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May 25, 2008
Environmental academy sees dream start to bloom
St. Monica Catholic Academy on the Northwest Side looks like lots of other Catholic schools: clean and neat, with lots of student-created artwork on the walls.
But the seeds of an idea are germinating, beginning to grow and bear fruit.
St. Monica is the first environmental academy in the Archdiocese of Chicago, with a curriculum its faculty wrote in cooperation with education experts from the Chicago Botanic Garden.
Cardinal George was to highlight the school’s efforts at a press conference May 22 with new Catholic schools superintendent, Dominican Sister M. Paul McCaughey, leaders from the Chicago Botanic Garden and the city of Chicago.
Children from preschool through eighth grade will learn how to care for the environment on a campus that will include photovoltaic solar panels on the roof, a permeable concrete parking lot, native plants and an urban farm.
Physical changes to the campus are just starting: six solar panels on the roof provide some of the electricity for the junior high courtesy of the Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation, and this summer the Illinois concrete industry will rebuild the parking lot with heat-reflecting “whitetop” and pervious concrete, which allows rainwater to flow through to the ground, students have already embraced the efforts.
The third grade, calling itself the “green team,” spearheaded a plan to increase recycling at the school, and preschool and kindergarten students have worm composting bins.
“It’s amazing how the students have taken this home and talked to their parents, and it’s affected their neighbors, too,” said Renee Rosenbusch, the third-grade teacher who coordinates the recycling project.
“Before this year, we really just recycled paper,” she said. “We didn’t do aluminum and plastics and the rest of it.”
This fall, her class did a “trash audit,” keeping and sorting its trash for four days. They found that they generated 86 pounds of refuse; of that, 12 pounds of paper were recycled. Since then, with the addition of recycling for aluminum, plastics and other materials, the school recycles 35-40 percent of its waste.
Much of the remaining waste is food scraps, many of which could be composted, Rosenbusch said. Maybe that will be a project for next year’s third graders.
The projects are part of the school’s Student Environmental Education and Development Studies Curriculum (SEEDS), developed over three years in consultation with the botanic garden. While some components were put in place this year, the complete curriculum will be rolled out next year.
The effort came from Father Ted Schmitt, St. Monica’s pastor, and his desire to show the community the “excellence of Catholic education.”
The school created a new mission statement, which says in part that it prepares its students “to claim their places as students of God’s creation.”
“What better place to teach students to care for the earth than a Catholic school?” Schmitt asked.
The principal, Ray Coleman, and the faculty agreed to move forward more than two years ago and the planning began. This year, some elements, such as recycling and worm composting, were put into place.
Junior high science teacher Tamara Kisczynski is looking forward to the day when the gardens are there for students to experience cultivating the earth, and the “urban farm” (of which her students were making a model) is there to help feed the students, showing them what healthy food can be.
“I’m hoping these are far-reaching fingers that will extend into all areas of their lives,” she said.
