John Schmied, 2011 Bartlett Award Winner

“I would like to thank the National Environmental Education Foundation for naming me as the 2011 Richard C. Bartlett Environmental Education Award winner. 

This is not only incredible news for myself, but also for the other environmental educators who have worked tirelessly beside me over the years to develop new and innovative ways to encourage students to learn what they can do to balance their desires with the need to protect their environment and the health of their community,” Schmied said of the award. “I'd especially like to thank my colleagues at Skyview Junior High School, Friends of the Hidden River and those in King County. This award is about ensuring that students, who will soon be our leaders, learn that as humans we have great power, but that with great power comes a great responsibility to make our environment a better place. Thank you again!”

“Whether it’s environmental grounding tasks or helping kids build their own environmental center, John connects his students to the living world,” said Marie Hartford, a fellow teacher. “He relates every plant touched back to our imperiled Puget Sound. His concern for this issue led him to form a non-profit dedicated to showing the hidden issues of waste water that greatly impact our region’s health. Therefore, John’s colleagues and students of all ages consider him a crucial mentor for their own sustainable actions.”

John Schmied is a 7th grade science teacher at Skyview Junior High School in Bothell, Wash. He has been a public school teacher for 17 years. His 21 years of service in the US Coast Guard and experience as a Lieutenant Commander informs his teaching style and he has used his exceptional strategic planning and strong business acumen to help raise over 1 million dollars to add green features to a regional environmental education center at a local wastewater treatment plant that will be used to teach thousands of students and community members about the science and significance of clean water.  Schmied is known for his commitment to utilizing environmental education to empower students to teach other students. In classroom projects that raise Coho salmon and Red-legged frogs – native keystone species of the Pacific Northwest – Schmied trained students to take responsibility for every aspect of caring for the young animals, from managing the overall project to maintaining their habitat.These students in turn trained incoming students and the model has now been adopted by teachers throughout the district, including those at the elementary level.  With a belief that science is the nexus of all subjects, Schmied employs a cross-disciplinary, systems approach to environmental education, frequently collaborating with teachers of math, art, literacy, social studies and history to integrate these disciplines into environmental learning. He has also pioneered cross grade lessons, enlisting older students to teach younger students about slugs, fish, mice and frogs and collaborating with elementary classes on native planting field studies for schools, parks and wastewater treatment plants. Schmied is highly regarded as a passionate mentor to teachers within his school, district and state where he has facilitated summer workshops on running animal studies in the classroom for science method courses and has played a lead role in writing and implementing Washington State’s Integrated Environmental Sustainability Learning Standards.

Underscoring an emphasis on using science to inform personal and community environmental responsibility, every student in Schmied’s class develops and implements their own action project to improve their environment called “My Present to the Environment.”  Students also do at least three days of service work in Skyview’s 6.5-acre Outdoor Environmental Learning Center that Schmied helped raise funds for and which students designed, built and continue to maintain. Schmied’s engagement of the community in environmental learning includes a focus on families. Near Earth Day, each student schedules a family meeting in which the family takes an environmental sustainability survey, creates an action plan listing three things their family is going to do to improve their local environment and then documents the results. Another example of Schmied engaging his students in the community includes a student developed Environmental Action Project that convinced a local chain of hardware stores to accept compact fluorescent light bulbs for recycling to address community concerns around the unsafe disposal of mercury.

Schmied’s teaching approach has yielded impressive academic results. His students have scored an average of 13 points higher than other students on the statewide science tests. Despite a reputation for rigorous and demanding coursework, over 48 percent of his students have earned an A grade in his classes the last two years running and he has been able to successfully support non-academically oriented students to become leaders in outdoor and hands on environmental learning activities. As testimony to the lasting impact of Schmied’s teaching, dozens of his students have gone on to pursue science and engineering degrees and often cite Schmied’s 7th grade science class as the spark for their academic and career pursuits.