Part 2: Choices in the Cafeteria

  • The Shaker Heights School District in Ohio now serves smoothies, salads, even sushi. But students say they still prefer ice cream and french fries. (Photo by Julie Grant)

When we hear about kids and obesity,
a lot of people point the finger at
schools. Most kids today eat about
half their meals at school, and many
cafeterias are filled with junk food.
In the second half of our school lunch
series, Julie Grant reports that some
districts are trying to improve what
they serve – but there are a lot of
challenges:

Transcript

When we hear about kids and obesity,
a lot of people point the finger at
schools. Most kids today eat about
half their meals at school, and many
cafeterias are filled with junk food.
In the second half of our school lunch
series, Julie Grant reports that some
districts are trying to improve what
they serve – but there are a lot of
challenges:

(sound of a school cafeteria)

The food available in school in Shaker Heights, Ohio looked a lot different a few years ago. They used to sell lots of pop and French fries. Today, we’re standing at what’s called the Nutri-Bar. Students can buy salads, sandwiches, even sushi.

“Fresh, healthy and portable. That’s the motto of the Nutri-Bar. This has been a big hit with our students.”

Peggy Caldwell is spokesperson for the school district. She says a group of parents started worrying about national obesity and diabetes rates among children and pushed for the change.

“They want us to provide healthy choices. They want us to provide nutritious meals. They understand that students learn best if they are healthy and well fed.”

Parents worked with the district to improve the food available in the schools.

(school bell)

“And, here they come.”

It’s lunchtime. Students are packing into the cafeteria.

(sound of a blender)

A few girls order fruit smoothies at the snack bar.

(sound of students in line)

But the line is much longer for the hot meals. Cheeseburgers and pizza are always on the menu. Today’s special: chicken strips and mashed potatoes. That might sound like a lot of fat and salt, but Caldwell says it’s actually pretty healthy.

“The chicken strips are baked now, they’re not fried. The potatoes are baked or, if they’re mashed potatoes, they’re made with low fat milk. There’s less sodium. They may look the same, but they’re better for you than they used to be.”

Caldwell says they’re starting to make pizza with whole wheat crust and the pasta is all whole grain.

But serving healthier food has cost the district. They had to buy ovens so they could bake. They have to pay more for labor to chop vegetables and make smoothies. And the food, itself, costs more. Fruits and vegetables come at a higher price than those processed foods that are high in sugar, fat and salt.

Especially in schools. Schools can actually get 15% to 20% of their food for free through the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Janey Thornton is undersecretary for food and nutrition at the USDA. She says when farmers have too much of, say, blueberries or green beans or ham, the USDA buys those commodities for schools.

“If we have an abundance of blueberries – in order to stabilize the market, to keep prices near where they should be, then those products are purchased by the federal government.”

Then the government offers those blueberries for free to schools. That sounds might sound like a win-win – helping farmers and schools. But lots of times those berries are processed into unhealthy things – like glazed blueberry snack pies – before they get to schools.

Peggy Caldwell says the government food presents a challenge. Schools can’t afford to turn down free food. But it’s often high in salt and fat, and at odds with her district’s efforts to provide healthy lunches.

“It’s not always consistent with the nutritional guidelines. It can be a challenge for a staff to use in a way and in quantities that really meet the health requirements we’re trying to meet for our students.”

Some critics have gone so far as to call the schools garbage disposals for un-sellable farm commodities. Janey Thornton with the USDA scoffs at that suggestion.

“I would love to have that garbage disposal in my home, in my freezer if that were the case.”

Thornton worked 25 years in school nutrition at a local district before coming to the USDA. She says the ground meat has gotten leaner, the canned fruit is now healthfully packed in a very light syrup.

(sound of a cafeteria)

For those that disagree, debating the federal government might seem like a huge undertaking. But there maybe even tougher tasks for schools encouraging healthful eating, like Shaker Heights.

Grant: “What are you having for lunch?”

Student: “Ice cream. Chocolate. Soft serve. It’s really good.”

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Shut Off That School Bus!

