World Outside Field Trip

Mr. Brooks' 6th Grade World Outside class getting way down in Whirlpool Cave.

Canyonlands Field Trip

The Environmental Ethics classes took a field trip to Reicher Ranch Monday.  We had a great time outdoors hiking and birding.

PERMABLITZ!

From a few years ago. 

Permablitz at Small this weekend!

Come out and help or just hang out Saturday and Sunday from 9-5.  We will be working on the northeast side of the building near the solar panel.

Erosion Control

For the past month, we have been working on controlling the erosion in one of the corridors of our campus. The area (at the back side of our campus near our chicken coop) was being quickly eroded away from high levels of rainwater and wind. The project will slow down storm water runoff and stabilize the slope of the terrain to control loss of soil,vegetation, and terrain. We created elevated berms and limestone rock grades to control and channel storm water. Students gathered limestone rocks from our nature trail to create rock weirs to capture sediment and redirect water flows.
Below are photos of our progress.

Small Middle School aims to become the first National Wildlife Federation Green Flag School in Texas.

Small Middle School aims to become the first National Wildlife Federation Green Flag School in Texas.

The Green Flag Schools program is run through National Wildlife Federation and the Eco Schools USA. Eco Schools USA is a program aimed to increase and embed environmental curriculum into students daily lives. 

Small was tasked with picking three environmental pathways to improve. We decided on the decreasing the school's energy use, decreasing the waste output, and increasing the school grounds gardens. In working towards this goal we have created an Eco-Action Plan, worked with community members, staff, and students, conducted school audits, discussed our work in classes, and have monitored our progress.

If you are interested in aiding our work, or becoming part of our Action Committee, please contact carly.surratt@austinisd.org or nate.rosenberg@austinisd.org. Thanks.

Garden Planting

Insect Wrangling and Potting up!

It is Monarch butterfly migration time. To work in conjunction with our insect curriculum and unit, we took our Native Plants and Animals classes out to see if we could examine Monarchs up close. The kids seemed to love it. What do you think?

The Green Growing class has also been working very hard from the beginning of the year. They have been collecting seeds and beginning plants for the gardens and our plant sales. We had close to 50 seed starts recently that had to be potted up so they could continue to grow and be healthy. Way to go guys and gals!

Starting a new garden.

In an effort to continue to naturalize our less than exciting areas of campus, we started new garden! It is located at the front of the school near the entrance to the teacher lot. Very close to one of our other National Wildlife Federation Schoolyard habitats and our 5000 gallon cistern We laid out tarps so we lose as little soil as possible, put cardboard down to stop the grass from growing, and created berms for contour and a place to plant. We will purchase plants from Emerald Garden once we receive mulch from the district. They graciously provide mulch to our campus at no cost and we couldn't be more gracious! You rock Austin ISD Facilities!

Please welcome our new flock! With the help of wonderful volunteers, we built a new chicken palace last spring that has allowed us to triple the number of hens we can keep.  That means triple the number of eggs this spring.  Be sure to sign up for our Chicken Club and receive dozens of fresh, organic blue-green eggs from our Americauna hens.

Thanks to all who came out to the third annual Green Fest Austin, featuring live music from Guy Forsyth & the Hot Nut Riveters, great healthy--I mean, yummy--food, vendors and fun activities like the climbing wall and the hamster balls.

Introduction of Guy by our former student Nicole, who worked to get the grant so that the band could play Green Fest.

Getting started.

Tree Update (4/2/14)

From Austin Heritage Tree Foundation Site:

"With the community's help, we have reached the $20K fund raising goal to transplant the historical heritage live oak at the SE corner of William Cannon Dr. and SH 290 at Oak Hill! However, there are new unexpected expenses for traffic control at William Cannon Dr. We are waiting on bids from contractors to determine the amount of additional fund raising that we will need. We can't start the transplanting work until the traffic control issues are resolved and the AT&T utilities by the tree are abandoned. The new deadline to start the tree transplanting work may be March 31st and may slide a week or so. Please, continue to donate. Any surplus will go to the post care (irrigation, certified arborist, tree heath care, fertilization, soil aeration, pest control) for 5 years for this tree. There's time for company matching donations. The tree fund will remain open until the tree is transplanted and that will take 3-4 weeks from starting date."

http://www.austinheritagetreefoundation.com/

Here is also an article on the tree and the challenges of its relocation:

http://kut.org/post/why-its-so-damn-hard-move-taco-bell-tree

Michael Fossum, Austin Heritage Tree Foundation, in front of the "Taco Bell" tree. www.kut.org

Spring Plant Sale and Funky Chicken Coop Tour

The Spring Plant Sale dates have been set! 

