Tools to create green teachers

Lewis and Clark professor Greg Smith is helping create sustainability

By Cliff Newell

The West Linn Tidings, Jun 18, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

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Greg Smith is starting a big chain of sustainability in the West Linn-Wilsonville School District.

Using a grant of $19,000 from the Gray Family Fund, Smith is teaching the teachers of the district how to teach their students about sustainability.

Better yet, Smith, a professor in the graduate school of education and counseling at Lewis and Clark College, is teaching them how to get so inspired about sustainability that it will spread throughout the community.

The course, which began in January, has 26 teachers. They cover all but one school in the entire district, but Smith wants them to think of themselves “as a team.”

“We’re primarily exploring the different dimensions of sustainability,” Smith said. “We’re working on understanding human behaviors in our natural system and addressing problems associated with modernization.”

That is quite a bite to chew off. But the next step is exciting.

“We’ll look at things teachers can do with students on problem solving. Committees will be formed, teachers will give presentations, and we’ll see what we can do to make our communities become better places.”

Fortunately, Smith says he is working with some very advanced students.

“Roger Woehl (district superintendent) realized more needed to be done to grapple with sustainability issues,” Smith said. “A year ago, 90 teachers started to do this, and this class grew out of that. Roger’s support has been extremely important.”

Then there is teacher Jim Hartmann, a true pillar of sustainability at West Linn High School.

“My three sons have been greatly affected by what they’ve learned from Jim,” Smith said.

Smith estimates that two-thirds of the teachers coming into the class had a solid knowledge base about sustainability. The other third “knew the word but didn’t know exactly what it means.”

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