Erika Bryant: At Stokes School, every day is Earth Day
At Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom Public Charter School, we like to say that for us every day is Earth Day. With the international perspective gleaned from our unique-to-Washington pre-kindergarten-through-fifth-grade bilingual-immersion French and Spanish academics combined with our commitment to community service and our location in the nation’s capital, we strive daily to educate our children and entire school family about the critical importance of environmental stewardship and social justice. To that end, we aim to be doers, donors and practitioners.
As a public charter school, Stokes School is open to all DC-resident students with campuses in Brookland and Capitol Heights. The school holds a top-tier ranking from the DC Public Charter School Board and has one of the longest waitlists in the city. Our in-demand program integrates academics with activities beyond the classroom.
Our immersion program differs from most bilingual educational programs. Rather than offering language instruction, we teach students in French and Spanish ensuring that by fifth grade students typically become fully operational in the target language. Likewise, we also walk the walk with our environmentalism.
Our fifth-grade students take environmental expeditions overseas — Martinique for French-immersion learners, and Panama for Spanish-immersion students. Hands-on experience in these learning journeys includes studying the respective country’s ecosystem and writing a personal narrative about a topic of interest pertaining to the destination, such as food or some aspect of the natural environment. Learning about the ecology of nations and communities overseas extends to other planet-friendly activities at Stokes School. These include fundraising for earthquake relief in Haiti, Chile and Japan, and raising money for families in the developing world to buy livestock.
Our fourth-graders undertake an annual study tour to Virginia Beach, where they study ocean life and learn to cast a net during a boat ride but also spend time picking up debris and trash.
Third- and fourth-graders canoe on the Anacostia River watershed, learning about the importance of wetlands and of keeping rivers and streams pollution-free. One particularly exciting opportunity involves learning about DC’s secret history of buried streams that tell a story of conflicts between urban development and environmental health. This includes learning about how well-intentioned interventions, such as reducing standing water during historic malaria scares, can cause long-standing future environmental damage.
In partnership with the nonprofit Urban Adventure Squad, Stokes School is developing a hands-on, community-based curriculum for children in kindergarten through fifth grade that incorporates field trips, local hikes, map-making and visits from local environmental educators. This will include learning how to identify hidden bodies of water; why and how these streams impact the Anacostia River’s health; the damage caused by litter; and the benefits of daylighting streams. This learning experience incorporates a school- and community-wide call to action, with students presenting their findings and unveiling their daylighting water proposals.
In addition to exploring Kingman and Heritage islands in the Anacostia River and using these visits to learn firsthand about ecology, hydrology and pollution, we practice what we preach on campus. We accomplish this through service-based learning closer to home, such as removing and recycling trash as part of the Brookland neighborhood’s cleanup day. We also maintain our own gardening, recycling and composting programs, and use only locally sourced food in our food service programs.
Our international, diverse and globally-aware perspective also is evident in our role as a co-founder of — and feeder school to — DC International Public Charter School, which offers environmental learning alongside language immersion in French, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese.
As we turn out the lights at two campuses for Earth Day and reaffirm our commitment to the world our students will inherit, we remind ourselves of the importance of environmental pioneers past, present and future. In all this, Stokes aims to embody the wisdom of Albert Einstein’s words: “Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”
Erika Bryant is executive director of the Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom Public Charter School, which serves pre-kindergarten through fifth-grade students at its Brookland campus at 3700 Oakview Terrace NE and its East End campus at 5600 East Capitol St. NE.
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