This year we will be having a 3 day event over 2 weeks! The first week the sale is on Thursday April 10 and Friday April 11 during the school day from 9 am to 5 pm. This will allow us to have a large number of student volunteers and will accommodate attendants' varying schedules. The second week the plant sale will be on Saturday April 19 from 10 am to 4 pm. We are attempting to test out which arrangement of dates and days will help raise more fund for the Green Academy. As always we will be selling native Texas plants, herbs, and vegetables that have been propagated by students and donated generously Emerald Garden Nursery. (http://www.pondsandgarden.com/)

 Plant sizes range from 4 inch pots to 5 gallons. Prices start at $3 and go up to $50.
Students will be available to give tours of our extensive gardens. If you see it growing on our campus, there's a good chance we will have it for sale.
Don't forget to buy a t-shirt or two!

Here are list of the plants we usually carry. We can get many others and usually will have many more. 


Texas Red Bud
Mexican Plum
Fragrant Mimosa (in bloom)
Possumhaw
Yaupon Holly
Wax Myrtle
Anacacho Orchid (in bloom)
Crossvine (in bloom)
Montezuma Cypress
Monterey Oak
Red Yucca (in bloom)
Twist Leaf Yucca
Manfreda (in bloom)
Gulf Muhly
Lindheimer Muhly
Inland Sea Oats
Blue Eyed Grass (in bloom)
White Coneflower
Purple Coneflower (in bloom)
Cedar Sage
Salvia Cleavelandii
Snake Herb
Red Columbine
Wedelia
Fluttermills
Datura
Texas Betony
Wooly Stemoda
Chocolate Daisy
Texas Rock Rose (in bloom)
Apache Plume (in bloom)
Chili Pequin
Arroyo Sweetwood
Escarpment Cherry

Larger trees and other species are available by request.


The Saturday date was also chosen to go along with our inclusion in the Funky Chicken Coop Tour. (http://austincooptour.org/) Please visit their site


for more information.  This is some of the information provided about the event on their site:

The 6th Annual Austin Funky Chicken Coop Tour, April 19, 2014. Begin the day with a stop by Coop Tour Headquarters, at Sunshine Community Gardens in a cooperative arrangement withTexas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, 4814 Sunshine Drive, Austin, Texas 78756. The Tour’s coops are open for tour goers from 10:00am-4:00pm. Coop Tour Headquarters will include coop tour and cycling registration, vendors, and a free education center, nestled throughout Sunshine Community Gardens, with their own onsite coop and chickens.
https://www.facebook.com/AustinFunkyChickenCoopTour 
Twitter @afct
Flickr athttp://www.flickr.com/photos/austincooptour

Spring Semester Update

It seems that every semester begins with its own trials and trebulations. Getting back into the routine always takes a little time, especially when extending both personal and work families.

Students are fully engulfed in the final class of the Green Academy and working hard on their independent study projects. They will soon be posting short updates on their progress directly to this blog. We have students working on introducing bees to Small's habitat, protecting Black-Capped Vireos, improving the air quality of the classroom environments, installing native and community gardens in the surrounding neighborhoods, and much more. A group of students are rehabilitating and securing the chicken coop to make it more functional and safe. We plan on being on the Funky Chicken Coop tour later this year.

The main focus of many students' projects is an area of land in the middle of Travis Country neighborhood. The land is near 4800 Trail West. It was originally set aside to be developed into an elementary school. When that did not pan out the land was discussed being developed into housing and other not so favorable outcomes. The land always remained in AISD's hands. When discussion of selling the land came up again, the Green Academy saw the oppotunity to take over maintenance of the land. The plan is to turn the land into an educational preserve because the land contained many geological features, plants, and habitats similar to a primitive Austin habitat before settlement. Students are working to increase the presence of the Greater Roadrunner, Chimney Swifts, Monarch butterflies, Eastern Cottontail, and many native snakes. Other students are removing invasive plants such as Nandina, and controlling the presence of Ash Juniper saplings. We hope this land will be used and improved for generations to come.

The sixth grade classes are just now beginning to understand the importance of garden management and its role in habitat creation. The World Outside class is deep in a biomimcry unit and the Native Plant classes are exploring reptiles and amphibians.

Mr. Brooks' classes are deconstructing keyhole gardens due to rodent issues and reusing the cinder blocks to make a more conventional garden. He is still working to install more rain gardens and is cooperating with the community garden.

Our biggest announcement is that we were approved to interview and hire a new teaching assistant for the Green Academy. In November Carly Surratt joined the Small family. She is orginally from Southeast Texas. She went to school as Texas State University and studied Geography. She has travelled to Ecuador and Colorado to work in a natural educational setting. She has already been a great asset and has allowed us to accomplish many more of our goals. We hope that she will be around for many years to come.