Frequently Asked Questions

Start the Challenge whenever it works for you! Ideally people start in the fall so they can observe the impacts over the course of the school year, but timing is flexible. We want you to get involved in whatever way you can, whether it be for the whole school year or a unit, and we hope that your New Actions can become habits in your everyday life. At year-end, teachers will be asked to complete a reflection form to help us track collective impacts and we will invite all participants to join us at a Green Classroom Celebration & Recognition in April.

The Green Classroom Challenge is meant to be a simple way for teachers, classrooms, students, and schools to get recognition for their green habits on the classroom level. We hope that Green Classrooms can be a stepping stone or work in tandem with the full Green School Certification program which includes energy, water and waste audits of school sites.

It can be hard to communicate complex issues to young students, and we recommend tailoring your approach to the challenge around your classroom-specific needs. You could choose the actions for your students, you could start with a smaller list actions for students to choose from, or even create your own 5 actions that work best for your students! 

We want everyone to be involved. We hope you can commit to 5 New Actions for as long as possible, but we also recognize how much you do as teachers and we want to accommodate everyone. If you need to approach the challenge differently, that’s totally fine! Any amount of change can make a big difference and we want to encourage everyone to do what they can. Please feel free to reach out directly at asandage@santacruzcoe.org if you have any questions on the implementation of the Challenge.