  • There are still a lot of states that don't have any restrictions on diesel idling. (Photo courtesy of the National Park Service)

Diesel exhaust has been linked
to a lot of health problems –
asthma, heart disease, and cancer.
That’s why so many states and cities
across the country have anti-idling
laws for diesels. Mark Brush reports
some bus companies are being caught
with their engines running:

Transcript

Diesel exhaust has been linked
to a lot of health problems –
asthma, heart disease, and cancer.
That’s why so many states and cities
across the country have anti-idling
laws for diesels. Mark Brush reports
some bus companies are being caught
with their engines running:

In Connecticut and Rhode Island , the Environmental Protection Agency caught a bus company called First Student breaking anti-idling laws. In some cases, they found bus drivers idling their engines for up to two and a half hours.

The government just reached a settlement with First Student. Tim Conway is an enforcement lawyer for the EPA.

“First Student really stepped up to the plate once we’d identified the violations. And they helped us look for solutions that would protect children’s health and protect the health of people around the diesel vehicle.”

First Student is now retraining their drivers and cleaning up their emissions. The company operates buses in 40 states.

There are still a lot of states that don’t have any restrictions on diesel idling. So, on any given school day, you can find long lines of buses polluting the air in front of schools, waiting for the kids to come out.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

Related Links

Company Trash, Classroom Treasures

  • Anita Gardner (right) and Shirley Ellington of the Discovery Center of Cleveland rummage through boxes at ZeroLandfill. (Photo by Julie Grant)

Furniture stores and architectural
firms get a lot of samples – of fabric,
tiles, and carpet. Those samples can
pile up. Usually, they get thrown in
the trash. But, in some cities, they
are starting to make unused design
samples available to artists and art
teachers. Julie Grant has more:

Transcript

Furniture stores and architectural
firms get a lot of samples – of fabric,
tiles, and carpet. Those samples can
pile up. Usually, they get thrown in
the trash. But, in some cities, they
are starting to make unused design
samples available to artists and art
teachers. Julie Grant has more:

(sound of Anita looking thru boxes)

Anita Gardner is rummaging through boxes of old tile samples. They’re still attached to those three-fold sample books you’d see at a design store. But she’s imagining what else the kids at her community center might make with them.

“You have to see it first, sometimes. Sometimes it doesn’t come. It comes later and then you go, ‘we can do this and we can do that.’”

Gardner is at a special event called ZeroLandfill. Furniture stores, architects and design centers can drop off unwanted materials, and people like Gardner can take whatever they want – for free.

“This has been a godsend to us, because we really don’t have a lot of money to spend on arts and crafts.”

Last year, she found a lot of unused fabric – so she taught the kids at her center to sew quilts.

“And a lot of children in our community have never even threaded a needle. Now they’re learning to use sewing machines. They’re learning to piece all types of fabric together. They’re learning patterns and designs. They have no idea, they’re actually learning math.”

And in inner city neighborhoods, where kids can go to bed cold in the winter, Gardner is especially pleased that she’s started a quilt-making trend. It also warms the hearts of the folks who organize ZeroLandfill.

David Fox helps to run these events in Cleveland.

“A lot of samples end up just being discontinued and then, where does this all go? And it ends up being thrown out a lot of time. Or – they just have so much stuff they just keep hoarding and hoarding and hoarding.”

About five years ago, some folks at architecture and design firms around Cleveland, as well as a carpet company, all started talking about what to do with their unwanted material. They were spending a lot of money to send it to the landfill. So they held a one-day drop-off for companies to recycle it.

Fox says they soon realized their trash might be treasure to artists and art teachers.

“It was a program that started as a one-day thing. Firms were able to come and drop stuff off. But it has turned into a yearly process and now it’s even gone to other cities.”

Fox says they’ve already saved more than 100 tons of material from going to the landfill.

Arts and crafts teacher Anita Gardner says it’s also provided innumerable lessons for kids and teenagers at her community center.

“They see now that anything can be art. Anything can be a craft. And it doesn’t have to cost a lot to be beautiful.”

