“I think we spotted some bald eagles!” exclaimed Angel, a fifth-grader from Baltimore’s Patterson Park Public Charter School.

Along with some two dozen classmates, he was cruising the Patapsco River and scanning the horizon with binoculars aboard the Snow Goose, a workboat operated by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation that takes school groups on field trips from the Baltimore harbor.

Whether Angel had actually seen bald eagles on an overcast November day was unlikely – but not impossible, explained Jocelyn Andersen, a biologist and CBF educator.

Together with fellow CBF biologist and educator John Tapscott, the captain of the 20-ton vessel, Andersen engaged the children in an interactive learning program. They dredged for oysters and caught white perch, which they admired in clear plastic tanks before releasing them again.

“We want to respect everyone and everything, including the fish we pull out of the water,” Tapscott told an eager audience of preteens.

Under a freshly minted Maryland law, these children and all of their counterparts in schools across the state must receive a comprehensive and multi-disciplinary environmental education by the time they graduate from high school.

On June 21, 2011, the Maryland State School Board voted that all high school seniors must complete a curriculum that ensures they achieve a proficient level of “environmental literacy” in order to graduate.

The new requirement will enter into effect for the class of 2015, allowing schools to fine tune existing class curricula starting with the fall 2011 crop of high school freshmen.

It was backed by Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, who in 2008 issued an executive order to form a Maryland Partnership for Children in Nature tasked with creating environmental education guidelines for the entire state.

Maryland is the first state in the country to introduce such a requirement, although many more are now looking into similar initiatives, according to Julie Dieguez, coordinator of Maryland’s Annapolis-based No Child Left Inside Coalition. It is part of a nationwide network endorsed by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, which took a leadership role in forming the coalition in 2006.

“There are 47 other states that are in some stage of developing and implementing their own environmental literacy programs,” said Dieguez.

“People across the country thought we would not be able to do it. … Is it going to be just checking off boxes, or a solid, well-rounded program?” she added. “We want to make sure the program is well rounded.”

Laurie Jenkins, supervisor of PK-12 Outdoor Environmental Education Programs at the Montgomery County Public School system’s Lathrop E. Smith Environmental Education Center in Rockville, Md., said the basic idea is that “environmental literacy spirals through the entire curriculum.”

To get the balance right, local school systems have the option of requesting a one- to three-year waiver from a deadline to submit environmental literacy programs by April 30.

“Now we are in the implementation phase,” said Jenkins. “It’s been very exciting. It’s all very new. … In Montgomery County, a lot of it is already in place.”

While many parents, teachers and legislators – at the local, state and national level – have backed such initiatives, some critics have cited concerns that the new Maryland environmental literacy requirement was too vaguely defined, could be interpreted as “propaganda,” or should be replaced by an “economic literacy” requirement instead.

“What kind of education is it going to be?” Maryland State Senator J. B. Jennings, for instance, was quoted as saying by foxnews.com last June.

“Is it going to be fact-based? Or is it going to be theory-based, which is usually politically, theory driven. And you can think, it’s going to be about global warming or climate change.”

But Jenkins dismissed such allegations as unfounded.

“To become an educated citizenry and to make decisions on things, kids need basic knowledge,” said Jenkins.

“This way, when they get into difficult situations, they can weigh the costs and the benefits. Just like people care about their house, you want kids to care about their ‘home’ – the planet we live on,” she added.

“There may be tree huggers out there, but we’re not it. We’re educators,” Jenkins said.

“Kids need to understand relationships between organisms and their environment. They need to make decisions. We’re preparing kids for careers and problems that we don’t already see yet,” she said.

“You can’t do it by ignoring it.”

 

For the Patterson Park fifth-graders enjoying their excursion aboard the Snow Goose, these future challenges were not yet – at least overtly – on the agenda.

Ryan Kaiser, their science and history teacher, said they will be back again next year.

“We come out in the fall and then again in the spring to compare and contrast – to find out what’s different in the different seasons,” said Kaiser.

“These are awesome tours – there is so much to learn in just one trip.”

Clearly his students agreed, based on the final impressions they were asked to jot down on a white board with markers.

These included words like “fun, cool, awesome, silly” and “scientific, experience, discovery.”

Other comments were “fish rule” and “first time touching a fish and an oyster” and “it is an awesome program.”

One child gave the class trip aboard the Snow Goose particularly high marks by hailing it as “the experience of a lifetime.”

Copyright Karen Carstens/2011.

• Good Places to Start to Learn More
  

• MD No Child Left Inside Coalition
• FAQ’s
• Key players

• Other Useful Resources
  

• NAAEE
• MSDE (Programs)
• MSDE (EE Toolkit)
• EELinked Networks
• MD Partnership for Children in Nature
• National No Child Left Inside Coalition

• Related Media Reports
  

• npr.org
• foxnews.com
• thebaynet.com
• mediamatters.org
• earthtechling.com
• washingtonpost.com

• Related Videos
  

• You Gotta Be There (CBF)
• MD Congressman John Sarbanes
• Education for a Healthy Planet (Vimeo)

Back to Top