This week, our Education team is attending the North American Association of Environmental Education Conference in Portland, Oregon. We are especially excited for the Awards Luncheon on Saturday, October 10, when Mike Town, an Earth Day Network 2007-09 Climate Change Educator, will be recognized as the K-12 Educator of the Year. Earth Day Network nominated Mr. Town of Redmond High School in Washington for this award because of his innovative and successful programs and his dedication to environmental education. With the support of Earth Day Network, Mr. Town built up his Cool School Challenge and started new initiatives, such as the Go GREEN (Greater Redmond Environmental Education Network) campaign, to further reduce carbon emissions at Redmond High School and throughout the region.

Mike Town is a phenomenal teacher who has inspired an entire school, city and others around the United States. He not only introduced Environmental Science to Redmond High School, but has expanded it into one of the largest and most successful programs in the country. He finds interesting, multidisciplinary ways to teach environmental education in the classroom and inspires his students by providing invaluable tangible experience. For example, through his Cool School Challenge, students develop energy audits and work with each teacher in the school to help them reduce their CO2 emissions by 2,000 lbs per classroom. They monitor progress and motivate classes to achieve the greatest reductions possible. Since the program’s inception in the fall of 2006, the district has saved more than $550,000 by recycling, watering less, and using less energy, and Redmond teachers have pledged a reduction of more than 125 tons of CO2. The impact of the Cool School Challenge is spreading exponentially, as more than 40 schools in the area have implemented this program, more than 200 teachers across the Northwest have been trained, and it has caught the eye of the US EPA, which is considering taking it to a national level. Mr. Town also provided direct environmental policy experience when he and his students advocated for the creation and passage of the Wild Sky Wilderness Act in 2008, which protected over 100,000 acres in Washington. His students were also awarded the President’s Environmental Youth Awards in 2008 and Earth Day Network helped arrange transportation to Washington, DC so they could attend the awards ceremony with President Bush, in addition to attending Earth Day 2008 on the National Mall. Through these and other accomplishments, Mr. Town has empowered students, inspired other teachers, and built an environment of involvement and activism. Redmond is now one of the greenest schools in the country and the number of environmental leaders to come out of his classes in the last five years is too large to count.

Mike Town, our Fall 2009 Feature Teacher, is a great example of the wonderful educators Earth Day Network supports through our Education Grant Programs and Green Schools programs, and we are excited to see him being recognized this week by such a prestigious organization as the North American Association of Environmental Education!