ZeroLandfill has been training architecture and design firms how to organize these events regularly. They’re now held annually in cities around Ohio – and new ZeroLandfills are being held in Minneapolis, Louisville and Boston this year.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

School’s Back, Sans Textbooks

  • Several universities are testing out the new Kindle DX, hoping to save money and paper on printing (Photo source: K.lee at Wikimedia Commons)

This fall, six colleges and
universities are throwing out
a lot of their textbooks. Rebecca
Williams reports they’re testing
out the idea of students using
electronic readers for some
classes instead of textbooks:

Transcript

This fall, six colleges and universities are throwing out a lot of their textbooks. Rebecca Williams reports they’re testing out the idea of students using electronic readers for some classes instead of textbooks:

The schools are Case Western, Arizona State, Reed College, Pace University, The University of Virginia’s business school and Princeton.

They’re all testing out the new Kindle DX – it’s got a large screen that the text of textbooks will be loaded into.

Cass Cliatt is with Princeton. She says the University prints out 50 million sheets of paper a year – even though a lot of course material is online these days.

“So the irony is that the availability of digitized text has lead to an actual increase in printing because people don’t like to read a lot of text on computer screens.”

But she says these are different. The new Kindles let you highlight stuff and take notes the way you might in an actual textbook. So in theory, students won’t need to print.

Cliatt says they’ll be testing that theory to see if universities can save paper and money on printing.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Portable Classrooms Get a Makeover

  • When schools run out of room, they often have to put students in portable buildings (Source: Motown31 at Wikimedia Commons)

When schools get too crowded, they often resort to sticking students in modular classrooms – cheap trailers, essentially. But Sheryl Rich-Kern reports some innovative architects are saying that the energy savings and efficiency of modulars make them an ideal, and often, permanent solution:

Transcript

When schools get too crowded, they often resort to sticking students in modular classrooms – cheap trailers, essentially. But Sheryl Rich-Kern reports some innovative architects are saying that the energy savings and efficiency of modulars make them an ideal, and often, permanent solution:

I’ve actually taught a class in one of those temporary, portable classrooms. It was in the early morning at a community college.

Students would walk in droopy-eyed. My job was to keep them engaged and awake.

Not an easy task – the room was either too hot or too cold. And the ventilation system made weird noises.

But, some experts say portables don’t have to be that way. They can be the kind of room that educators actually prefer.

Michelle Gould is a teacher and parent at the Carroll School in Lincoln, Massachusetts. And she teaches in a new kind of portable classroom.

“The air is very clean in here. It smells like the outside. It doesn’t smell like air conditioning or heating. The lighting is very good for not working under natural light. It seems like you’re outside. And it makes a big difference tutoring kids.”

Tutor: “Did you write your last name, Will? No? Very good, nice spacing. Close your books and put your pencil down.”

(sound of kids playing outdoors)

The Carroll School’s main building is a brick mansion from the early 1900s.

It is stately, elegant. The portable next to it is not. It’s boxy, and has a flat, white roof. Kind of ugly.

But, when you walk in to the portable you feel a change. It’s comfortable!

Cliff Cort is president of Triumph Modular, the firm that leases the country’s first green portable classroom.

“This is a vestibule, we think is a necessary ingredient to almost all buildings, because it controls the weather from the outside to the inside.”

Vestibules aren’t typically found in modular classrooms. Neither is the paperless drywall that eliminates mold, or the sensors that “learn” the best way to control the heating.

“If the teacher tends to come in early on Mondays, the building will begin to learn her habits, and then turn on the heating or A-C just before she gets here. And if they start to take off half a day on Wednesdays, the building would start to learn that no one is here in the afternoons, and then they can shut down. So it helps manage the use of the HVAC system.”

Cort points to the domed skylights known as sun tunnels, which bring in daylight.

“But they don’t bring it in a way that’s too harsh. As you can see, this is screened a bit. So it’s diffused light.”

Triumph Modular is just one of the companies making these more environmentally friendly modular classrooms.

Tom Hardiman is director of the Modular Building Institute, a trade association for dealers and manufacturers of commercial modular buildings.

