Earth Day is one of those "learning" opportunities that comes around once a year, and schools and educators are taking full advantage of it.

Toward that end, Maryland Public Television is airing a documentary, "Growing Greener Schools," at 4:30 p.m. Thursday (with a rebroadcast for early risers at 4 a.m. Friday).  The show looks at how environmentally oriented curriculums and green buildings are changing students, families and communities.  

The film treats this as a nationwide phenomenon, but features Patuxent Elementary School in Upper Marlboro, one of more than 260 public, private and parochial "green" schools in Maryland.  The film also quotes Bronwyn Mitchell (pictured at right), executive director of the Maryland Association for Environmental and Outdoor Education, which has been promoting green learning since 1985.

For more on the documentary and the movement, check out the website Growing Greener Schools.  For those who'd rather watch it with a bunch of like-minded folks, there'll be a special showing at 4:30 p.m. Thursday at the University of Maryland University College Marriott Inn in College Park.  As seating there is limited, RSVPs are requested to pcambell@umuc.edu

Meanwhile, more than 1,400 teachers worldwide - including more than 30 in Maryland - have pledged to go paperless on Earth Day. They'll neither make nor take assignments on paper that day. Tip of the hat to Shelly Blake-Plock, a high school teacher in Bel Air, for letting us know. You can read her blog post about it here and see the list of teachers here.

What's your school doing for Earth Day?  How 'green' is it the rest of the year?

(2008 photo of Envirothon, 2009 photo of Bronwyn Mitchell, by The Baltimore Sun's Barbara Haddock Taylor)