Earth Day contest and school wide implementation
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This year we decided to do something different for Earth Day. This year we decided to let the kids come up with an idea to implement at COE school wide to decrease our environmental impact.
We wanted it to be student's choice so that they could take more ownership of the idea and really get behind it.
In order to start the process, I sent an email to all the teachers requesting they get their classrooms to come up with an idea. I gave them suggestions to make their life easier. They then responded with what their classrooms decided on, then the students got to vote on what they wanted to implement.
*****A note for schools that want to implement this: April is a SUPER busy month for teachers with the STAAR testing going on. I suggest maybe doing the voting PRIOR to anytime near Earth day and have the roll out that week. I believe that participation was not nearly has high as I wanted because of the amount of pressure teachers were under during this time frame, so I highly suggested moving the voting process, from experience. ******
Here is the email that I sent out to teachers. Since I knew they were busy, I tried to make the process as painless as possible for them:
Hello, Wonderful Cheetah Teachers,
My name is name and I am the environmental awareness chair for the PTA.
This year I wanted to do a fun project for Earth day that our students can take ownership of.
I also want to do it without making your life any harder than it already is, so I am going to attempt to make this as painless as possible.
What I am requesting from you is to have your students vote on a way that we can implement something new and green into Chandler Oaks.
You can either do it by classroom or by village, whatever is easiest for you.
The children can vote on their classroom/village favorite suggestion and then we can have a school wide vote.
The winning class will get a small token .
Here are some suggestions in case your kids come up short and so, again, it stays easy for you:
-adding a small recycling trash can at each table group to encourage more paper recycling since it's right there
-request that the school bring snacks in recycling containers (I *might* be able to go to IKEA or something and get reusable containers for students, not really in my budget now)
-request that the plastic containers in the cafeteria get recycled instead of thrown away
-start composting in the cafeteria to reduce waste
-have a designated walk/ride your bike to school day once a month/week to reduce car usage with everyone who arrives by foot go into a drawing for a chance at an impossible shot?
-appoint a grade level green guide to oversee the village's green practices and provide reports and plans
Okay, I hope that gives you enough of an idea so that you know what I am looking for. Please feel free to decide how you want to do this, whether classroom or grade level.
Once you decide your Earth Day suggestion, please email them to me.
The winning idea at our school was adding a small trash can to each of the group tables to increase the ease of recycling. The class received small red paw prints that can attach to zippers or key chains.
This works great at our school because every classroom at every grade level sits in groups, so each table group would get a trash can.
We believe that this will be a good thing because it allows students to easily recycle any recyclable item right there at their group, rather than have to travel to recycle. This will make it easier as well as prevent additional distractions to other students while others are up walking around.
We are also very lucky to be located right down the street from an IKEA, who just happens to carry small trash cans that are of the low cost of 1.99. They also happen to carry one of our school colors! So, we will purchase 4 trash cans for each classroom which will end up being a total cost of around 320.00 for our school. We will add a picture of the recycle sign so students will remember it's not for trash.
At this time, we are unable to make the purchase due to the late time of the year and the budget freeze until next school year.
This is on the plan to implement at the beginning of next school year so that students that attend next year will be able to easily recycle items from their desk.
We hope this increases the recycling and reduces our TRASH! Making recycling easy is the first step to making it become a habit.
This is a very easy idea to implement at schools and I hope others can allow their students to brain storm and own ideas to make a smaller envrionmental impact!
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![[image] trash can](../activity/2492/1368465006.jpg "[image] trash can")