“Improved acoustics. Improved daylighting. There are countless studies out there that show that it does improve the learning environment.”

Hardiman says many of the old-style portable classrooms end up being used for 20 or 30 years. The problem is they weren’t meant to.

But higher-end portables, like the one in Lincoln, Massachusetts, are built to last.

And, because of the modular construction, they’re greener.

“We typically produce much less construction waste material than site-built construction. Because our factories buy in bulk, they can resuse smaller pieces of material. If you’ve been on a construction site, you’ve seen dumpster after dumpster of two-by-fours and drywall and siding sticking out of the dumpster. There’s just not that much waste with modular construction.”

Hardiman says that green portables are the wave of the future.

They’re not the cheapest solution. But Hardiman says they do provide the best learning spaces on campus.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sheryl Rich-Kern.

Related Links

Interview: Action Against Atrazine

  • One lawyer wants a class action suit against the manufacturer of Atrazine, an herbicide used on crops (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

Atrazine is a weed killer. It’s
used by farmers in several crops,
basically because the herbicide is
relatively cheap and effective.
When Atrazine is used in the spring,
it sometimes ends up getting in
water – and in some cases at levels
above the government’s drinking water
standard – the maximum contaminant
level of three parts-per-billion.
Steve Tillery is an attorney in a
lawsuit against the manufacturer of
Atrazine – Syngenta – and Synenta’s
partner, Growmark. Tillery represents
water suppliers and he’s seeking class-
action status to represent all water
suppliers who’ve had to deal with Atrazine
contamination. Lester Graham talked to
him about the lawsuit:

Transcript

Atrazine is a weed killer. It’s
used by farmers in several crops,
basically because the herbicide is
relatively cheap and effective.
When Atrazine is used in the spring,
it sometimes ends up getting in
water – and in some cases at levels
above the government’s drinking water
standard – the maximum contaminant
level of three parts-per-billion.
Steve Tillery is an attorney in a
lawsuit against the manufacturer of
Atrazine – Syngenta – and Synenta’s
partner, Growmark. Tillery represents
water suppliers and he’s seeking class-
action status to represent all water
suppliers who’ve had to deal with Atrazine
contamination. Lester Graham talked to
him about the lawsuit:


Lester Graham: Mr. Tillery, what’s this lawsuit about, if the level is less than the 3-parts-per-billion the government says is safe?

Steve Tillery: Well, actually, at different times of the year, Atrazine does in fact exceed the federal standard. The federal government refers to MCL – maximum contaminant level – and that’s the maximum, they say, a chemical should exist in the water supply to be consumed by people in the community. The maximum contaminant level for Atrazine is 3-parts-per-billion. Many times, throughout the Spring, throughout Illinois and other Mid-Western cities, the levels grossly exceed 3-parts-per-billion. So what happens is that the cities, the water districts, are required to pay large amounts of money to filter the water so it is below that level. In addition, some have gone to the expense of completely cleaning it out of their water supplies. So that it doesn’t exist at all. And they should, in our view, be entitled to reimbursement for the expenses that they have incurred for completely cleaning it out of their water supplies.

Graham: Scientists that worked, then, for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association told me that during the application season, during the Spring, that they measured levels of Atrazine exceeding the safe drinking water levels in the rain on the East Coast from all of the application in the Midwest. Rather than just cleaning it up, is this not a problem of too much Atrazine – maybe we limit the amount?

Tillery: Well, the issue is whether or not it should be banned completely. The European Union has done exactly that. For all of the reasons that people look at – scientists look at – this chemical and point to the adverse health affects, changes to the environment, all of those reasons, the Europeans banned it some years ago.

Graham: The defense in most cases like this is: this is a regulated product, the label is the law, if it isn’t applied correctly, it’s the applicator – the farmer’s – fault; and if it is applied according to the label, the government says it’s safe.

