The students at Temple Christian School (TCS) are getting a completely different kind of education outside the mandatory reading, writing and arithmetic as they learn the importance of being environmental stewards with the school on a path to earning the coveted Green Flag designation. And the education is impacting students in more ways than one, as some students have been enlightened on the different careers available to them in the environmental sector outside of farming and fishing. TCS' Eco-School Programme coordinated by health science teacher Ezralee Rolle began in May 2014 to raise environmental awareness among students while enhancing the school's grounds.

"We initially started the program to bring more environmental awareness to the school," said Rolle. "We found that the kids were not just getting the importance of taking care of the environment, and we wanted to bring something to the school that would get them more involved and active in being better stewards to the environment."

Through a seven-step process, Eco-Schools empowers youth people to take action for the environment while engaging them in fun, action-oriented learning and community outreach. Successful Eco-Schools are awarded the Green Flag, an internationally acknowledged symbol for environmental excellence. The steps include forming a committee, conducting an environmental review, creating an action plan, making curriculum connections, monitoring and evaluating, informing and involving, and coming up with an eco-code.

The TCS program focuses on biodiversity (planting and labeling native trees around the school's campus, constructing planters with native flora and creating a vegetable garden); energy conservation (implementing and promoting practices to conserve energy, educating on economical benefits of conservation); and litter and the school grounds (recycling aluminum cans, strategic placement of recycling bins on the campus and a school grounds cleanup campaign). They are also hoping to make their own compost for their vegetable garden and install water fountains to reduce the purchase of water bottles thus reducing the amount of plastic that goes into the landfills.

To obtain their Green Flag designation, TCS must achieve at least two-thirds of their goals, maintain a mainly litter free campus and be a student-led organization. As such TCS needs to monitor the litter management and recycling initiatives they have put in place --recycling at least 85 percent of the cans on campus; turning off lights in buildings when not in use to reduce energy usage. The school also planted its first flower garden and reconstructed umbrella-covered outdoor seating around the campus to facilitate outdoor classes; this helps in energy conservation and gives students a better appreciation for the world around them.

"When we first put up the umbrella-covered benches, the kids literally ran out of the classrooms to them, because the kids are so excited to be outdoors," said Rolle.

With nine outdoor benches, about four classes can be held simultaneously. Rolle hopes more teachers make use of the facilities because she said the children are excited to be outdoors and outside a hot classroom. The science teacher said it's up to her peers to adapt to taking students outdoors for lessons in a different environment. She also hopes the eco awareness the students and staff develop at school would spill over into the community.

"I really want them to take home that sense of sustainability and ownership, that this is where we live, this is our livelihood, this is how much percent of our country is just water and that we have to respect these things, and to realize that they have to put something into it to sustain it for future generations," said the program coordinator. "I want TempleChristian to be that school that is recognized for being more aware and conscious of the environment."

Rolle said a sense of community is what she also hopes the program will bring to the school, as children come together to talk to each other and share ideas. The fact that students have already broadened their horizons as far as career opportunities open to them, she said, is an education in itself. The students learned about the various jobs during a Bahamas Reef Environment Educational Foundation (BREEF) summit.

"We had students that did not know that there were jobs that they can do in the environment such as engineers and oceanographers, so it's opening a whole new door of career opportunities that students are looking at," she said. "We don't have a lot of environmental stewards in our country, so to get kids thinking about things like this now that they're in high school, and they don't have to go into a job market thinking that anything to do with the environment is just for tree huggers or those type of people is a place that you can both educate from and appreciate in a way that will cause sustainable growth."

The Eco-School Programme is the largest sustainable schools program in the world with over 40,000 registered schools in more than 50 countries across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, the Caribbean, the United States, Mexico and Brazil.
TCS is hoping to become the seventh Bahamian school to receive the Green Flag.

The first Bahamian schools to receive Green Flag Eco-Schools designations were Eleuthera's Deep Creek Middle School (2010) and Hope Town Primary School in Abaco (2012). Forest Heights Academy (Abaco), St. Andrew's School and Man-O-War Primary (Abaco), received the coveted Green Flag in 2013. Lyford Cay International School was designated a Green Flag School in 2014.

At the Eco-School Programme's introductory stage, TCS, which has a student complement of approximately 400, rolled the program out to the staff first to give them an idea of what the program is about and its benefits to get them onboard. The Eco-Code, "Planting Dreams to Grow a Greener Bahamas", is displayed in all classrooms. Rolle said education would motivate and drive the process to its success.

The Eco-Schools Program was developed by the Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE) in 1994, in response to UN Agenda 21 that calls for reorienting education toward sustainable development. BREEF is the FEE representative for The Bahamas and national operator for the Eco-Schools Programme.

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