Project GreenHouse

Next project- Project Greenhouse.... Our not-so-greenhouse is about to go green - I mean really green. Our plan is take it completely off the grid and convert into an Alternative Learning Center - utilizing hydrogen fuel cells, wind, and solar pv cells to power the entire set-up. We are just in the research stages and plan to proceed immediately. We are also researching micro-environments and the requirements for controlling and monitoring it with robotics. Thank goodness we have some great minds in our robotics class.

United's Recycle Fashion Show An International Hit

Kelsey Isenberg shows off some "trashy fashion"

United's Recycle Fashion Show rocked the house. Over 100 kids got involved (grades 5-12)and some amazing fashions were created. Father Gabriel Zeis, President of St. Francis Univeristy was the guest MC. Also, a special thanks to the Judges: Renee Cambruzzi - Phipps Conservatory, Beth Bollinger - St. Vincent College, Dr. Janet Blood- IUP, and Gabriel Zeis. The winning fashions will be displayed at the Pa Dept of Education for the month of April.

Thanks to all the amazing sponsors:
Sponsors:
Phipps Conservatory
Pittsburgh Zoo
Penn Future
CJL Engineering
Community Foundation for the Alleghenies
Wright Knox Shipping
St. Francis Univeristy
St. Vincent College
I.U.P
Coys Pizza
9th Street Deli
PDE
Grand Prize ($200) was provided by Principals For Change

News Releases:
Tribune Democrat
USA Today.com
International News

United High School Green Progress

Take a look at the green progress that United High School has made since September 08.... The link below will take you to the Green Advisory Board update. In the update, you can see all of the on-going green initiatives at UHS.
PS: I am a principal at United HS

Green Advisory Board Summary

PA Turnpike Commission Caught Green Handed

Pa Turnpike now has green parking spots at rest stops across PA. The special spots are designated for hybrid/flex fuel/enviro-friendly autos.

United High School Writes/Adopts Enviropact

United staff and students have worked together in order to come up with a comprehensive school-wide green pact. The EnviroPact is an agreement between students and staff on energy consumption/usage, recycling, composting and changing daily habits to more enviro-friendly ones.

Click here to see the United High School EnviroPact

Phipps Conservatory Caught Green Handed

Who better to catch green handed than Phipps Conservatory.... They invented green. This year Phipps has launched the Fairchild Challenge for the 2008-2009 school year in area schools across Western Pennsylvania.
United High School has been lucky to be involved with Phipps on this amazing year long program.
The Fairchild Challenge is a program of the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables (Miami), FL. Launched in 2002 at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden as a pilot program; it has caught on to become a leading environmental education program now in its sixth year of success. Each year Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden trains other public garden and education sites to become satellite partners for The Fairchild Challenge. Engaging students world wide in environmental awareness.

Fairchild Challenge Goals:
*To increase environmental awareness, scholarship, and stewardship of teens.
*Engage a broad and diverse audience of students and teachers by extension, their families, neighbors, and communities.
*To help teachers meet academic standards in a fun and competitive way.
*To celebrate and award schools, students, and teachers for their efforts in environmental awareness.


Visit the Official Fairchild Challenge website.

Recycling Presents Major Challenges

Everyone thinks that recycling is a fun and easy way to get kids involved in the green movement..... Guess again. United's recycling program has been a work in progress. The first thing we learned was that schools are a major waste producer - and I mean major. The issue that we faced right out of the gate was storage. What are we going to do with tons of paper products and plastics? The sheer volume alone was staggering. We researched every possible solution. First we tried to go through the county. Indiana County has a much too limited program to handle our needs. Next, we thought about building a storage complex - but the overall costs and the involvement needed from the state and school district was overwhelming. Our next plan was to look at outside vendors to see if they could provide recycling bins and transortation. No luck- we are too remote. But we got lucky... We constructed a plan with the Recycling Center and Krise Transportation (Krise is our school bus provider). The county is supplying us with huge cardboard boxes to store the recyleable waste and Krise is transporting the material to the Recycling Center in Homer City. What an incredible partnership for us. Since November, we have recycled over 4000 pounds of paper products. We are starting with plastics next week.

