How One Houston School is Helping Children Experience the Environment
In a quiet corner of Yorkshire Academy’s central courtyard, there’s a garen. The little patch of earth is set up to welcome butterflies, and there’s a spot for vegetables. All of it is designed to foster hands-on learning.
“The second grade is in charge of our butterfly garden,” said Dene Lavora, who runs the science program for the Memorial-area school. “The first grade is in charge of the vegetable garden. Pre-K and kindergarten get to plant.”
Giving kids this kind of exposure to nature helps them in multiple ways. It’s an opportunity to connect with the world around them, but it also teaches them that many of the foods they eat every day don’t have to come from a grocery store. At Yorkshire, they’ve grown cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers, creating what Lavore calls “a salsa garden,” and then used seeds from their vegetables to grow more.
“It’s teaching them, ‘what do I need to self-sustain?’” she said. “Why buy a package of seeds when we have cucumbers? We can make those seeds work and plant them in our garden.”
All of it is part of the school’s innovative SEEDS Program.
The acronym stands for Students Engaging the Environment by Discovery and Science, and Lavore, along with fellow teacher Jacqui Stanley work to ensure students are not only learning the science behind the environment, but are also engaging with lessons in an active way.
And it’s not only the little ones who have a role to play. Fourth and fifth graders at Yorkshire Academy, which offers classes for those 18 months through 5th grade, participate in Lavore’s Ocean Protectors class, which teaches them the importance of caring for the earth’s waterways.
Stanley notes that Yorkshire is one of only four Ocean Guardian schools in Texas – and the only one Houston.
The designation is given to schools by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of National Marine Life Sanctuaries. Schools receive it by committing to protect local watersheds and teaching classes that showcase oceanic and atmospheric science, and what people can do to protect oceans.
Stanley’s students visit the headquarters of the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary south of Galveston, a string of protected coral reefs in the Gulf of Mexico.”
“It makes [the science] very real to them,” Stanley said. “They meet the marine scientists. [In January], they got to see three fish dissected and saw their stomach contents.”
All of this helps the students see the impact actions have on the planet around them.
Ocean Guardians is a five-year program that culminates in a year-end project.
Stanley has devised initiatives where students tested water from Buffalo Bayou, the school’s filtered water system and other waterways to see what elements were in it. They’ve made density separators.
“It’s something they build, using the law of density to figure out what happens with little microplastics.” said Stanley.
“Another year we did algae farming and we grew algae in the classroom, and we used algae to monitor the effects of the algae on CO2 from car emission during carpool time.”
Programming like this is long-term for students, with projects taking six months of more, and combining elements of research and inquiry, helping them understand how to push forward when they encounter roadblocks, or shift thinking in the face of new information.
The modules designed by Stanley and Lavore not only give students a degree of autonomy in learning and taking on responsibility, they also make science tangible, setting them up for future success in middle school and beyond.
There’s another benefit as well.
“These projects are student directed, student led” said Stanley.
“They some up with the ideas, they figure out what the problem was, they figure out how to fix it. They work together. So, there’s students who are more analytical and students who are more creative. so they learn from each other.”
