The flier at the start of this post -- for the 11th grade Green Action Expo at Boston Green Academy -- gives you a glimpse into our school as the year comes to a close.
Currently all 6th-11th graders at Boston Green Academy are learning about and preparing for their end-of-year cross curricular exhibitions. Each grade level digs deeply into a sustainability issue through field trips, interviews, articles, documentaries and data collection. They synthesize the information in all of our their content classes and present on their findings and solutions at their end of year exhibition. Our 6th graders are digging deeply into utopia/dystopia, our 7th graders are focusing on our lack of outdoor/recreational space, our 8th graders are learning about affordable housing issues in Boston, our 9th graders are learning about climate change, transportation and waste issues in Boston, our 10th graders are focusing on the food system and our 11th graders are choosing any issue in Boston and solving it for economic, social and environmental sustainability.
These big, end of year exhibitions are critical "Green Milestones" -- experiences we want all our students to have on their way to graduation. Another set of Green Milestones challenge students to step outside of their urban environments -- participating in outdoor adventures and expeditions that help students build connections to each other and the natural world, and to reflect on the cities they call home.
This spring, all Boston Green Academy middle school students participated in an overnight trip to an outdoor education center in the New England area. We strongly believe that exposure to the outdoors in the middle school years helps our students build stronger connections with the earth, which is a vital step towards preparing our students to lead in the sustainability of our community and world.
This year our entire 6th grade participated in the Environmental Connections program on Thompson Island where they learned about science in the outdoors, our 7th grade visited the Ecology School in Saco, Maine where they experienced a rocky tidepool for the first time, and our 8th graders climbed Mt. Cardigan, learned about leadership in the outdoors and battled black flies in Alexandria, New Hampshire. We can’t wait for next year!
