Calverton Elementary School Environmental Club Wins Acclaim

This year, the EPA selected Calverton as the Mid-Atlantic elementary school recipient of its 2009 President’s Environmental Youth Award, given each year to a school group that positively affects the environment.

In 2006, Katie Swanson, a teacher at Calverton Elementary School in Beltsville, asked her third-grade students to list some of the world’s biggest environmental problems, and explain how the students could personally help solve them.

“Almost all of the kids came up with an idea of starting a club to tell other people about them,” said Swanson of Silver Spring, who began teaching in 2006 after spending five years as an environmental attorney. “So, we did.”

Four years later, those ideas have led to the school’s Save the World Environment Club, which has successfully lobbied for paper recycling at the school, planted trees on campus and picked up trash as far away as Washington, D.C. The 16-student club’s work has earned acclaim from teachers, parents and even the United Nations and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.



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