A Green Ribbon School takes a comprehensive approach to helping students reach their greatest potential. A Green Ribbon School promotes healthy and sustainable living for students, parents and staff. Green Ribbon Schools create their own vision and plan and improve over time. Green Ribbon Schools are healthier, happier and smarter. Find out how to become a Green Ribbon School.

The national GRS program is an award program recognizing schools that promote and participate in projects in the areas of sustainability, nature and healthy living with their students, parents, teachers and communities. Schools participate in an online shared knowledge community (the GRS website) where they can connect with others, share ideas, accomplish great projects, and publish the results of their projects to achieve recognition as a Green Ribbon School. The goals within the program’s structure are to:

• Promote Nutrition, Fitness and Health
• Promote Environmentally-Friendly Campuses
• Promote Outdoor Physical Activity and Nature Play
• Integrate Nature into Education

For more information on the GRS program and what the GRS website has to offer, visit: http://greenribbonschools.org/what-is-grs.php or REGISTER NOW to get started!

The Green Ribbon Schools program is where health, education, STEM skills, technology and sustainability combine to propel entire schools towards a happier, healthier and smarter future. It is where students get more involved in school activities, not less, and where teachers and students become the true leaders of their schools and communities.

Research shows that today’s children may be the first generation at risk of having a shorter lifespan than their parents. Sedentary lifestyle and physical inactivity have contributed greatly to the numerous health problems plaguing today’s children. Outdoor activity in the natural environment has taken a back seat to television, video games, and the computer. Chronic conditions such as childhood obesity, asthma, and attention-deficit disorder have all increased over the past few decades. GRS acts on the best research regarding children’s health, physical activity and the importance of a connection to nature to encourage a comprehensive, whole-child approach. Research shows that children who are physically fit, connect with nature and eat nutritious foods are healthier, happier and smarter. Benefits of the GRS program include:

• Cognitive benefits: increased STEM skills, college and career skills, creativity, problem solving, focus and self-discipline
• Social benefits: increased cooperation, flexibility, and self-awareness
• Emotional benefits: stress reduction, reduced aggression and increased happiness
• Absenteeism and discipline problems: decrease as students become involved in projects that have an environmental focus

Visit http://greenribbonschools.org/earn-award.php for info on how to earn the award.

Short answer: Approximately 10-30 minutes per project. The GRS website was designed by and for teachers and students. So it is quick and simple to use, and helps facilitate the project learning process. For a teacher: registering takes 2 minutes, Starting a project takes 2 minutes, inviting students takes 2-5 minutes, and if you decide to create results pages instead of having students create them, this can take as little or as long as you need (5-25 minutes). Publishing a page, once it is created, takes around 30 seconds. So once you have completed a project in the real world, publishing the results of that project takes around 10-30 minutes. A lot less time than you thought right! Spend any extra time in our Community area sharing project ideas, lesson plans and tips with other GRS teachers.

Start project using the START NEW PROJECT button on your MY PROJECTS page. This is the page you land on every time you log in to the site. Once you click that button, you will land on the START NEW PROJECT page, which takes around 2 minutes to fill out.

Inviting students is simple. Once you have started a project you will land on the Project Dashboard. On the right side of the page you will see the Project Members widget. Click the Add Members button. This will reveal the INVITE CODE for this specific project. You can give this code to anyone you want to join your project. They will enter it in the JOIN PROJECT blank upon logging in. This will automatically add them to your project and you will see them appear in your Project Members list. You can also send an invite email to students using the email blank on the ADD MEMBERS pop up.

Project Roles - Each project has one Creator (the teacher who started the project). All other people invited to the project are called Members. These Members can have two roles: Student or Moderator. A Creator may assign the Moderator role to anyone they choose in the Assign Roles area of the Member widget. Moderators have the same abilities as the Creator (teacher) within that particular project (aka - they are able to approve pages to be published).

Think of it as the presentation page for your project. This page shows off the results of the project you and/or your group accomplished. Each project can have one or many results pages published for it. So feel free to have all of your students create a results page and submit to you for publishing approval. Results Pages are created by using the RESULTS BUILDER, found on the PROJECT DASHBOARD of each one of your projects. You can insert text, images, videos, and even embed video games using html. Use creativity to shout out the results of your projects in your own unique voice.

Both Students and Teachers can create Results Pages. However, only teachers can actually publish Results Pages. Students can create results pages and submit them to the teacher for approval to be published, but the teacher is the only person who can actually click the PUBLISH button for each Results Page. To approve a submitted page from a student, a teacher will go the PROJECT DASHBOARD for the project, locate the PROJECT PAGES area and click on the PUBLISH tab. On this tab you will see a list of the SUBMITTED pages. Click the PUBLISH button in the ACTIONS column to approve each page. Once you click that, the page is published and viewable in the public PUBLISHED PROJECTS area of the site. You can unpublish a page at any time.

All published pages for all projects can be found in the PUBLISHED PROJECTS area of the website. Also within each project you will see a link in the top right corner that says "See all Published pages for this project". For teachers, if you want to see which pages are published within an activity, you can click on the PUBLISH tab in the PROJECT PAGES area of the PROJECT DASHBOARD. Published pages are highlighted in green and say "Published" in the Status column.

A GRS Community is a place where people who want to discuss a specific topic can get together and share project ideas, lesson plans, and files, as well as mentor and help each other accomplish great things. We have communities specifically setup for GRS Teachers, GRS Students, StuCo folks, those interested in the Healthivores Video Game Contest, and even a community for each of the 4 Cornerstone of the GRS program. You can be a member of any group you like and connect with all the members of that community.

Healthivores is an initiative by Cyberways and Waterways (the non-profit that oversees Green Ribbon Schools), and its main focus is to encourage and support students in learning about healthy living (eating, exercise, nutrition, etc.). The Healthivores Video Game Contest is a project and contest where students design their very own video games about healthy living in as little as 2-3 weeks. We have provided a simple Lesson Plan for teachers to follow (even if the teacher and students have zero game design or even game playing experience). Learn more here.

We hear more and more that teachers are using the PUBLISHED PROJECTS area of the website as their go-to place for getting project ideas. Additionally we have the PROJECT IDEAS area of the website that is organized by Cornerstones, the Featured Published Pages on the homepage to browse through, and the COMMUNITY area of the website. Also keep an eye out for CONTESTS that go on throughout the year, which are projects that satisfy the different GRS Cornerstones and offer some great prizes (like Laptops, gift cards, and badges).

We are here to help any time you need it. No question is too small. If you are stuck let us know. You can check out the FAQs to see if we have answered the questions, or the Help Videos to see if we have covered the topic. If not visit the CONTACT US page and send us a note. We love to help!

To make sure you hear about all of the Contests, promotions and deadline reminders from GRS:

1) Sign up for the newsletter here.

2) Go to your Profile and Account areas (see the upper right corner of the page once logged in for those nav buttons) and update all of the information requested on these pages and tabs.

3) Keep an eye on the CONTESTS page of the website and the Featured Contest block(s) on the homepage.

Those under 13 years of age must have parental consent to participate on the GRS website: PARENTAL CONSENT FORM (PDF 62KB)

Visit http://greenribbonschools.org/schools.php to see the list of Participating Schools.

Visit: http://greenribbonschools.org/4Cornerstones.php

The 2012-2013 GRS deadline is June 15, 2013. All projects must be published before this date to be considered in the evaluation process for GRS awards.