Max School Bus is the first to integrate the DonorsChoose.org plug-in, which helps to support teachers’ classroom projects.

We’re proud to announce that Max School Bus is the first blog to sign up and feature the DonorsChoose.org plug-in. If you’re not familiar with plug-ins, this is a small application that we integrate to add functionality to the blog. In this case, the plug-in generates a list of “Possibly Related Classroom Projects” at the bottom of each post, based on the content of the post. For example, this is what you’ll find today at the bottom of Can We Medicate Our Way Out of Obesity?

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The four-day school week has upsides and downsides. How do we weigh them?

Eco Child’s Play (ECP) brings an authoritative perspective to the recent move toward four-day school weeks, which have largely been the result of high fuel prices.

“As a parent and a teacher, I like this idea in order to give families personal time.  As an environmentalist, it makes sense to cut down on energy use and transportation costs with such an alternative schedule.”

Unfortunately, this means longer school days, and parents can rarely change their work schedules. Which means paying for some type of daycare.

“A four day a week calendar means longer days for students to meet these minimum requirements. For the littlest ones, this is a concern from a developmental perspective. For oldest ones, the long day means not much is accomplished during the last hour of the day when fatigue and boredom set in.”

The final note on homeschooling being the “most energy efficient way to educate your child” shows where the author is coming from. For us, that’s akin to going with a horse and carriage to save on gas. It’s an entirely different debate than the four-day school week. But let’s just say that when you look at the types of families that homeschool, they tend to inhabit the fridges of society on either extreme.

Peter Libby, M.D. takes society and the medical establishment to task on the issue of childhood obesity.

It’s refreshing when physicians criticize the American Academy of Pediatrics, together with Big Pharma, in addressing serious medical issues. Especially when it appears in the pages of The New York Times:

The very discussion of drug treatment to lower cholesterol in kids constitutes an admission of colossal societal failure. Although our genetic makeup has not changed in the last 20 years, our collective girth has skyrocketed, and the epidemic of childhood obesity is going global. We need to look to our environment for the root cause of this sudden change in the shape of the human species, which in evolutionary terms is occurring in an instant. Rather than “medicalizing” childhood obesity and heart risk, we need to repair our toxic surroundings.

As citizens, as parents, we must strive to reinforce physical education, nutrition curricula, and encourage limitation of high-sugar beverages in schools.

Just as we can’t drill our way out of the oil crisis, we can’t medicate our way out of the obesity crisis. Unlike energy, though, it doesn’t require huge technological breakthroughs to integrate healthy nutrition and exercise into schools and curriculums.

Blogs are connecting classrooms in new and exciting ways.

If you believe that the Internet has been great for education, then you’ll appreciate even more what blogs are doing to enrich classroom environments. Though some may have preconceived notions of what blogs are about, set those aside for now. Because blogs are pretty much anything you want them to be.

First and foremost, they provide a unique resource of information that you may not find anywhere else. Max School Bus is a shining example. Education bloggers provide unfiltered information direct from the source. These mostly serve the interests of teachers and parents. Blogs also serve as excellent tools for educators, both as a component of the curriculum and as a way to communicate and involve parents.

When it comes to health issues, teachers can utilize blogs to distribute information and open dialog with parents in highly efficient ways. Links to other resources can be shared through comments, so the classroom blog can become a central place for interaction on these topics and others.

TeachingTips.com recently listed 50 Useful Blogging Tools for Teachers. Below are our 10 favorites from that list.

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High school harvests rain water and improves indoor air quality.

The Langston Brown Community Center and High School in Arlington, Virginia, has a LEED Silver rating and has quite a few interesting green features. The enormous water tanks used to store rainwater certainly are the most visible (though the one on the front of the building is hidden by panels that make it blend in the overall design).

Langston High School was the first building in Virginia to obtain LEED certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. Environmentally responsible aspects of the site include pervious asphalt in the parking spaces, electric-vehicle charging stations, and a bioretention area. Two 11,000-gallon tanks store rainwater for onsite irrigation, sidewalk washing, and other uses. Waterless urinals also contribute to the project’s 23% reduction in potable water use, compared with a baseline model.

