In a time rife with cut backs and layoffs in the business world, job competition is fierce and unique skills are valued. The staff at Edison Academy not only recognizes this but also is seizing an opportunity to help propel their students to success.

The school, which offers technical and specialized courses that focus on career fields to high school juniors and seniors in the FCPS system, began a push to promote green job skills to their students this summer. The result, school officials hope, will be a new generation of young Fairfax County men and women equipped with career skills that will not only help set them apart from other job candidates, but will enable them to make a positive difference on their environment as well.

“They’re practicing green collar job skills, and they can put that on their résumé,” said Career Experience Specialist Genie Williford. “It’s a hot time right now to mention those skills, and we’re hoping the green focus will help them find ways to market themselves.”

Though the school has a long-standing commitment to green practices, as evidenced by the HVAC program receiving a Lowe’s Grant for $10,000 last year for its efforts in promoting carbon monoxide poisoning awareness, the push to expand the curriculum came after a day of green education this past summer. On Sept 1, the school’s Career and Technical Education instructors visited the United States Green Building Council’s offices and the National Building Museum to acquire knowledge about the “green” industry and develop ways to incorporate green education into their instruction.

“It was the kind of atmosphere that you’ll be expecting to find in business and industry,” Williford said. “The teachers came back really inspired.”

That inspiration gave the teachers myriad ideas to institute in their classrooms that will not only highlight green practices but contribute to the existing curriculum as well. The first idea that arose from the field trip was to partner the culinary and landscaping departments. As part of the partnership, the landscaping students will take the unused food scraps from the culinary department and put them into their new compost machine. The students will then take the compost and use it as fertilizer for a vegetable and herb garden. Once those plants are grown, the culinary students will be given the food to use, and the process will continuously repeat itself. In addition, landscaping teacher Tomas Ovalle is also working with the students to create original designs for the garden and will use recycled wood to build it.

“They’re going to build the herb gardens to give back to the culinary department,” Ovalle said. “It’s going to be one, big circle. We’re really making an effort to make everything 100 percent green in here.”

IN THE HOTEL management program, instructor Dwannal McGahee is having his students do an extended research project to study resorts and hotels with green practices to see how they incorporate environmentally friendly ideas into their facilities. Also, McGahee said that his students would be exploring how those hotels market their green features so that they can understand what appeals to the consumer. Their research will culminate in an internship at a local hotel, where McGahee hopes they can help implement the green practices that they have learned.

“The trend is green, and the consumer is looking for businesses like that,” McGahee said. “The kids were fascinated to see that there was a big push for businesses to be environmentally friendly.”

The automotive program is also taking part in the green initiative. Williford said that the students will be focusing on how to make cars more fuel efficient and to cut down on emissions so that they can learn how to make cars not only run better, but make them safer for the environment as well. In addition, the students will repair and resell cars that would otherwise be sent to the junkyard and will be studying the engineering of hybrid cars so that they will be able to work on them.

“We are doing things to become more aware of emissions and we’re trying to fix and resell cars,” junior Will Luster said. “It not only benefits the shop, but it is great preparation for the future.”

OTHER GREEN initiatives are taking place in all of the academy’s programs. Williford said that the cosmetology program will be collecting hair clipping from haircuts and will donate the hair to a group that uses them to clean oil spills. In the HVAC department, students will be learning how to make air conditioners and other appliances more energy efficient, while the students in the electrical program will learn how to cut down on electricity usage.

Though the academy only has its students for a few hours a day, a few times a week, staff members are confident that the students are receiving the message that going green is not only good for the environment but also is a great way to make a living.

“Many of the students are very passionate about what they are doing here and want to continue in the industry,” Williford said. “We’ve had a lot of success stories, and we hope to have many more.”