Cannon Beach Academy focuses on gardening, the environment and more

On a breezy stretch of Oregon’s North Coast, where forests meet the Pacific and driftwood lines the shore, a group of elementary school students learn how to care for the planet — not from textbooks, but from the soil in their hands.

They build birdhouses and worm bins. They plant seeds and harvest carrots. They talk to strangers about composting and pollinators with a kind of earnest authority only children can carry.

This spring, their classroom is expanding beyond school grounds.

For the first time, Cannon Beach Academy is hosting EcoFest, a community celebration timed with the city’s 12 Days of Earth Day, blending environmental education with a practical goal: helping sustain the small charter school.

“It’s a little bit of both — something new and something we hope becomes annual,” said MaryEllen Rogozinski, the school’s executive director and PE teacher said. “We wanted to create an event that brings the community in, shows what the students are doing and helps support the school financially.”

The school, which serves about 35 students from kindergarten through fifth grade, operates with partial public funding, receiving roughly 80% of what it needs through Seaside School District. The rest must be raised independently — a challenge that prompted school leaders to think creatively.

EcoFest, Rogozinski said, became a solution with broader purpose.

But the roots of the effort stretch beyond the school itself — shaped in part by the decades-long work of volunteer Betty Gearen.

Two years ago, Gearen helped launch the school’s garden program, stepping in as a volunteer and later expanding it into a thriving after-school Eco Kid Club that now draws most of the student body.

A longtime educator with a background in fire arts from the University of Hawaii, Gearen spent decades teaching and developing curriculum, including environmental education programs across Honolulu. She founded The Green House in Hawaii, an initiative focused on sustainable living, and worked with organizations like Kokua Hawaii Foundation as garden coordinator for the ‘AINA In Schools Program.

Now based primarily in Cannon Beach, Gearen has brought that experience with her into a small coastal school with big ambitions.

“We have 35 little kids, and those 35 little kids are being trained to be caretakers for our Earth,” she said. “They’re going to go into our communities and lead that change. It give us hope for the future.”

Under her guidance, the school has taken on an ambitious goal: becoming a “green school,” where waste is minimized and sustainability is woven into daily life.

In February, Cannon Beach Academy became the first school on the Oregon coast to join the Eco-School Network, a Portland-based initiative connecting elementary schools working toward environmental sustainability.

The designation is both a milestone and a starting point.

“No waste means thinking about everything differently,” Gearen said. “If a piece of paper comes in, we use it on one side, then the other, then it goes into the worm bin and turns back into soil. It’s a full-cycle way of thinking.”

That cycle is visible across campus. Food scraps from the cafeteria are fed into worm bins or compost piles built by students, eventually returning to the garden beds as nutrient-rich soil. Plans are underway to transform land behind the school into an outdoor learning center, with pollinator plants to support bees and butterflies.

The lessons are practical, but also philosophical.

“We’re trying to teach the circle of life — how humans fit into it, and how we can help,” Gearen said.

For students, those ideas are not abstract.

Last year, during Cannon Beach’s Earth Day parade and fair, children dressed as bees, butterflies, foxes and birds — many in costumes made from recycled materials — and staffed a booth where they explained composting, pollination and waste reduction to visitors.

“They’re so excited to tell people what they know,” Rogozinski said. “And when a child is explaining something to you, it’s just different. People listen.”

Gearen has seen that shift firsthand.

“In the past, adults were doing the teaching,” she said. “Now the kids are.”

That change, she added, can ripple outward in unexpected ways.

“When kids start doing something, families follow,” she said. “It’s powerful when it comes from a child.”

EcoFest will build on that momentum. Visitors will be invited to make seed balls, create envelopes from recycled materials and learn how to mix environmentally friendly cleaning products — small, tangible steps toward what Gearen describes as a larger cultural shift.

“How easy it is to be green, and how much fun it is — that’s what we want people to see,” she said.

The event also marks both the beginning and the culmination of the city’s Earth Day celebration. Students will participate in the parade and fair, and later, on Earth Day itself, return to campus to plant trees and pollinator gardens in their new outdoor learning space.

For Gearen, the work is as much about hope as it is about urgency.

Rather than focusing on the scale of climate challenges, she centers her teaching on what children can do.

“I don’t talk about climate change in a way that’s scary,” she said. “I talk about what they can do to help. That’s where they feel powerful.”

That sense of empowerment can be seen in small moments, Gearen said. Like when students harvest vegetables they’ve grown themselves.

“They were pulling carrots out of the ground, washing them and eating them,” Gearen said. “They were taking handfuls home. When you grow it, you’re connected to it.”

Back in the garden beds and classrooms, those connections are already taking root.

For Rogozinski, EcoFest is simply an extension of what is happening every day.

“The kids are our biggest advocates,” she said. “They soak it all up, and then they go out and teach everyone else.”

Cannon Beach’s 12 Days of Earth Day

Noon to 3 p.m., Saturday, April 11 – Cannon Beach Academy Open House

10 a.m., Monday, April 13 – Tree City USA Celebration

9 a.m., Thursday, April 16 – Parks and Community Service Committee Meeting

10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Friday, April 17 – CB Shreds Spons. by PacPower and Recology Recycle

1:30 p.m., Friday, April 17 – Wildlife Center of the North Coast at Cannon Beach History Center

7:30 to 10 a.m., Saturday, April 18 – Haystack Rock Awareness Program Puffins Welcome

10 a.m., Saturday, April 18 – Solve Beach Cleanup

11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Saturday, April 18 – Street Fair and Parade

1 p.m., Saturday, April 18 – Cannon Beach Library Events for Kids

1:30 to 2:30 p.m., Tuesday, April 21 – Pollination Planting at Whale Park

10 a.m., Wednesday, April 22 – Planting at Cannon Beach Academy

5 p.m., Wednesday, April 22 – Fire Safety Lecture at Cannon Beach Academy