Is your school good for the environment?

Being green wasn't easy for Kermit the Frog(a famous cartoon character)—but it is for a growing number of schools around the country.A "green" school is an environmentally friendly building that uses less energy by depending on earth's natural resources for heat,light,and power.Green schools have clean air,a lot of natural light,and renewable power sources.

New studies show that green schools are not only good for the environment,but good for you too!Kids in classrooms with a lot of daylight scored 25 percent higher on reading and math tests than students who studied in rooms with less natural light.Students in schools with more natural light took three to four fewer sick days than students exposed to artificial classroom lighting.The further study found that those students had less dental decay（龋齿）because they were exposed to more of the vitamin D produced by the sun.

The Willow School in N.J. is a school that was built as a green building in 2002.Parts of the building are made wholly from recycled materials.To help trap heat,for example,building workers filled the walls with material from old blue jeans instead of the traditional insulation（绝缘物）made of chemicals.Every classroom has skylights to allow most sunlight,and solar panels（太阳能电池板）line the south end of the building.It uses about 70 percent less energy than a non-green school.This helps the school cut down on high energy costs.

Kate Burke Walsh,head of the Willow School,says,"Sunlight has an impact—you're happier."The clean,natural surroundings help both students and teachers "handle stress and stay relaxed and focused…it's a very calming atmosphere."

What will you get if you ask middle schoolers to show you their city through a camera? There may be images of flowers and friends, street scenes and sneakers, and trees and trains. It can also include colorful images featuring their favorite people, places and things. Such photographs made up an exhibition that was the end result of a special citywide photography lesson called “Everyday DC”.

“DC is a place where people can all come together and be free and be with everyone that they love,” said Lauryn Tharpe, one of the four student curators (馆长) who worked with their art teacher at Brookland Middle School to put the exhibition together. “There’s more to DC than big buildings and important people.”

“Everyday DC” was inspired by a popular Instagram feed called Everyday Africa, which was started by two professional photographers who noticed the personal photos of Africa, from their perspective (视角) showing a different story than their professional work. The goal of the online photo “exhibition” was to show viewers what it’s like to live in Africa, as opposed to what people outside of Africa see in the news.

In Washington DC, students took photos to reflect their lives there. Twelve middle schools each submitted about 10 student photographs, from beautiful portraits to action shots and images of the students’ favorite foods. Tharpe and another three students were selected to be curators by their art teacher, Maame Bawuah, who coordinated (协调) the project for DC Public Schools.

“I have a lot of amazing students, although the four of them are quite exceptional,” said Bawuah, who chose the students to be curators because of their interest in both photography and museum management.

A curator is someone who collects, organizes, cares for and displays anything in a collection. To get ready for the exhibition, the curators had to take care of many tasks, including taking their photos according to different themes.