{"id":322343,"date":"2010-02-15T13:08:40","date_gmt":"2010-02-15T18:08:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greenrightnow.com\/?p=8964"},"modified":"2010-02-15T13:08:40","modified_gmt":"2010-02-15T18:08:40","slug":"educating-and-empowering-the-next-generation-of-green-citizens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/322343","title":{"rendered":"Educating and empowering the next generation of green citizens"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jean M. Wallace, MAEd<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>CEO, Green Woods Charter School<\/a><\/strong>, Philadelphia<\/strong>
\n <\/strong><\/p>\n

As a young girl, I spent every summer at the Jersey shore.\u00a0 I loved the beach! I\u2019d stand by the water\u2019s edge and simply marvel at the vastness of the ocean. With my red plastic bucket in hand, I would spend countless hours exploring the small tide pools and discovering the diversity of life that lived within the ocean current. It was fascinating to me and, looking out over the horizon I always imagined to myself, \u201cWhat is out there?\u201d<\/p>\n

When I went to high school, I had to meet with my high school counselor to help chart my course through high school and beyond.\u00a0 The defining moment for me was when my counselor asked me, \u201cWhat do you want to do in life?\u201d\u00a0 My response was clear and direct, \u201cI want to be a marine biologist!\u201d I said.\u00a0 The counselor then asked, \u201cCan your parents afford to send you to college?\u201d\u00a0 \u201cNo\u201d I replied.\u00a0 \u201cThen I will put you in the Commercial Course track so that you can learn something productive and get a job.\u201d<\/p>\n

I spent the next three years learning how to cook, sew, do bookkeeping and stenography, be a salesperson in a \u201cRetail Selling\u201d course for which I received an F. Best of all I learned how to work a keypunch machine.\u00a0 Not one of these courses interested me. I hated high school and I missed more than 30 days of my senior year. I graduated in June of 1970 with all As and Bs as an unmotivated, miserable, but \u201cproductive\u201d member of society.<\/p>\n

Getting past the obstacles<\/strong><\/h3>\n

I always knew that I wanted to work with animals. But not living near a coastal environment, I decided that the next best thing to working with marine animals, would be working at the Philadelphia Zoo.\u00a0 After graduating from high school I landed a summer job as the Children\u2019s Zoo and spent the next two summers educating the public about the animals under my care.\u00a0 I searched for full-time work at the Zoo and learned of an opening as a Zoo Keeper. I went to apply for the position, but was told that I was a \u201cwoman\u201d and the job of Zoo Keeper was a job for a man.<\/p>\n

My family was a family of very proud blue collar workers.\u00a0 My father and mother, as well as my brother, grandmother and grandfather all worked for the City of Philadelphia.\u00a0 One day my mom came home and told me that the City was looking to hire women as police officers.\u00a0 This came as a result of a court order to settle a gender discrimination suit. I applied, took the test, and was accepted as one of the first 100 women on the police force in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

The next 18 years were spent working in a job that was very exciting and, in many ways, extremely rewarding.\u00a0 Most of my work was undercover and I enjoyed the many roles I got to play. It also gave me the job security I needed and, as a result, I was able to help provide for my daughter so that she could attend some of the best private schools in the city where I knew there would be no barriers placed on her dreams or her opportunities. \u00a0She is now exploring a master\u2019s degree in \u201cgreen\u201d architecture.<\/p>\n

After almost 18 years with the City, I was retired from the Police Department due to an injury.\u00a0 But I was too young to simply do nothing. Although my dream of a career in science wasn\u2019t realized after high school, my love of animals and the environment never faded.\u00a0 I set out on a new course and took my first class in college when I was forty years old.<\/p>\n

After many years of taking courses, I now hold a Bachelor\u2019s Degree, Master\u2019s Degree, and four Pennsylvania Certifications in education. The one that allows me to have the most influence on young women, and all of my students, is my Principal\u2019s Certification. With this certification, I now have the ability to successfully and enthusiastically mentor and motivate an entire generation of young women to go into the field of environmental science.\u00a0 My girls \u2013 and all of my students \u2013 can be anything they want!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Taking steps toward a greener planet and a relevant education
\n<\/strong><\/h3>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Green<\/p>\n

Green Woods Charter School's Jean Wallace with last year's graduates (from left to right), Jayla Russ, Olivia Smith, and Gabriella DiGiovanni<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I joined Green Woods Charter School in 2004 as the person responsible for guiding the development of, what is now, our award-winning curriculum.\u00a0 After many years of hard work and the opportunity to work with a talented and dedicated team of educators, our school now enjoys both a local and statewide reputation for excellence in teaching environmental science.\u00a0 Our students (boys and girls) outscore their peers in state-wide science exams.\u00a0 As a result, they are recruited from 8th<\/sup> grade into some of the top high schools in the city.<\/p>\n

What is most exciting for me, however, is that my girls actively seek the opportunity to apply to the Science Leadership Academy (SLA), an amazing high school in Philadelphia that operates in partnership with the Franklin Institute.\u00a0 SLA is operated by Chris Lehmann, a progressive leader in education who believes, as I do, that all children should be given an opportunity to learn in a challenging environment and that girls and boys should be encouraged and motivated to follow their dreams.\u00a0 My girls and boys both go on to high school learning about how the environment works, as well as their place in it and their responsibility to it.<\/p>\n

Through our actions, as well as our words, we should never stop challenging children to excel in school.\u00a0 But, we also have to change the way that education is delivered so that children find meaning in school and understand that high school, in particular, is another step on the road to what they will be in their life as an adult.\u00a0 Too many children see no point in high school as they aren\u2019t able to see that they have any future beyond the high school years.\u00a0 Believe me, I understand that feeling.\u00a0 Not only was my dream of becoming a marine biologist not encouraged, it was crushed by a system of education, and a society as a whole, that either tracked my academic ability based on my financial status or decided my professional ability to do a job based on my gender.<\/p>\n

This may sound simple, but I believe that we can all be mentors to both young women and young men.\u00a0 As adults, we need to be sure that no doors are ever closed on children that will create barriers to their education or their dreams.\u00a0 More importantly, as adults, we need to ensure that a quality education, for all children, remains a civil right that should not be taken away from any child.<\/p>\n

(The Green Woods Charter School offers a K-8th grade curriculum that emphasizes interconnectedness among people and the natural environment. Learn more at its website<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jean M. Wallace, MAEd CEO, Green Woods Charter School, Philadelphia As a young girl, I spent every summer at the Jersey shore.\u00a0 I loved the beach! I\u2019d stand by the water\u2019s edge and simply marvel at the vastness of the ocean. With my red plastic bucket in hand, I would spend countless hours exploring […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6460,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-322343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6460"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322343\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}