Tillery: Yeah, we’re not safe. For two reasons. First of all, it’s not a problem with farmers. Farmers are doing exactly what is on the label. They are applying it precisely the way the manufacturer says it should be applied. So they’re not the issue. The problem is the manufacturer. To the extent that we rely on federal regulators to do the right thing, we are misdirected in this instance. For many years, the relationship between Syngenta – the principle manufacturer of this chemical – and the EPA has been under close scrutiny. And I’m hopeful that it’s reevaluated and examined under this new administration. Big corporations, in this case from Switzerland, who come here and sell this and make enormous profits in this country selling this chemical – 77 million pounds a year, average. When they make that money, and they cause taxpayers to incur $400 million a year in expense throughout the US to clean up their mess, they should be the ones that come back and reimburse them. We aren’t asking for anything else besides that. We are asking for compensation to these cities who’ve incurred this expense. The people who create the mess should pay for its cleanup. People should not be drinking water with Atrazine in it, at any level.

Graham: Steve Tillery is an attorney seeking class-action status trying to make the manufacturers of Atrazine pay to clean up the water their product contaminates. Thanks for your time.

Tillery: Thank you for allowing me to come here and speak.

Graham: I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

Childhood Obesity Antidote: A Walk to School

  • In a suburban area of Chicago, kids protested to make the area safer for walking to school (Photo by Shawn Allee)

Kids in big cities often live
close to school, so you’d think walking
to school would be an easy solution to
cutting childhood obesity. But some
parents worry about traffic, abduction,
or gangs so much, they stuff their kids
in the car instead. Shawn Allee met some
groups who want parents to overcome that
fear and let kids burn more calories:

Transcript

Kids in big cities often live
close to school, so you’d think walking
to school would be an easy solution to
cutting childhood obesity. But some
parents worry about traffic, abduction,
or gangs so much, they stuff their kids
in the car instead. Shawn Allee met some
groups who want parents to overcome that
fear and let kids burn more calories:

“I’m going to walk you through what Safe Routes To School is and we’ll talk about
how it works in a place like Chicago.”

This is Melody Geraci.

She’s with the Active Transportation Alliance, a Chicago group that promotes walking and
biking.

For Geraci, there’s plain-jane walking to school where you toss your kid a lunch bucket and
wave goodbye – and there’s organized walking.

In some parts of Chicago and other big cities – parents don’t trust the plain-jane kind.

“When we ask parents, why does your child not walk or bike to school, a lot of
parents will say ‘distance’ – it’s too far. That’s not the case in Chicago. Most kids
live close enough to their neighborhood school to get there by foot, right? But then
they say traffic. People are driving crazy. The streets are hard to cross, not enough
crossing guards, all that stuff.”

Geraci says organized school walking is a remedy: put kids together, and put adults in the
mix.

“There’s this phenomenon called safety in numbers. So if you have fifteen people at
an intersection at a light, they’re much easier to see than just one person trying to
navigate it all by themselves and nobody’s seen what happened.”

Geraci says this safety in numbers idea goes a long way in fighting traffic problems.

It can also work on fear over gangs or abduction.

“When fewer people are outside, walking places, biking places, just being out in
their environment, what happens? Things happen. Crime. There are fewer people
watching.”

Geraci’s message resonates with Carmen Scott-Boria.

Scott-Boria recommends walking to school as a solution to childhood obesity.

But she hesitated at first, because of her experience as a kid.

“The same time that I walked to school, that was also a prime gang-recruiting time
after school, so I definitely was intrigued by the gangs and got involved with gangs
because I walked to school.”

Scott-Boria says she’s not trying to scare parents – she just wants them to know what
they’re up against – and how organized they need to be.

To get an idea of what organized school walking can look like, I head to one of Chicago’s
elementary schools.

Victoria Arredondo and Remedios Salinas are near the school’s back entrance.

They run a walking school bus.

Every day, Arredondo and Salinas walk kids on a fixed route between school and home.

It’s like a bus, with no wheels – and no air pollution.

Arredondo says she gets plenty out of it.

“When I’m walking, I feel famous. People greet me, the neighbors, the businesses,
because they see us with the children and they greet us.”

Arredondo appreciates the recognition – because, every once in a while, it’s clear how
important her volunteer work is.

