The 2018 Green Schools Conference and Expo (GSCE), the only national event to bring together all players involved in making green schools a reality, was held May 3-4, 2018 in Denver, CO. This year it was hosted in partnership with Rocky Mountain Green, USGBC Colorado’s regional sustainability conference.

The Sustainable Forestry Initiative/Project Learning Tree, which has been engaged with GSCE since its’ inception, was proud to be a silver sponsor this year for GSCE Track 2: Inside Out: Using the Outdoors to Enhance Learning. This track included the following informative and dynamic sessions which collectively engaged nearly 200 enthusiastic conference attendees:

• Empower Your Students to Design Bio-Inspired Solutions to Climate Change
• Collaborative Rain Garden Design & Research: Enhancing Student Leadership
• Teaching & Treating: Storm Water Solutions on School Grounds
• Talking Down Walls: Teaming-Up to Build and Teach in an Outdoor Classroom
• Green Roofs as Outdoor Classrooms on Your School and in Your Neighborhood
• Speed Greening: Using the Outdoors to Enhance Learning

The conference enjoyed robust attendance and featured several celebrated leaders across the education, sustainability, and business fields including biomimicry expert Janine Benyus and humanitarian design activist Emily Pillonton.  School and district leaders were also featured and led spirited discussions about how environmental literacy enhances student learning and school culture. This cadre included Prin. Tarachell Thomas of Pine Jog Elementary in West Palm Beach, FL, a certified and exemplar PLT GreenSchool.

Kimberly Lewis, USGBC (US Green Building Council) Senior VP, Community Advancement, Conferences & Events stated, “To achieve our greatest ambitions, we must embrace the power of the spaces where our children spend their days, where they learn, and what they learn, not to mention how they learn. There is no substitution for action in this arena.”

The 2019 GSCE will be held in Saint Paul, MN. Please visit http://greenschoolsconference.org/ to find out more about next year’s conference.

By James Riley McGirt, Manager of Service Learning & Community Engagement and eePro GreenSchools Moderator