The Commodore John Rodgers School

Green School Application to MAEOE - March 2022

The Commodore John Rodgers School (Commodore) is a pre-K through 8th grade school in the Butcher’s Hill neighborhood of Baltimore City. It serves students from across the city, but mainly those in the Perkins/Middle East, Patterson Park/NorthEast and Madison/East End neighborhoods which surround the school. This is an area diverse in race, cultures and economics. We serve about 60 pre-K students and about 100 students at each of the other grade levels. We have 55 teaching staff members.

Our vision at Commodore is, “We aspire to move 100% of our students from Commodore to College so they have the opportunity to do what they choose in life. Our Collegiates will compete and be kind at the same time.” Our mission is to do everything in our power to equip our students with the skills, experiences, and the mindset to make good choices in life. Being a Maryland Green School is an important part of our vision and mission as teaching, modeling and practicing themes of health and sustainability directly equip our students for their future.

One thing that makes Commodore unique is its daily advisory structure in the middle school (6th to 8th grade). Advisory is a time that each staff member meets with a smaller group of students to build relationships. Advisory is a unique time in the school day that student-directed projects and passions are carried out. During advisory times, many groups of students choose to work on sustainability projects. Current and past projects include establishing the school's (mostly) native pollinator garden, picking up litter around the school and in the neighborhood rain gardens that border the school property, assisting with recycling, and helping organize school materials for reuse.

Younger students look forward to this time and their participation in student-driven activities as they get to middle school. Younger students are also involved in green education, field trips and actions to help prepare them to be green leaders when they are old enough to participate in advisory time.

All Commodore students also participate in weekly Community Meetings. These are meetings between all teachers, advisors and students at one or more grade levels. 7th and 8th graders meet together. 5th and 6th graders meet together. And lower grades meet with their grade full grade level. During this time students build community by acknowledging each other, making apologies and sharing important announcements. These meetings help to support our Green School work as it is a time to share updates about Green School initiatives. Announcements are followed by a learning time where students or a staff member present on a specific topic. A few times a year this is a Green School topic including what to recycle and an Earth Day Celebration are the Community Meeting topics.

Commodore has many partnerships including those who work closely with our Green School ideals. We have active long-standing partnerships with NorthBay Adventure, Great Kids Farm, and the Patterson Park Audubon.