“We have a problem with gangs. A young lady got caught in the crossfire last year.
Since then the violence has settled down. It’s sad because after the loss, people want
to help.”

Her partner Salinas says that doesn’t last long.

“Sometimes people sign up but they don’t continue after a month, they stop doing
it.”

Salinas and Arredondo say their walking school bus makes everyone feel safer and fewer
cars clog up the street near school.

That translates into cleaner air and more exercise for kids.

That’s a community asset they’re glad to protect – they wish more parents would get on
board.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Kids March for a ‘Walkable’ School

  • Parents and students at Monee Elementary take over the road that leads to the school. They hope to raise awareness about an unfinished sidewalk that makes the route to school hazardous to pedestrians. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

There’s an ideal image of being young
and being in school. There’re the friends,
the apple for the teacher, and walking to
school. Well, the walking-to-school part is
off-limits to millions of children. Even if
they felt like getting exercise, some suburban
kids are too far from school or the route is
dangerous. Shawn Allee dropped in
one school that wants to change that:

Transcript

There’s an ideal image of being young
and being in school. There’re the friends,
the apple for the teacher, and walking to
school. Well, the walking-to-school part is
off-limits to millions of children. Even if
they felt like getting exercise, some suburban
kids are too far from school or the route is
dangerous. Shawn Allee dropped in
one school that wants to change that:

In the small surburban town of Monee, south of Chicago, police and firefighters are not
used to big protests.

But on the morning I visit, they’ve got one on their hands.

(sound of kids whooping it up)

Cops closed the street between a church and the elementary school.

Five hundred kids, dozens of parents and a smattering of teachers fill up the church
parking lot.

They’re ready to take over the street and march to school.

Parent Arnold Harper’s near the head of the line.

Shawn Allee: “What’s the special occasion?”

Arnold Harper: “The special occasion is about the sidewalks so the kids can get
safely to school. If you’re walking to school, you’re going to run into a part just
before the school. There’s no sidewalk and the kids have to walk out in the street.
Or if they’re riding their bikes, they have to ride out in the street for a brief
moment. You don’t want that – you don’t want your kid ever on the street.”

Allee: “So the school discourages kids from walking?”

Harper: “Absolutely.”

Actually, the parents and the school are tired of discouraging kids from walking.

They want someone: the city, the county, the state – anybody, to build sidewalks between
the subdivisions and the school.

So kids want to hit the street and make noise over the sidewalk issue – only they can’t get
started.

No one brought a whistle.

A snickering fireman takes things into his own hands.

(sounds of honking, etc.)

Kids walk past new homes and corn fields.

I find principal Joanne Jones in the crowd.

Shawn Allee: “In this kind of small town suburban environment, people are used to
driving. What’s the big deal that kids can’t walk to school?”

Principle Jones: “As we know, our country is suffering from childhood obesity and
part of the reason is they don’t get enough exercise. And we feel that if kids get an
hour, sixty minutes, of exercise each day, that would help them be more healthy.”

Allee: “You think if more kids were able to walk, they would?”

Jones: “Yes. We’ve had kids ask us before, why can’t we ride our bikes to school,
why can’t we walk to school? We’ve had parents let them ride their bike, while they
drive alongside. They want to do it.”

If Principal Jones wins this fight, she’ll be bucking a trend.

Very few children walk to school anymore.

Research shows in the sixties, about half walked or biked to school.

Now, only fifteen percent of kids do.

Missing sidewalks aren’t always the problem.

In suburbs and small towns, housing developers sometimes forget about pedestrians when
they build homes.

Heidi Gonzalez helped organize the walk-to-school rally.

She says school district rules and laws don’t always help.

Heidi Gonzalez: “You have to have a certain amount of open acreage when new
elementary schools are built. A lot of developed areas are finding it hard to find nine
acres of space to put a school on.”

Shawn Allee: “So there’s a requirement to plop a school down where they’re on the
edge of development instead of where there are a bunch of houses with finished
sidewalks and other infrastructure.”

Gonzalez: “Exactly.”

