Category: Big picture

Carbon Footprint Revealed! What’s next?

Student presenters

Total emissions and approaches to reducing them We have the report from Green Places, and it shows that DA generated 3,532 metric tons of CO2 equivalent in 2021-22. It’s the answer to a big, important question, yet it generates so many new questions! Some of them were addressed in a presentation on December 19 by …

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Be There or Be Square: Sustainability Edition

Invitation

By Frankie Stover and Tina Bessias NOTE LOCATION CHANGE: This event will take place in Kenan Auditorium at the Upper School. After months of data gathering and analysis, Green Places and the Environmental Sustainability in Action class are going to reveal Durham Academy’s carbon footprint and set our sights on reducing it. This is the …

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What We Mean by Sustainability

Upper and Lower School students walking in woods

When the students in last year’s Environmental Sustainability class made a pitch to the Administrative Team, they asked that DA make a public commitment to sustainability. The Innovation Journey Grant is enabling us to move toward such a commitment for both operations and curriculum. In the meantime, however, the Sustainability Leadership Team took up the …

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Faculty Summer Readings on Sustainability Theme

Each year, Durham Academy kicks off our return to school with discussions of summer reading. Most folks think that summer reading remains a student experience, working through an assigned text to be ready to discuss it in first week English classes, but faculty and staff do summer reading, too! Usually we pick a focus for …

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An Innovation Journey begins…

Sanju (headshot)

SustainABLE DA, fueld by an Innovation Journey grant, launches August 9-10  with forty-five teachers, administrators, staff members, Parents Council representatives, and Upper School student leaders working together in Horton Hall to create a shared vision. The effort is being led by Jaimie Cloud, who has been fostering Education for Sustainability (EfS) in public and private …

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From Red Alert to a Greener DA

DA Strategic Vision

During our August back-to-school meeting for faculty, I challenged my colleagues (and myself!) to create environments and experiences that are more:  humane  sustainable, and  open to the genius of our students I won’t dwell on the humane part here, but I do hope we are doing all we can to overcome the dehumanizing brutality of …

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Compost: Sustaining Circles of Life

Student wrapping arms around "Feed me" sign on bin

Since the dawn of time, the world has used and reused and reused and reused all of its resources from water, to nutrients, to air, and anything else you can name. The Law of Conservation of Mass still holds true in everything that we do today. Sustainability isn’t stopping some intergalactic cloud from exerting demonic …

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Our Home

Image of Earth from space

The recent string of extreme weather events got me thinking about home. I mean “home” as in the Greek oikos (like the yogurt), which is the root of “ecology“: the study of our home. Today we share our home with 7.7 billion people. We tend to focus on troubles and conflicts, but the dominant story …

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