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Green Collar Workers at Richmond High

As spring moves into high gear, Richmond High's CreekKeepers — students learning about a variety of watershed issues — are busy renovating their school's greenhouse, setting up a compost bin and worm boxes, planting a garden of native plants and maintaining the school's creek.

Richmond High didn't always have a creek. The inspiration came six years ago from School-to-Career Coordinator Lana Martarella Husser, when she began a "Teacher Cadet" class for 10th-12th graders interested in becoming teachers themselves. The year-long program included internships for the cadets in local elementary schools. After observing interns' reluctance to take charge in the classrooms, Husser formed the idea of making them experts in a subject not taught by most elementary school teachers at that time: environmental education.

"We used to meet at a local creek at 8 a.m.," remembers Husser. "We'd get back to school soaking wet." Clearly, the students needed a place to train on site. At Husser’s instigation, another Richmond High student group, the "Career Explorers," who were interested in engineering jobs, teamed up with engineers from Chevron Corporation to build the Outdoor Science Classroom. Chevron donated mechanical engineer Kevin Fitzpatrick's time and expertise, as well as materials: two tons of sand and gravel, two tons of river rock, and two heavy-duty pumps. Thus was Richmond High’s very own creek born.

The Outdoor Science Classroom exposes students to what Husser calls "green-collar" occupations, careers with an environmental twist that can include both teaching and engineering. In September of 2000, the Richmond Wastewater Treatment Plant gave the CreekKeepers a grant for $5,000 to create a composting program on school grounds. The program has also spawned an Environmental Club sponsored by the Science and Industry Technology Partnership Academy.

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