Terra Verde Discovery School hosts green summit

May 11—Elementary and middle school students came from near and far to participate in the fifth Oklahoma Green Schools Summit on Tuesday at Terra Verde Discovery School.

They came together to promote green initiatives in public and private schools, with teachers, students and school leaders taking part in workshops and recognizing work that is done to promote green space, reduce waste and promote sustainable living.

In attendance from Norman Public Schools were Wilson, Kennedy, Truman, Eisenhower, and Lincoln elementary schools and Irving Middle School. Also in attendance were students from Christ the King Catholic School in Oklahoma City, Dewey Elementary in Dewey, Oklahoma, and West Junior High in Moore.

Oklahoma Green Schools Program, the event's organizing body, is operated through the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality.

Event organizer Sara Ivey is executive director of the green schools program. She said the organization provides funding and technical assistance for environmental education topics.

The program gives students an opportunity to audit their own schools on how effectively they use energy and water and how they recycle and dispose of waste.

"Once they've collected their data, they compare that and see what they could be doing better and what they're doing great at," Ivey said. "Then we ask them to take that information and share it with decision makers at the school, whether it's the principal, superintendent, school board or parent-teacher organization."

The Green School Summit offers a space for schools to celebrate their successes in enacting green initiatives. Students gave presentations and went on a tour of Terra Verde, a private school at 1000 36th Ave SE with a mission of promoting sustainability.

"Terra Verde has everything from solar panels and gardens to the animals, an orchard and different water quality projects," Ivey said.

Headmaster Eric Snyder said the school was approached by Ivey in 2015 because of what it does in green initiatives, and they have been working together ever since.

"Our school had that green sustainability side already," he said. "So one of our teachers took on that role to do it."

The summit hasn't been held since 2019 because of the pandemic.

"We finally got to do it this year, which I think is amazing, not just for our students, but for all the local schools to see some of the sustainable efforts that we do in everyday schooling that can be implemented in all schools in Oklahoma pretty easily," Snyder said.

Terra Verde raises chickens, which it uses in its cafeteria and sells to families. Fifth-graders learn to make prickly pear jelly that is sold at a fundraiser. The school also has 60 acres of land, the grass of which is harvested and fed to its animals, including goats.

At the end of school days, students are responsible for sorting recycling to teach them what can or can't be recycled.

Whitten Hatfield, a fourth- grader at Terra Verde, said students are taught the importance of sustainable eating.

"We don't have wasteful lunches," Whitten said. "So, like, there's no trash in our lunches, and if you do, you just keep it in your lunch, and we try to recycle as much as we can."

Caius Chadwell, a fourth-grader at Eisenhower Elementary, said he came to learn from Terra Verde and the other schools.

"I came to learn about how to help our school and learn to lead the school to become better and greener," Caius said. "I learned we should do it each day so we can keep our school clean."

At Eisenhower, he said he is involved in the garden where the school is growing tomatoes. He said the school also has a compost pile.

Trina Gibbins, a PE teacher at Eisenhower, said the fourth-graders will lead the school as fifth graders to try new things that promote sustainability.

"We picked a group of students that are fourth-graders, so they'll be able to start implementing the program next year as fifth- graders," Gibbins said.

Diane Wood, gifted resource teacher and math intervention specialist at Lincoln Elementary School, said fifth-graders performed an investigation on how the school goes through food waste in the cafeteria.

"We spent, I don't know how many days, collecting data on how much food kids would waste," Wood said. "They weighed their food waste, collected the data and made a presentation to Justin Milner (Norman Public Schools' chief operating officer) and some teachers at Lincoln."

Since the launch of the student-led investigation, the school no longer uses styrofoam trays and has switched over to compostable trays, Wood said.

"We're making progress," she said. "I have a green team this year that recycles. Every week, we have 15 big blue bins from the city of Norman, and every Wednesday the kids go around and collect the bins from all the classrooms, put them in the big bins, and they roll them on the street."

Brian King covers education and politics for The Transcript. Reach him at bking@normantranscript.com.