Summary
Over the past few years Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School has been moving towards a greener school experience for their students, faculty, and staff. Students and faculty are constantly looking for ways to improve the recycling program, incorporate environmental issues and values into the curriculum, and find more ways to “go green.” Green initiatives at the school are supported by faculty, students, parents, administration, and maintenance staff. Everyone in the school is excited about this movement and eager to keep incorporating environmental programming across the curriculum.
Inspired by our burgeoning partnership with the Pearlstone Center farm staff, the Environmental Club has embarked on many new programs and initiatives in the school. Alongside the advances our facilities administrators have made toward greener building practices, these changes have allowed Beth Tfiloh to reinvent itself as an environmentally-conscious institution. In addition to various environmental curricula introduced, these efforts have led to a renewed focus on sustainability throughout the entire school community.
All grades and subjects have been teaching lessons related to the environment and the school has been supportive of the maintenance of a vegetable garden, having school wide programming related to the environment, and being conscious of water and energy usage. The environmental club in the High School has been instrumental in providing programming for many grade levels and spearheading environmental initiatives in the school. Each year they organize a campus wide cleanup where they remove garbage from the school grounds and surrounding woods and stream.
Community service is a major component of the Beth Tfiloh education. Beginning in the Preschool, students are encouraged to perform meaningful community service to foster their sense of civic responsibility and fulfill the mitzvah (commandment) of tikkun olam (repairing the world). Similarly, the Lower School, Middle School, and High School all boast tikkun olam student committees through which students can participate in a diverse spread of community service projects. It is with this mission in mind that many of the programs and activities included in this application were undertaken. One of these programs is the recycling program.
This has greatly improved over the last two years with a move towards single stream recycling, ensuring all classrooms, offices and hallways have trash and recycling bins, and reminders around the school for everyone to recycle what they can.
Being a Jewish day school, the students receive both a secular education and a Jewish education. Judaism teaches about the care of the environment through Jewish texts, celebrations of the holiday of Tu B'shvat (Birthday of the trees), and cultural values. Tu B'shvat is a holiday devoted to the trees. It is celebrated by eating fruits from trees, typically fruits from the seven species mentioned in the Bible as being abundant in the Land of Israel (wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives and dates). Classes eat those fruits and in the weeks leading up to the holiday learn about the importance of trees in our natural world, how humans and animals benefit from trees, and how we can help save trees and preserve our natural environment.
Environmental topics are being taught across grade levels and across all subjects. Throughout the last few years this has been occurring more. Art classes encourage the use of recycled materials, social studies classes teach about composting and reducing our carbon footprint, science classes teach about photosynthesis and the Chesapeake Bay watershed, and general studies classes learn about butterfly life cycles. Different grades also take field trips with environmental themes or have speakers come to the school.
Beth Tfiloh is proud of these environmental accomplishments and looks forward to continually improving the school environment and finding new ways for the school to “go green.”
Inspired by our burgeoning partnership with the Pearlstone Center farm staff, the Environmental Club has embarked on many new programs and initiatives in the school. Alongside the advances our facilities administrators have made toward greener building practices, these changes have allowed Beth Tfiloh to reinvent itself as an environmentally-conscious institution. In addition to various environmental curricula introduced, these efforts have led to a renewed focus on sustainability throughout the entire school community.
All grades and subjects have been teaching lessons related to the environment and the school has been supportive of the maintenance of a vegetable garden, having school wide programming related to the environment, and being conscious of water and energy usage. The environmental club in the High School has been instrumental in providing programming for many grade levels and spearheading environmental initiatives in the school. Each year they organize a campus wide cleanup where they remove garbage from the school grounds and surrounding woods and stream.
Community service is a major component of the Beth Tfiloh education. Beginning in the Preschool, students are encouraged to perform meaningful community service to foster their sense of civic responsibility and fulfill the mitzvah (commandment) of tikkun olam (repairing the world). Similarly, the Lower School, Middle School, and High School all boast tikkun olam student committees through which students can participate in a diverse spread of community service projects. It is with this mission in mind that many of the programs and activities included in this application were undertaken. One of these programs is the recycling program.
This has greatly improved over the last two years with a move towards single stream recycling, ensuring all classrooms, offices and hallways have trash and recycling bins, and reminders around the school for everyone to recycle what they can.
Being a Jewish day school, the students receive both a secular education and a Jewish education. Judaism teaches about the care of the environment through Jewish texts, celebrations of the holiday of Tu B'shvat (Birthday of the trees), and cultural values. Tu B'shvat is a holiday devoted to the trees. It is celebrated by eating fruits from trees, typically fruits from the seven species mentioned in the Bible as being abundant in the Land of Israel (wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives and dates). Classes eat those fruits and in the weeks leading up to the holiday learn about the importance of trees in our natural world, how humans and animals benefit from trees, and how we can help save trees and preserve our natural environment.
Environmental topics are being taught across grade levels and across all subjects. Throughout the last few years this has been occurring more. Art classes encourage the use of recycled materials, social studies classes teach about composting and reducing our carbon footprint, science classes teach about photosynthesis and the Chesapeake Bay watershed, and general studies classes learn about butterfly life cycles. Different grades also take field trips with environmental themes or have speakers come to the school.
Beth Tfiloh is proud of these environmental accomplishments and looks forward to continually improving the school environment and finding new ways for the school to “go green.”