Sustainability in Education - Vermont Commons School Skip to main content

Research & Service Class Featured on WPTZ News

Research & Service Class Featured on WPTZ News

Students in the Environmental Engineering Research & Service class have been conducting a survey to assess potential sources of contamination to the Bartlett Brook watershed, which is a natural and recreational resource for the City of South Burlington, and the drinking water source for 70,000 people. WPTZ Channel 5 recently spent an afternoon in the […]

Students in the Trees

The Tree Research & Service class has been busy helping the trees around the Burlington area. This month, we started by meeting with Kit Anderson, a professor at UVM. She taught us about relationships between trees and humans, such as the Live Oak society in Louisiana, made up completely of live oak trees. Then, we […]

Students Work With Immigrant Children at the Sustainability Academy

In this Research & Service class, we have been working with immigrant children at the Sustainability Academy (SA) as well as with adults from the Association of Africans Living in Vermont (AALV). We have been having discussions about where this population comes from, how they might have ended up here and why. We also began […]

Students Work With VT Department of Environmental Conservation

This semester, a hearty band of seventh, ninth, and eleventh – graders are working in our local watershed to better understand some recent changes and how we might be able to address some of those changes. We started the semester with a workshop led by Jim Pease of the VT Department of Environmental Conservation. Jim […]

The Wealth of Communities

The Senior Social Studies class, Ecological Economics, takes a close look at what local folks are doing to increase community vitality, raise levels of health and happiness, and decrease our carbon emissions and dependence on fossil fuels. This has been an inspiring and eye-opening semester in Social Studies 12: Ecological Economics. Using Deep Economy by […]

Students Working on Many Projects for Bike Recycle Vermont

The Bikes and Community Research and Service class has been spending Wednesday afternoons at Local Motion’s Bike Recycle Vermont shop in Burlington. The students have settled into a groove wrenching on bikes, making jewelry for Bike Recycle Designs, and generally helping around the shop. We have also been exploring topics surrounding Bike Recycle’s two-fold mission: […]

Students Wow Branch Out Burlington!

The ‘Greening Our Cities with Trees’ Research & Service class has been busy this month! The students continue to wow Branch Out Burlington! with their incredible weeding and mulching at the nursery – the director of the organization has never seen the nursery look so good! We also had a chance to work with trees […]

Exciting Things are Happening in Research & Service this Semester!

In addition to teaching English to new immigrants from Nepal each Friday, the Changing Face of Vermont Research & Service class has been working with English Language Learners at the Sustainability Academy, a public elementary school in Burlington. Working together with these students who have all immigrated recently to Vermont, the VCS class is collaborating […]

Scholarship. Community. Global Responsibility.

Students emerge from their time at Vermont Commons School intrinsically motivated to seek out their role for improving the world, with the skills and competencies to do so.