Fairfax Co. teacher up for national award for getting kids excited about sustainability

Laure Grove was eager to teach at Terra Centre Elementary in Burke, because the school was initially built to be environmentally efficient.

In an attempt to conserve energy, the school was constructed underground. When she arrived in 2018, there were a few garden beds outside, but Grove noticed they weren’t being utilized.

When students returned to the Fairfax County school campus after the peak of the pandemic, the garden beds needed to be cleaned up, Grove said. Many people helped lead that effort, and brainstormed what could be done inside the school building during the cleanup outside.

What started as a small project to get the gardens ready for use again evolved into a schoolwide approach to ge

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