At Hanover High School's Science Symposium this spring, one freshman summed up what she'd learned about the fashion industry in a single number: there's already enough clothing on Earth to clothe the next six generations, all at once. Ninety-two million tons of it gets wasted every year, worldwide. "It's just kind of sickening," she said. That reaction is what drove a small group of ninth-grade girls in the school's Environmental Club to spend the spring semester turning a hard fact into...

By Lauren Edward, Kindergarten Teacher, Cornish Elementary School Last spring one of my kindergartners walked past me in the school garden chewing on something. I asked her what she was eating. "A flower," she said. Where did you get it? "The garden." What do you think? "Yummy." That is pretty much the whole argument for a school garden, and it took her about four seconds to make it. These are the same kids who will push a vegetable to the far edge of the plate at home. Out in the garden they...

By Devin Burkhart and Chrissy Morley, Grade 5, Marion Cross School, Norwich, Vermont One of our students told an interviewer this spring that she had discovered she has a passion for composting. Her evidence: when she sees somebody throwing a banana peel in the trash, she said, what goes through her head is "no, no, no, no, no." That is a fair picture of where our fifth graders started this year. It is not where they ended up. Chrissy: It is worth saying that this program did not arrive fully...