{"id":8933,"date":"2019-04-15T10:15:51","date_gmt":"2019-04-15T14:15:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/?p=8933"},"modified":"2019-04-26T11:33:56","modified_gmt":"2019-04-26T15:33:56","slug":"vbcps-students-learn-about-sustainability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/vbcps-students-learn-about-sustainability\/","title":{"rendered":"VBCPS students learn about sustainability"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ask Muntaser Amin what watershed his school is in and he can easily tell you it is in the Elizabeth River and Eastern Branch watersheds.<\/p>\n

Fellow fourth-grader Nolan Kok can tell you that the water from their school drains to Stumpy Lake.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe researched impacts on watersheds and how to reduce pollutants into the stormwater,\u201d another Providence Elementary School fourth-grader, Javon Hill, shared.<\/p>\n

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In the past five months, Amin, Kok and Hill, along with 17 fellow students in their grade level, became known as the school\u2019s \u201cSolutions Team.\u201d They earned the namesake by representing Providence in the school division\u2019s first-ever \u201cOur Watershed Needs Identified for Today and Tomorrow,\u201d or OWN-ITT, competition. All schools in the division were invited to compete and the top three schools in each elementary, middle and high school level will win $500, $250 or $150 when winners are announced in May.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the beginning we really didn\u2019t know much about watersheds and now they are like little experts,\u201d said Gina Byrne, the school\u2019s gifted resource teacher who has met with them weekly. \u201cI know some of them have been walking around their neighborhoods to see how much trash is in the actual storm drain. So they\u2019ve really become aware and that way they can take that awareness and spread it with their parents and the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Studying watersheds is part of the fourth grade curriculum in Virginia Beach City Public Schools (VBCPS). In fact, VBCPS students study a different aspect of sustainability at every grade level, beginning in kindergarten when students investigate and learn that materials can be reused, recycled and conserved.\u00a0The following year, they learn that natural resources are limited and by fourth grade, they are studying the positive and negative influence of human activity on ecosystems.<\/p>\n

Sustainability learning continues in middle school with students studying energy transformation to meet society\u2019s needs. High schools offer several courses that dive into sustainability topics such as use of global resources, policy and impacts on populations. All of these areas affect the Earth\u2019s triple bottom line, which refers to social, economic and environmental impacts.<\/p>\n

For their project,\u00a0the Solutions Team scoured the internet and the city\u2019s website and even walked the grounds of their school and neighboring Kempsville Middle School to gain firsthand knowledge.<\/p>\n

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\u201cAs you can see, about 40 percent of our site is pervious ground,\u201d Amy Bluhm stated, pointing to a satellite map as she and teammates took turns sharing research they uncovered before a panel of experts, since presenting before an audience is one of the contest\u2019s requirements.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe combination of land development, sea level rise, flat and low tide water topography and intensive coastal real estate infrastructure development puts southeastern Virginia, namely Virginia Beach, Norfolk and the Hampton Roads region, at extreme risk of storm surges,\u201d Sophie Buddenhagen emphasized. Other students then went on to discuss environmental costs and potential solutions, such as rain barrels or rain gardens that could be added to Providence should they win the competition.<\/p>\n

Regardless of the competition, Alexander Espinoza knows that learning about these issues is important.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will help the Earth. It will also help the community. You never know if someone else will have that big idea.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ask Muntaser Amin what watershed his school is in and he can easily tell you it is in the Elizabeth River and Eastern Branch watersheds. Fellow fourth-grader Nolan Kok can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":8938,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[123],"class_list":["post-8933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sustainable-schools","tag-providence-elementary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8933"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8941,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8933\/revisions\/8941"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}