Our New "Green Dream"
Since our inception in 1967, ecology and sustainability have been at the heart of Villa di Maria (VdM). From the start, VdM had a “green dream” to establish the first “green” school in the St. Louis area, inspiring and supporting other schools to do the same. In our recent redesign of the campus, adding buildings for our Elementary and Children's House classrooms, we have sought to reduce our energy footprint and preserve the natural landscape. Recognizing our efforts, Ameren awarded VdM $5,000 for our our Elementary building which aligned with many LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) benchmarks.
VdM’s expansive six-acre outdoor campus offers many opportunities for children to engage in and appreciate the beauty of the natural world. Children collect and study leaves for a botany lesson, plant seedlings in the garden, participate in nature walks, create forts in the woods, and care for our chickens. VdM has naturally and organically engaged in many sustainable practices such as composting, recycling, and water conservation through rain barrel use.
Not only does our physical campus reflect our environmental concern, but our Montessori philosophy and pedagogy also reinforces our efforts. The knowledge that we are interconnected beings in a larger ecosystem of the classroom, society, and the world (including the natural world) is built into the culture and lessons of the Montessori classroom. Montessori philosophy deeply values the natural world and offers that perspective to the child through engaging lessons in botany, zoology, and ecology. A Montessori environment contains many plants and animals to observe, care for and from which to learn. Currently, our classrooms contain a variety of pets including a bearded dragon, hamsters, guinea pigs, a hedgehog and fish, to name a few. Children participate in the research of and care for these animals, preparing a suitable habitat and ensuring their nutritional needs are met. The children also tend to a myriad of types of plants within the prepared environment. Through these daily interactions, children learn the various needs of living things around them and recognize their place in a vast network of interconnected living and non-living elements.
In addition to the Montessori lessons and physical environment of the classroom, the Montessori approach naturally fosters responsible and thoughtful behavior in the children toward the world around them. On-going “Grace and Courtesy” lessons demonstrate to the children how to engage appropriately with their peers in their community and care for the entirety of the prepared environment (read more about “Grace and Courtesy” in this blog post!). The classroom guides model these behaviors and social interactions, and through their observations and experiences, the children begin to develop a deep awareness of their integral role within their classroom community. To understand our impact on the larger world ecosystem, we must first appreciate our role in the smaller communities of which we’re a part, including the family and the classroom. Starting this work at an early age inspires Villa children to think and dream big with respect to their impact on their local communities and the world.
In part due to the inspiration of our elementary children who have grown up learning such Montessori principles and practices, we challenged ourselves to take even more practical steps in our care for the earth, formalizing our commitment into strategic goals. Missouri Green Schools and Green Schools Quest provided us that framework and recognition to guide us further in our pursuit of ecological justice.
Missouri Green Schools (MGS) is a statewide recognition program that provides structure, resources and guidance to schools seeking to create sustainable, eco-friendly learning environments. There are five levels of recognition in the MGS program. Villa has already met the requirements for the first level and our goal is to meet all five levels by 2026, thus becoming a Green Ribbon School. Green Schools Quest is a part of the MGS program specifically geared to implement the goals in individual schools through yearly project-based challenges (hence a quest). These projects are meant to be student-driven, low-cost, and guided by a green mentor, with the chance to win cash prizes at the end of the year.
Our Green Schools Quest Green Mentor, Benjamin Winkler, has been incredibly helpful in raising awareness and educating our community about proper waste diversion. He conducted a waste audit with the elementary children, helping them recognize what was in their classroom waste bins and how they could improve their sorting habits. He also presented an entertaining puppet show to the Children’s Houses and hosted other fun activities to educate and inspire the elementary children.
Our self-proclaimed Green Schools Quest challenge this year is to recycle more and recycle better. We’ve upped our recycling game by engaging in the TerraCycle program. Classrooms collect snack and candy wrappers in a jar which they deliver monthly to a specific drop-off site. Elementary children volunteer to help measure and accompany transport of these wrappers on going-outs. Elementary children also spear-headed both the Halloween Candy Wrapper Collection and Electronics Recycling Event this year, and they participate in writing weekly eco-tips for the Wednesday Notes (VdM’s weekly parent newsletter). We are so pleased to witness the eager participation of the children in each of our endeavors, as we seek to raise their eco-conciousness and experience.
Our VdM children continue to inspire us, and we hope you feel inspired too! Look for a community eco event coming this Spring, as we’d love to continue to involve our whole community in our quest for sustainability at VdM. If you’d like more information about our Green Initiatives or desire to support our efforts on campus, please reach out to Martha Erickson (marthae@villadimaria.org). Together we can be a part of forming the next generation into responsible humans that care for the environment, their communities, and the world.