Project "Green Footprint" is a local community environment project created by fifth-grade students to remind the citizens of their school (and Earth) to tread lightly on Mother Nature's creations. The students chose to focus on the air quality outside the school, specifically the carbon emissions produced by idling cars. Students complete Internet…

There is a need to establish and nurture a relationship between urban and suburban students and the natural world. This relationship needs to be personal and immediate. They need to see the wilder life that survives and sometimes flourishes in "their" world--not miles away in the hills and mountains or hidden beneath the sea, but outside…

In this article, the author proposes Green English be thought of as a nondisciplinary approach located in the edge between disciplines, one that offers teachers and students opportunities for personal, social, political, and conceptual learning. For, just as diversity increases survival in nature, getting students to "read, interpret, and…

Five middle school teachers are among the few people wandering around the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, squinting at labels describing the plants that will bloom soon. The author and her colleagues are on a reconnaissance mission, trying to plan an interdisciplinary field trip for the seventh grade. They represent different departments--science, math,…

The public is deeply concerned that students in urban settings are not achieving at high levels. Over the past twenty years, large urban districts have attempted to restructure massive school systems using educational policymaking processes that have focused on school structures, standards-driven curriculum, and test-based accountability measures.…