Woohoo! April Education Action team Activities and Volunteer Opportunities
Annette Mills
Good morning! Here is the first edition of the Education Action Team's monthly reports. Thanks for everyone who contributed!
Items highlighted in Green are volunteer or observation opportunities. Contact the Rep associated with that school for more info.
Earth Day event on April 16th
The interactive "Solutions Fair" will have booths out across from the Erin Scott McKinley Park (next to the Skate Park at the south end of second street)f rom 12:30 to 3 pm on Saturday April 16th. Ruth Johns, Maxine Agather, Marie Loiseau, Bailey Payne, and Karin Bolender have already volunteered but we can always use more help! Activities:
- A "Bird Booth", where kids can make their own "binoculars" out of toilet papers tubes and then observe different types of nests/birds.
- The "Planter Booth", where kids can plant sunflowers and peas into paper pots to take home. (Bailey coordinates)
- The "Wheel o' Sustainability", where kids can spin the wheel to earn sustainable prizes like recycled newspaper pencils (Bailey)
- There may also be an interactive watershed table that teaches kids about pollution
(Bailey)
(Thanks to Maxine Agather for the summary) (Contact Rachel for more info)
Bailey Payne, Corvallis School District Sustainability Specialist
Some upcoming events and resources. Please reach out to me with any questions or ideas. https://www.csd509j.net/departments/teaching-and-learning/sustainability/
Annette Mills, Corvallis Sustainability Coalition Leader
I think the Education Action Team would be interested in knowing that the latest Solarize Corvallis project is adding solar panels at Linus Pauling, Cheldelin, and Franklin. We raised $134,000 in community investments to help fund these installations, which will be done this spring.
(From Rachel:)
Want to invest? https://oregoncleanpower.coop/
Ruth Johns, Crescent Valley High School Rep
The SEA Club is in full swing renovating the greenhouse. The students will be planting seeds and managing tomato starts for one of the local garden clubs that will make the mature tomatoes available to the public in the Spring. They are also collecting food waste in the cafeteria for their greenhouse compost bins. The club members are collecting the contents from the recycling bins in classrooms and hallways and making sure the recyclable items are put in the correct collection bins. Cans and bottles with deposits go to the bottle drop shop. The SEA Club has an account there and the money is used for club needs. The club members are energetic!!! Hello to everyone!
Maxine Agather, Rachel Kirby, EdAT Rep Adams Elementary School Steward
Name: The Eco-Gators 🐊💕
School: Adams Elementary
Meeting Time: Every A-Week Monday from 2:35 to 3:00 pm (so 2x a month)
Current Project: Before spring break, the students generated a bunch of great ideas for initiatives we could start trying to implement at the school. When we met this week, we settled on trying to create some sort of weekly/monthly "trash day" throughout the school. I prompted students to start considering logistics and we went through the basic steps of how an action plan is created. I will be discussing our ideas with our principal, Peter Henning, in the hopes that when we meet again on April 18th we will be able to solidify a final action plan.
Here is a comprehensive guide to Food Waste Audits (including sample logs) that I came across recently, in case you want to add it to your stash of resources :)
Karin Bolender, Muddy Creek Elementary
Unfortunately I have nothing to report from Muddy Creek's Green Team, which has been on hiatus since the winter break through the rest of the year. They did meet a number of times in the fall, but the teacher is too overwhelmed at this point. :( Hoping for more activity next year.)
Dionné Mejía, Cheldelin Middle School
Green Team meets: Tuesdays 12:40-1:10 pm
Currently working on: Students are making a google slides presentation to present to other students. This project has been mostly self-led and the students are very independent, so I have been supporting mostly behind the scenes and sometimes in person. I'm not sure if there are opportunities to help out. I asked the lead teacher how best to support them. I also invited them to the Planet Palooza event. Last month Kenny from Republic Services did a presentation about recycling and this helped the students with their google slides. The students are doing a homeroom competition where each homeroom will collect plastic materials from home and use it to decorate their homeroom door. This is a competition and the green team will judge the doors and offer a prize.
Here is the project timeline.
The first lesson, Friday (4/8):
- An informative review of waste locations on our campus and the importance of putting waste in the appropriate locations based on what the item is.
- This lesson will also include a summary and opportunity to brainstorm a project idea. Part of that project is to collect repurposed materials (could be recyclable, but encouraged to find things that can not be recycled but rather repurposed). Please read more about the project in the slide show provided.
- Prior to this lesson, a bag will be delivered to every home room teacher. The bag's purpose is to allow students to bring in items for the project throughout the following week. The bag also includes "start up materials" that have been donated from the district office and OSU--materials that can be repurposed into something else and added to the student's stash!
The second lesson, Friday (4/15):
- This is your time to design and create your project!
- Check out the slideshow for helpful hints to have full class participation and encourage creativity.
- Once done, please hang the project outside your door. At the next meeting, CMS Green Team will go around and take pictures of each project and give shout outs (and possibly prizes!) to several in the announcements
Amanda McBride, Steward and Michel Wiman, Rep Linus Pauling Middle School
We are starting the Bottle Drop Blue Bag Campaign on Monday and students are making advertisements for the donation campaign. We could set them out on Monday or Tuesday and my students could pick them up everyday at the end of the day.
Green Team is my 7th-period Adv. STEM students and my Digital Media class are making the advertisements. We meet every day in 7th period and they are all 8th graders.
We are currently getting the school garden ready for spring, planting seeds for veggie starts. We are focusing on the Garden as well as the Greenhouse.
