Outdoor education lives!
Sixth-graders in Montgomery County Public Schools will head to the Lathrop E. Smith Environmental Education Center in Rockville next year for three days of science exploration and team-building, just as generations of middle schoolers have done since the program began in 1963.
And thousands of other MCPS students will be able to continue learning about ecosystems and other science topics on day trips to the education center located in Rock Creek Regional Park.
That’s because, after months of uncertainty, Outdoor Education Supervisor Laurie Jenkins and her staff learned a few weeks ago that the program had been saved from the budget ax. Its $600,000 price tag had been listed among Superintendent Jerry Weast’s proposed cuts, but was spared when the Board of Education voted in May on spending for the next fiscal year.
“Everything is set to go,” says Jenkins, who noted that her staff had to schedule for next year weeks ago without knowing whether the program would continue. “We just moved ahead as if we were always going to be funded for the following year. There was a lot of faith involved.”
And now, with the State Board of Education’s decision to make environmental literacy a high school graduation requirement, it turns out that eliminating the program would have proved more detrimental than just depriving students of a beloved middle school rite of passage.
On June 21, Maryland became the first state in the nation to require high school students “to receive a comprehensive, diverse environmental education” before graduating. The concept is already under attack from some conservatives, who question how such controversial issues as global warming will be addressed.
The next step is for districts to figure out how to develop programs that will create environmentally literate students, beginning with this fall’s high school freshmen class.
In anticipation of the requirement’s passage, the Outdoor Education office has been working with other MCPS staff to determine what curriculum changes may be needed. The staff has been “hugely involved” in “figuring out what does that mean for freshmen this year,” Jenkins says.
According to the state Department of Natural Resources, “public schools will be required to infuse core subjects with lessons about conservation, smart growth and the health of our natural world.” Districts can shape their own programs as long as they meet state standards.
“We’ll be looking a lot at the high school instruction area to see what that’s going to look like,” Jenkins says. Her staff also will most likely be providing professional development for educators so they implement can lessons in their own school yards as well as at the Smith Center.
Since the staff has been working for months on issue, Jenkins is doubly relieved that outdoor education has survived.
“It would have been such a bad year if anything were to happen with this program because environmental literacy is coming to the forefront,” she said.