So, the school’s aren’t connected to their communities.

The kids had been whooping it up, but their enthusiasm dies when they reach the school’s
flag pole.

As for the adults, like me and Heidi Gonzolez?

We’re left behind.

Gonzalez: “Now we have the dangerous walk to go back to our cars.”

Allee: “Because we won’t have the luxury of police and fire protection.”

And it was a kinda scary to dodge traffic from the school to where the march began.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, on a Singing Hike We Go

  • Music teacher Maura Volante leading students on her "Woods Walk Singing", a singing hike (Photo by Karen Kelly)

In many cultures, people sing as
they work or as they travel. But in North
America, most of us aren’t comfortable
singing out loud in public. Karen Kelly
reports on a music teacher who’s trying
to change that – by taking her students
into the woods:

Transcript

In many cultures, people sing as
they work or as they travel. But in North
America, most of us aren’t comfortable
singing out loud in public. Karen Kelly
reports on a music teacher who’s trying
to change that – by taking her students
into the woods:


“Ooh, ah. Ooh ah. Here’s another part: aay-oh”

Maura Volante is leading a troupe of six students through a path in the forest.

It’s rainy, buggy and muddy. But everyone quickly gets into a groove – both with their
feet and with their voice.

(sound of walking song)

“There’s lots to look at all the time: the green and the shadows, the lake, the sky and all
the different vegetation. And when I’m feeling relaxed and I’m in my body and I’m
walking along and I’m in nature like that, it just makes me want to sing. It inspires me to
let my voice out.”

Volante teaches singing in Ottawa, Canada. For her, people don’t need a good voice to be
able to sing. Instead, she says singing just comes naturally to humans, like breathing and
walking. Which is why she tries to get people outside where they can experiment and
make mistakes.

“It’s kind of like recreational softball. It doesn’t matter if someone sucks at it. They can
still play. It’s for fun.”

(sound of more singing)

We spend about two hours hiking around the heavily-wooded Mud Lake.

I did some research to see if I could find any other organized singing hikes. I found one
at a bible camp in Virginia. And there’s one at a kibbutz in Israel. And, at Yellowstone
National Park? They recommend singing loudly – or shouting – to scare the bears away.

Of course, lots of people like to sing when they hike. On this walk, Kathy Woodgold
says she sings differently when she’s walking in nature.

“When we’re in the woods, it brings sort of a primitive spirit. Like, I’m thinking, let’s
pretend we’re not civilized, instincts, and so on. And maybe that opens up a creative
spirit. It frees us to sing random notes, instead of having to feel like we have to do a
predefined melody.”

This isn’t really a conservationist group. But teacher Maura Volante says, in some small
way, doing this helps the planet.

“I think there is a benefit to the environment for people to sing more because that gets
them to appreciate nature more and appreciating nature helps you be committed to
preserving it.”

(sound of singing “O Canada”)

The small group stops at a dock overlooking Mud Lake for their only performance of the
day. The audience? Ducks, frogs and mosquitoes.

But they give it their all.

For The Environment Report, I’m Karen Kelly.

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Pollution and Classroom Performance

  • Researchers at the University of Michigan are looking to see if air pollution is a factor in school kids’ health and academic performance. (Source: Motown31 at Wikimedia Commons)

Scientists are investigating whether
air pollution is affecting how well students
perform. Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Scientists are investigating whether
air pollution is affecting how well students
perform. Lester Graham reports:

Researchers say we might be building schools in the wrong places. We build them
near interstates full of polluting cars and trucks, and we build schools downwind of
factories. Kids might be getting a big dose of air pollution everyday they’re at school.

Researchers at the University of Michigan want to look at whether it’s actually
affecting kids. Paul Mohai is the lead researcher.

“School-aged children are particularly vulnerable because their bodies are growing.
They’re considered a vulnerable population and that’s all the more reason we should
be looking at the toxic burden that they may face, both in the schools that they go to
and where they live.”

Mohai and his colleagues will look at all the social and economic issues, and then air
pollution to see if it’s a factor in school kids’ health and academic performance.

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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