Building Green

by Gary Juren, Architect
The other day I was listening to National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.”  As the program was airing the benefits of building green, it occurred to me how mainstream this environmentally friendly concept was becoming.  This is not a new concept to Architects.  Since the Roman architect Vetruvius (70BC) authored The Ten Books on Architecture, architects have been aware of the benefits of designing buildings with an emphasis on orientation to the sun and to the wind, availability of local materials, and minimizing the impact to the environment.  What had suddenly changed in the marketplace to pique the public interest in building green?

As you know, much of the real estate market has “tanked” recently. However, according to McGraw-Hill Construction, one area that is seeing an increase in activity is that of building green.  Nearly one third of all new construction in the U.S. is considered green.  I give a lot of credit to the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) for creating this new demand.  The USGBC, founded in 1993, created the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program. This has become the de facto “Green Building Code.”  LEED has created a rating system for building green.  Five key areas of sustainable design are rated and credit points are given for buildings using strategies intended to improve performance in the areas of energy savings, water efficiency, indoor environmental quality, materials selection and stewardship of the building site. Buildings can qualify for four levels of certification based on the number of credit points earned.  The four levels of LEED Certification are:

*  Certified

*  Silver

*  Gold

*  Platinum

A request for LEED Certification is on a voluntary basis.

The USGBC has been ingenious in their marketing of LEED.  This non- profit organization has been able to convince building owners that LEED Certification is simply the right thing to do.  It has become cachet to have one’s building Certified.  It has also become marketable.  LEED Certified Buildings provide healthier work environments, which in turn contribute to higher productivity and improved employee health.  This is a benefit to not only building owners and their occupants but to society as a whole. It is a fact that environmentally responsible buildings initially cost more. However, these higher initial costs are mitigated by the savings incurred in operational costs of a LEED Certified Building.  It is reported that an initial investment of 2% extra will yield over ten times that investment over the life cycle of a LEED Certified Building.  It has become “we can’t afford to not do it.”

Three recently completed Texas schools deserve special recognition for achieving LEED Accreditation.

·        Boerne ISD- Champion High School

·        Borger ISD – Elementary School

·        Dallas ISD  -  Hector Garcia Middle School



Boerne ISD

Borger ISD

Dallas ISD



 

Research shows there is a direct correlation between the quality of school buildings and student achievement.  In a landmark study titled “Greening America’s Schools,” the findings conclude that significant improvement in student test scores in reading and math were evident in green schools. There was a reduction in absenteeism.  On average there was a 41% reduction in health related costs.  There were fewer teacher sick days and an improvement in teacher retention. Kudos go to these school boards for investing in building green.  By achieving LEED Certification, they are sending the message that their District’s environmental priorities are important.

The LEED program has grown from one standard for new construction to a comprehensive rating system covering all aspects of the development and construction process.  Recently, Neighborhood Development was introduced into the LEED Rating System.  This system integrates the principles of smart growth, urbanism and green building into the first national program for neighborhood development.  The land developers are responding to public demand.  As more and more material manufacturers enter the competitive green market, the momentum of the green movement will strengthen and continue to flourish in an industry which traditionally has been slow to change.  After all, Vetruvius gave us the playbook about 2100 years ago.

Tips For Teaching Effectiveness

by Dr. Mickey Wircenski

Educators are busy people.  There is always the pressure to practice new strategies and “best practices” in teaching.  Most teachers are already using a wide variety of effective teaching strategies.  However, it is always useful to take a moment to review those strategies that are research-based and have been proven to be successful in classrooms.  Below is a collection of “best practices” that have been used in classrooms across the country to capture students’ attention and make them want to learn:

·         Use current events as a foundation for lessons to develop relevance

·         Use discussions and ask for opinions

·         Use active then passive activity

·         Use cooperative learning activities

·         Teach in small chunks

·         Create student interest surveys

·         Use open-ended questions

·         Present ideas to brainstorm

·         Develop two alternatives and set up debate

·         Focus on student journals and weekly submissions

·         Use Gardner’s multiple intelligences theory for making assignments

·         Offer extra credit

·         Give students choices, plan what to do but not how to do it

·         Contact resource people

·         Develop contracts for learning differences or difficulties

·         Develop enrichment activities for assignments that all students will complete

·         Make students think about the world and their place in it

·         Capture students’ imaginations so they will want to take a lesson a step further

·         Allow for student input in developing and assignment projects

·         Practice random participation of group sharing

·         Provide support for student opinions

·         Develop teacher-written scenarios for students to solve

·         Rotate mini-lectures and practice activities.

