GO GREEN!

(ADAM BIRD/Special to the Free Press)

KALAMAZOO

Green school

Curriculum blends environment, business


November 29, 2007

BY TINA LAM

FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

KALAMAZOO -- Public schools devoted to the arts, creative writing, international studies, music and technology have sprung up nationwide. But not many are devoted to the environment, despite growing concerns about the planet and an increased push for green-thinking business.

The Edison Environmental Science Academy, part of the public school system in Kalamazoo, aims to close that gap. Seven years since its founding, the school is going strong and has begun a new mission: blending the environment and business.

"We're ahead of the curve," said principal Chuck Tansey. "We want to see kids who create green businesses when they grow up."

The school features small class sizes, a greenhouse and three laboratories. Outside, there is a courtyard with a pond, wetland, birdhouses and an observation deck. Inside, the walls are painted with murals of seas and forests. Hallways are lined with buckets of gardening tools. In the library, Edison, a 42-inch iguana, basks under heat lamps, listening to classical music on a radio next to her cage. Scattered terrariums hold firebelly toads, a tiger salamander, a leopard gecko and crickets (soon to be gecko meals).

A lab boasts a large groundwater flow model and a chick-hatching incubator.

It wasn't always like this. A decade ago, Edison had a reputation as an unsafe, poorly functioning school in the city's most impoverished neighborhood. "The state was ready to take it over," Tansey said. He didn't want to send his kids there, much less teach there.

With the help of a federal grant, the school district turned it into an environment magnet school in 2000. People in the neighborhood kicked out drug dealers and adult entertainment stores and took the area back, Tansey said. Then came the Kalamazoo Promise, a commitment two years ago by anonymous donors to provide every child in Kalamazoo a free college education. That offered even more hope.

"There's been an immense change," Tansey said. The school's population is still mostly poor and minority kids, but test scores are up, the bad reputation is gone, and students aim high.

Deonte, 9, whose mother is a waitress at a Big Boy, transferred to Edison last year. His grades were poor. Now, he gets A's and B's and can explain how a thermometer works and how molecules move. He's considering becoming an architect. "You can't get a good job without a college degree," he said.

Some members of Congress want more schools like Edison. Bills in the U.S. House and Senate, dubbed the "No Child Left Inside Act," would add environmental science standards to the national curriculum. Tansey hopes other schools will follow Edison.

"We've made a positive transition," said Barb Clopton-Bizzell, who has taught at Edison for 30 years. "Becoming an environmental academy gave us pride, and the public sees us differently now." Second-grade teacher Darryl Blasingame transferred to Edison from another school. "They have a great program, and I liked the direction they were going," he said.

This year, the neighborhood and the school helped organize citywide protests against the nearby dumping of contaminated soil from a cleanup of the Kalamazoo River. Edison students researched and wrote passionate letters to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which Tansey read at a public hearing.

The EPA sent the PCB-laden soil elsewhere.

In the heady early days of the new Edison magnet program, primatologist Jane Goodall visited, and kids went on field trips to Lake Michigan to sample its water. Goodall no longer visits, and Tansey said the school has found that labs, greenhouses and field trips are expensive.

"It's hard to sustain," he said.

Without watering down the school's core theme, and with a new infusion of federal money for the next three years, Edison is adding economic development to the curriculum, hoping to earn extra cash for programs. Next spring, kids will raise herbs in the greenhouse to sell at a local farmers market, and fifth graders are creating a new game board to sell. The school also plans a video production studio and classes in nature photography. The kids are learning how to do market research and environmental impact statements.

"We want to show them a world beyond this neighborhood and that they can make a difference," Tansey said. "We want the kid that will create the next Toyota Prius."

Contact TINA LAM at 313-222-6421 or tlam@freepress.com.