Last week's in-service training session also prompted discussion among teachers about where their lessons on the environment could ultimately lead, particularly if learning about the issues now prompts children to grow up to develop new technology.

"We have solar-powered calculators," one teacher said. "Why don't we have solar-powered cars?"

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