Even with a busy schedule, CTE teachers should periodically take the time to reflect on their own classroom delivery strategies, continue using what is working and incorporate new ideas.  Along with the self reflection it is also essential to have a colleague provide feedback.  Oftentimes they see things that we don’t and have had success with strategies that we have not yet tried.

Source

Bosch, K. (2006).  Planning Classroom Management: A Five-Step Process to Creating a Positive Learning Environment. (2^nd Edition).  Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Student Characteristics and Self-Concept

by Lynne cox

About 18 months ago I wrote a blog titled “Emotional Intelligence and Positive Self-Concept” which provided an overview for a study I designed for the purpose of investigating relationships between self-concept and participation in secondary CTE programs.

To refresh your memory, self-concept, discussed as a scholarly topic since the time of Socrates and Plato, is an important theoretical construct in education because self-concept is considered to be a desirable trait and a facilitator of positive future behavior. Self-concept is generally considered, by researchers in the field, a multi-dimensional construct and may vary according to domain; the way we think about and categorize ourselves as a “math” or “English” person, as “creative” or “athletic,” or as “beautiful” or “intelligent” is a practical example of the domain-specific nature of self-concept. High or low self-concept in one domain does not necessarily correlate with high or low self-concept in another domain.

General self-concept, also called self-esteem, is an overall view of oneself that is not generally correlated with domain-specific self-concept.  General self-concept is based on personal thoughts, interpretations, and beliefs: “It is not how good (or bad) you really are, but how good (or bad) you think you are that determines your behavior” (Bandura, 2003, p.377). According to Bandura (2003), individuals with high general self-concept set more challenging goals for themselves and are more persistent in the face of adversity than their counterparts with low general self-concept.

Recently I conducted this study to examine the relationship between the characteristics of students enrolled in AAVTC programs and students’ self-concept scores as measured by specific subscales from the Self-Description Questionnaire (SDQ). A total of 196 male and 89 female secondary students (Grades 9-12) participated in the study. Student characteristic variables of interest were age, gender, CTE program enrollment, and participation in CTE. The self-concept subscales analyzed were General, Academic, Verbal, Math, and Problem Solving.

The study detected a relationship between specific student characteristics and self-concept as measured on certain domain-specific first-order factors. Gender and participation in CTE over time were found to be the most important contributors to the student characteristic variable. Verbal self-concept and problem-solving self-concept contributed the most to the self-concept variable.  The interaction between student characteristics and self-concept, for this study, indicates that while participation in CTE does positively relate to problem-solving self-concept, gender is still the primary variable in predicting a student’s self-concept.

Results suggest that females in arts-based CTE programs have a higher verbal self-concept than males enrolled in the same programs, which is in line with prior research in the area of giftedness and self-concept. Findings indicate that male students in arts-based CTE programs have a higher problem-solving self-concept than their female counterparts.

Results from this study, although inconclusive based on effect size interpretation, suggest that students with a high level of participation also have high verbal and problem-solving self-concepts. Considering the instructional activities required in these particular CTE programs, this is a logical outcome and is consistent with self-concept studies of secondary students in specialized arts programs.

Age was found to be unrelated to self-concept.  This lack of relationship, especially when compared to the relationship between participation in CTE and self-concept, is in line with the theory that individuals develop self-concepts as a direct result of the interactions and activities they choose to participate in over time. Because students choose to participate in activities that help them develop their verbal and problem-solving abilities, it makes sense that their verbal and problem-solving self-concepts will improve independent of their age.

These findings add to the literature concerning the area of self-concept as it relates to student participation in CTE programs. Given the shortage of research in this general area, the study represents a first step in examining a relationship between CTE students and the development of self-concept.  Stay tuned to recommendations and more information on this topic!

Reference

Bandura, A. (2003). Social-cognitive theory. In R. B. Ewen (Ed), An introduction to theories of personality (pp. 365-385). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.