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Solar Vehicle Goes Around the World:  Arriving at Environmental Charter High School

From Green Ambassadors: Louis Palmer, a Swiss solar pioneer and inventor, is completing an ambitious plan to travel around the world in a solar-powered vehicle called the “Solartaxi“. The Solartaxi is arriving at Environmental Charter High School (16315 Grevillea Ave, Lawndale, CA 90260) on July 21, 2008 at 1:00 PM. The name “Solartaxi” is an invitation for people around the planet to take a ride on solar energy and solar technology to a cleaner, nonpolluting future.

Environmental Charter High School (ECHS) and The Green Ambassadors are pleased to host the arrival of Louis Palmer, a true Ambassador of Peace, Solar Energy and Clean Technology for the planet Earth.  After setting off from his Swiss hometown of Lucerne on July 3rd last year, his journey around the world will last one and a half years, taking passengers along the way, travelling over 40 countries, and totalling about 50,000 km. The aim of Palmer’s project is to show that solutions to combat global warming are available.  He is going to start his North American leg in Vancouver on Canada Day, July 1st, and will arrive at Environmental Charter High School on July 21.  He will visit the innovative small college prep campus for 4 hours from 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm before continuing his tour.  On July 22, UCLA will host Louis Palmer in his solar powered vehicle the Solartaxi.

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Healthy lunches can turn cafeterias into classrooms, while also influencing how kids and their parents eat at home. Here are four organizations making a difference.

Educational health problems are unique in that there is so much value to be found in the solutions, such that how we address them transcends the actual issues by becoming more than just healthier alternatives. They also become life lessons. A school bus running on biodiesel becomes a course in renewable energy. A recycling program can become a form of artistic expression. And healthy lunches can become lessons in both nutrition and sustainability. What’s more, as any parent knows, kids bring what they learn home with them, often educating their parents on things like recycling and energy efficiency.

Individuals and organizations are addressing the issue of healthy lunches in unique ways, from removing Coke machines and fried foods to robust school gardens. The Edible Schoolyard, founded by renowned chef Alice Waters, provides urban public school students with a one-acre organic garden and a kitchen classroom. Using food systems as a unifying concept, students learn how to grow, harvest, and prepare nutritious seasonal produce. Experiences in the kitchen and garden foster a better understanding of how the natural world sustains us, and promote the environmental and social well being of our school community.

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Los Angeles-based nonprofit, The Children’s Nature Institute, introduces Nature to many children for the first time.

Imagine living less than an hour from the Pacific Ocean for the first five to eight years of your life and never seeing it, let alone stepping foot on the beach. Imagine a playground with no trees or vegetation whatsoever. How will that impact a child’s worldview? How will it shape their values? The Children’s Nature Institute (CNI) seeks to make these fundamental connections between children and the natural world.

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USA Today reports on the nationwide impact of rising diesel prices on schools. It presents a paradox of sorts, while creating some interesting opportunities.

As we recently reported here and here, the cost of fuel is putting a serious squeeze on school budgets. High gasoline and diesel prices can be a double-edged sword. Or, as Max Gladwell put it, there can be a green lining.

From USA Today: “School administrators are spinning their wheels trying to cope with the soaring costs of fuel for school buses. The bottom line: More students will walk farther this fall.

“All the less drastic measures have pretty much been exploited,” says Robin Leeds of the National School Transportation Association. “All that sort of easy-picking fruit has been picked.”

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This is what happens when we really think about how we’d like to educate our children…and design accordingly.

The Willow School is one of the leading green schools in the U.S., though the qualifier “green” does not imply that it’s any less of a school academically. It can be considered a leading K-8 private school in its own right. It’s just that Willow happens to be housed in LEED Platinum and Gold buildings.

The following video is from a New Jersey Public Broadcasting spot.

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