Shadow Valley Elementary recognized as top environmental education school
Olivia Lott, the environmental STEM specialist at Shadow Valley Elementary School in Ogden, talks to students about a battery-powered vehicle sixth graders at the school made on Thursday, April 22, 2021. The school was designated one of 27 Green Ribbon Schools in the country by the U.S. Department of Education.
Earth Day worksheets hang in a hallway at Shadow Valley Elementary in Ogden on Thursday, April 22, 2021. The school was designated one of 27 Green Ribbon Schools in the country by the U.S. Department of Education.
A worksheet on CO2 is shown on the desk of a student at Shadow Valley Elementary in Ogden on Thursday, April 22, 2021. The school was designated one of 27 Green Ribbon Schools in the country by the U.S. Department of Education.
OGDEN — On Thursday morning, as students at Shadow Valley Elementary School raised the American flag, they also sent a green one up the flag pole in front of the school.
“Because the community around us needs to know if the air quality is OK, we would put up the flag that represents how the air quality is that day,” sixth grader Ryklie Moss told a spokesperson from the Ogden School District about the initiative, one of many programs that teach sustainable, healthy living at the environmental science magnet school.
That same morning, which also happened to be Earth Day, students and faculty at Shadow Valley Elementary found out it had been named by the U.S. Department of Education as one of 27 Green Ribbon Schools throughout the country.
The award recognizes schools that work to reduce environmental impact and utility costs, improve health and wellness, and ensure effective sustainability education.
“The pandemic has driven home the vital importance of school buildings and grounds; health and wellness; and hands-on authentic learning,” said U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona in a press release. “I congratulate the selected schools, districts, and postsecondary institutions, which are, through their sustainability practices, offering healthy, safe, efficient school environments and protecting our planet.”
While Shadow Valley Elementary has only been working toward earning the designation for two years, the school has been developing its environmental science offerings since it opened in 2009. Every part of the school is geared toward showing students how to be responsible stewards of the planet, even the building it’s housed in.
The school was constructed to minimize west-facing windows, and uses energy from the wind and sun harvested on-site. According to a summary of the school published by the Department of Education, it was also designed to be water-efficient and uses 45% less water than the average school. Nearly one-third of the materials used to construct the building were recycled.
Outside, the school has set apart space to serve as an outdoor classroom. Currently, students acting as ecologists are working to redesign the space to include plants native to Utah and a space where they can eventually observe wildlife from a distance, according to environmental STEM specialist Olivia Lott.
Project-based learning
“One of the things that we do when we start a project is every project starts with a role students take on,” Lott said.
Students start in kindergarten as waste managers, and as they move on to higher grades, they assume other positions like biologists and engineers. The children learn how to sort recyclables and where their garbage goes. They hatch chickens and plant seeds, and sixth graders are designing a greenhouse.
Sixth grade students also partnered with engineering students at Weber State University to build a battery-powered vehicle, which they raced earlier this week at Utah Motorsports Campus in Erda.
“They’re so excited because it’s something real they can do; they’re really making a difference and they’re learning about a career and diversifying their career options,” Lott said.
Students are working on an intensive analysis of the air quality within their school and are testing each area for its level of particulate matter pollution. While they don’t yet have the results, students have come up with a variety of hypotheses.
One is that the kindergarten hallway has the least because the children are smallest, there are fewer students and classrooms are bigger, Lott said. Other ideas students have proposed is that the air is cleanest near doors that frequently open for recess, or in the fourth grade hallway where there are a lot of plants.
After the students reach a conclusion, Lott said, they will work on figuring out how to replicate the elements of the cleanest area to improve the air throughout the school.
“We want to show that education is fun, and students are going to learn with projects and get better all around — not just in numbers, not just in testing, but all around, which is what we want,” said Principal Vincent Ardizzone.
Another prong that is considered in the Green Ribbon award is the degree to which a school promotes healthy living. In its approach to social-emotional learning, Shadow Valley has implemented the Second Step Program, which allows teachers to take a more holistic approach in helping students develop a healthy self-image and learn how to process emotions.
Physical education teachers at the school teach yoga for both students and faculty to help them manage stress. And in typical years, the school holds a 5K race for students.
“We try to promote students being active,” Ardizzone said.
Now that Shadow Valley has received Green Ribbon designation, one of its responsibilities is showing other schools how to educate in the same way. Teaching science in a way that is hands-on and engaging, Lott said, “will also help them with test scores and throughout their lives.”
Much of what Shadow Valley does falls within Utah’s new Science with Engineering Education (SEEd) standards that were adopted by the state school board in June 2019. These standards emphasize the importance of putting science into practice and teaching it in a way that helps students learn to think like scientists as they make connections across different subjects.
Lott said the school has a lot of plans to further that kind of learning in the future, like a green entrepreneur competition, in which students would design, price and market a product meant to help the environment.
“It would just take all of their math knowledge and put it into science, technology, engineering and marry everything so well,” she said.
One sixth grader at the school, Nicolas Hutchinson, said these kind of projects are “cool,” and that he’s “really excited” about his school winning the award. And through the school work he and his classmates do, he’s also educating the community on how to reduce their individual footprint.
“When you come to our school, or just driving around, if you’re parking you should turn off your key,” he told an Ogden School District spokesperson, noting that idling will “ruin the environment around us.”
