HAMILTON ELEMENTARY/MIDDLE SCHOOL #236
Hamilton Elementary/Middle School is located in the Hamilton neighborhood of Baltimore. We serve 860 students in grades Pre-K through 8th. Hamilton has meaningful and long lasting relationships with many community partners including Hamilton/Lauraville Main Street Association, Baltimore City Office of Sustainability, the Johns-Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, City Blossoms (Washington, DC), The Nature Conservancy, Constellation Energy, Parks & People Foundation, KaBoom!, and Irvine Nature Center.
These partnerships demonstrate the strong support of our greening efforts by our larger community. Additionally, they have allowed us to greatly expand our greening efforts through the financial support and guidance of our partners.
Hamilton's history of focused sustainability starts approximately eleven years ago. At that time, Hamilton Elementary/Middle School launched an ambitious effort to transform a massive asphalt lot into a green space that now features open green space for recess and sports, two outdoor classrooms – one for students in pre-k to 2nd grade and one for students in 3rd to 8th grade, a fruit orchard, a 2,000 square foot and 900 square foot native pollinator gardens, a 120 square foot living roof, 3 compost tumblers, 2 static compost piles, 7 indoor vermiculture bins, 500+ gallons worth of rain barrels, 14 student-run raised vegetable beds, and a chicken coop that is home to Hamilton’s hens.
All of the green spaces at Hamilton have lent themselves to an ever-evolving list of creative projects and lessons which engage our students in environmental education in their own urban ecosystem. Some of the key projects and lessons which have taken place over the last several years include a student-led cafeteria composting pilot program, and a unique partnership with the Johns-Hopkins Center For a Livable Future at Cylburn Arboretum through which all sixth grade students were able to visit the commercial scale aquaponics system at Cylburn, and then design and build their own classroom sized system with the guidance of Jesse Blom, former farm manager for the project.
These efforts were part of the flagship accomplishments of the past few years, but in no way overshadow the day to day excitement of outdoor education at Hamilton. Through an enrichment class (in the same grouping as music, art, and P.E.) known as Nature Explorations, students are exposed to outdoor education on a weekly basis. These classes focus on a wide-variety of environmental education topics, all the while striving to connect the learning to our immediate space and to student-led action projects which have shaped our schoolyard as they've shaped our students.
These partnerships demonstrate the strong support of our greening efforts by our larger community. Additionally, they have allowed us to greatly expand our greening efforts through the financial support and guidance of our partners.
Hamilton's history of focused sustainability starts approximately eleven years ago. At that time, Hamilton Elementary/Middle School launched an ambitious effort to transform a massive asphalt lot into a green space that now features open green space for recess and sports, two outdoor classrooms – one for students in pre-k to 2nd grade and one for students in 3rd to 8th grade, a fruit orchard, a 2,000 square foot and 900 square foot native pollinator gardens, a 120 square foot living roof, 3 compost tumblers, 2 static compost piles, 7 indoor vermiculture bins, 500+ gallons worth of rain barrels, 14 student-run raised vegetable beds, and a chicken coop that is home to Hamilton’s hens.
All of the green spaces at Hamilton have lent themselves to an ever-evolving list of creative projects and lessons which engage our students in environmental education in their own urban ecosystem. Some of the key projects and lessons which have taken place over the last several years include a student-led cafeteria composting pilot program, and a unique partnership with the Johns-Hopkins Center For a Livable Future at Cylburn Arboretum through which all sixth grade students were able to visit the commercial scale aquaponics system at Cylburn, and then design and build their own classroom sized system with the guidance of Jesse Blom, former farm manager for the project.
These efforts were part of the flagship accomplishments of the past few years, but in no way overshadow the day to day excitement of outdoor education at Hamilton. Through an enrichment class (in the same grouping as music, art, and P.E.) known as Nature Explorations, students are exposed to outdoor education on a weekly basis. These classes focus on a wide-variety of environmental education topics, all the while striving to connect the learning to our immediate space and to student-led action projects which have shaped our schoolyard as they've shaped our students.