United Goes Green

Since the walk, we decided that it was time to put up or shut up. Could we actually become a model green school or just talk about it? So we decided to take action. The first step was to get the right people involved. We assembled 2 teams:

1. Green Advisory Board
2. United Teacher/Staff Green Team

The Green Advisory Board consists of 2 Indiana County Commissioners, Dr. Patty Vathis - Pa Dept of Ed, Gabriel Zeis - President of St. Francis University, Erik Foley - Director of the St. Francis Renewable Energy Center, Tim Long - Director of Indiana County Recycling Center, and Gladys Wright Knox - Owner of Wright Knox Shipping. The Green Advisory aboard was put together in order to get valuable input and involvement from experts in the field of education and industry.

The School Green Team consists of teachers and students who want to make a difference and get involved in the greening of the UNited School District.

It aint easy being Green.....

We have been working around the clock.... Getting a whole school to go green is no easy task. We have been offline for a while but are back and greener than ever..... I will be adding a bunch more posts in the upcoming days on the Green Progress that we are making here at United. We have formed a Green Advisory Board, Green Committee of students and teachers, started a full-scale recycling program, converted my 1984 Benz into a greasecar that has the ability to run on straight waste oil (from Giant Eagle), formed a EnviroPact for teachers and students, and are working on a plan to start composting food waste from the school caf and much much more....
Watch this video... We are already planning for EcoJourney Part II. This time we bike it in 36 hours - stay tuned.

We ARE back!

Sorry for disappearing for a month or so... We have been trying to get back into the swing of things... We are now working on going green here at United High School. Stay tuned many more entries.....

Back to Work and Ready to Roll Up Sleeves

Just wanted to thank everyone again for their support. The trip was amazing and horrible - if that's possible. But now we are healing up and planning to make some real green noise. We are in the process of planning out the Green Academy for educators -which will be run with ACORE. PFC GreenSpaces will be the main focus of the conference/event. The goal: To get school across the country to join GreenSpaces. Once a member, each school will come up with their own green plan and use the online community to share and collaborate with schools across the country. Stay tuned.

WE MADE IT!!!!!!!

12:30 Couldnt have come any quicker....



With Mike Eckhart, President of ACORE (and new partner of PFC)



On the balcony of the Speaker of the House's Office... amazing........

Thank you all very much... We must now roll up our sleeves and get busy. We will be launching the Green Academy for principals across the country in partnership with ACORE in the near future as well as growing PFC GreenSpaces. Now its time to catch our breaths. Our feet walked us to DC but you guys carried us
Aaron

Harpers Ferry Falls

We have been praying for rain for days.... Thank the lord... We made it to the 60 mile point and we feel much better. We have time to rest and collect ourselves - we are back in (near) civilization. KDKA Radio called today for an interview. And, we are trying to call out the presidential candidates to meet us on the trail - why not??? The Speaker of the House is seeing us on Friday.
We would love to hear their feelings on the energy crisis... finally.
3 days to go. We are at The Towns Inn and its amazing. See you in 3 days at DC.

Back on the grid and within 100 miles

Sorry we lost contact for the last few days.... PAW PAW WV is pretty much in the middle of nowhere and we had no service. We were truly in the wild. We are back near civilization and only 100 miles from DC. Every step is borderline agony and the heat is brutal. The worst part..... snakes. We almost stepped on a timber rattler and a copperhead right on the trail. That would not be good. We have 27 tomorrow and we are will only 75 out. I have never realized how much I took food and water for granted.

NBC Universal Picks Up PFC Walk

Millions of kids across the country watched the video that the United High School Video Prouction class created about PFC. Check out their site.
ChannelOne.com