Earth Week Project 2008

I believe that everyone has read the Courier article that I sent out via e-mail, so here is the rest of the story.

Since our new school is set for construction in June, I wanted to do something else other than planting this year. I decided to focus on recycling. It was a natural decision since I have the entire second grade participate in the school wide recycling program each year. This involves each of the second grade classrooms to be responsible for collecting used paper from different wings/areas of school and then recycle it. We do this every year for the entire year with the second grade classes. When students leave my school, they would have all been responsible for recycling for an entire year. If I teach for 30-40 more years, imagine the lives I would have influenced. It is mind blowing the effect I have on the future.

A large impact project was floating around in my mind all fall. It was not until February when the project became clear in my mind. The vision popped in like Dr. Brown's flux capacitor in Back to the Future. I though that students could look for plastics at home and bring them to school for the project. This would indirectly teach them to look at what they are throwing away and to rescue the things that can be recycled. Will they all start recycling when this is over? No, but it might affect their actions at some point in their life. Maybe one person will recycle in the future because the impact this project had on their life. If that is the case, then it would be worth it. The public would also be impacted as they drove past our school and exposed themselves to the article in the paper.

The students did a great job of bringing in enough plastics for the project. I had about 30 large trash bags full of extra plastic. Home Depot donated 60 ten foot long steal rebar, and Meyer's Nursery let us borrow the 30 metal fence posts. The only expense that I had was in the purchasing and construction of the classroom flags that flew above each recycling man structures. The Courier had a nice photo of a student putting on a piece of plastic, but they didn't include the picture of one of the structures.

I have included a few shots, as you can see, of what the entire project looked like so that you can get a clearer picture of what this was all about. I just wanted to post on Earth Week that tells the entire story. The Courier left a lot out. Thanks for checking out the article. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!!!