Anacostia Watershed Society Announces 2014 RiverSmart Schools in Washington, D.C.

The Anacostia Watershed Society, a nonprofit organization currently celebrating its 25th anniversary of cleaning the water, recovering the shoreline, and honoring the heritage of the Anacostia River and its watershed communities, is thrilled to be working with five new Washington, D.C. schools through the RiverSmart Schools program. This schoolyard greening program, a collaborative effort between the Anacostia Watershed Society and the District Department of the Environment (DDOE), focuses on creating green space on school grounds while also connecting teachers and students to that green space and the entire Anacostia Watershed.

Each year, the DDOE selects five schools from the District of Columbia, out of a pool that applied to the program, to engage with DDOE and the Anacostia Watershed Society as a RiverSmart School. This year’s schools are: Capital City Public Charter School, John Philip Sousa Middle School, Excel Academy Public Charter School, J.O. Wilson Elementary School, and Ludlow Taylor Elementary School.

“We are excited to welcome five new D.C. schools into our RiverSmart Schools program,” said Ariel Trahan, Director of Education Programs at the Anacostia Watershed Society. “Each year we look forward to embracing a new group of students and teaching them about the environment that surrounds them. The projects are not only effective at creating environmental awareness, but also teach them gardening and community service skills, improve the aesthetics of school grounds, and create a sense of pride and ownership in the students.”

RiverSmart Schools is a two year program designed to educate students, foster ecological awareness, and connect them to the environment they live in. The program includes a four part training workshop for teachers, hands-on classroom lessons and demonstrations, boat trips for students on the Anacostia, and stormwater mitigation installations at each school that students help create. Training workshops for teachers provide them with the knowledge and resources to engage their students with the newly created space and use their conservation site as an outdoor classroom.

Training for RiverSmart School teachers began during the last week of January. To learn more, please visit www.anacostiaws.org/programs/education/riversmart-schools.