By Kim Siebert MacPhail
It was the last day of school and they were tired, but happy.
The school year was over, the kids had all gone home, and Earth Science teacher Barbara Ferri and Life Science teacher Heidi Scaltreto had just completed the first organized end-of-school locker clean-out, which resulted in mounds of recyclable material plus dozens of three ring binders, pens, pencils and reams of unused paper that will be redistributed for future use.
“We did one grade at a time,” said Barbara Ferri. “The DPW was very, very helpful, bringing over totes [for the recycling] and helping us get set up. Gretchen Carey [Recycling Coordinator] put together a public service video [about how to recycle locker contents] to show the kids.”
“The teachers showed the video to their advisory groups ahead of time so that kids would know what to do when they got to the lockers to clean them out,” added Heidi Scaltreto. “We spread out pails for pencils and pens and rulers and calculators—things of that nature—in the areas the lockers are in, and then a bin for the binders, a tote for the paper goods and a bin for the regular trash.”
In the past, Scaltreto said that after the locker clean-out, there had been “bags and bags” of trash because everything was thrown away, regardless of whether it was recyclable or reusable. This year, after the organized clean-outs, there were only two, not-entirely-filled, barrels of actual trash.
“Stuff that would traditionally have been tossed is going to be recycled,” Ferri reported. “We’re going to parcel the reclaimed [paper, pencils, binders, etc.] to the Learning Centers and to Guidance for the kids who maybe lose stuff and need it to be replaced and also for kids in need. Guidance knows which families could use these things, and this way they won’t have to go out and buy them.”
The time it took to process locker contents in a more thoughtful manner rather than throw everything away was about the same—20 to 30 minutes, Ferri and Scaltreto reported— although the time was used differently in the new system than it had been before.
“It was more focused,” Scaltreto said. “I think it’s important that the kids realize what their actions are. Instead of just taking it all and chucking it in the trash—and now it’s gone!—they actually had to open their three-ring binders, take the paper out, sort it, put it into the recycling. They have to have an understanding of what they’re doing. They’re more involved in the process, rather than trashing everything and [using the rest of the allotted time to chat with friends in the hallway].
The organized locker clean-out initiative is a natural extension of a larger environmental and recycling program that Ferri and Scaltreto work on together throughout the school year. Ferri spoke about how she originally got involved and started motivating students for the effort.
“The Alliance for Climate Education does free assemblies that are quite clever,” Ferri said. “There’s animation on a screen and a [live] speaker, and the two are synched so that the person talks and then—boom!—something happens on the screen. It really hooks the kids into understanding how much energy we’re using and wasting and that they have some ability to [effect change].
“That’s how it started,” Ferri continued. “We had some kids who were gung-ho, and they did a project through the Science Club where they got teachers to be conscious of the fact that they had things plugged in that weren’t being used that were drawing energy. . . .Do you need to have every single light on? When you’re not using your computer, is it turned off? They did a ‘before and after’ to see how much the energy use went down after teachers were made conscious of the issue.”
It was an offshoot of this project that led to a regular school-wide effort to establish—and then improve—recycling systems in the middle school building.
“The money we get from redeeming bottles we donate to the LABBB program, and they use it to fund [what they need]. We also recycle print cartridges and cell phones—there’s a long list of items that www.fundingfactory.com will give us money for. Kids and staff [also] bring things in from home, and we’re using that money to fund the Science Club programs.”
Not only are these activities good for the environment and effective ways to save money and fund programs, the new Science curriculum standards within the Common Core of Learning and the assessment tests that will replace MCAS are “very heavy into climate education,” according to Ferri and Scaltreto. Classroom activities such as charting the decomposition rates of different materials, measuring energy use, or tracking how much water is wasted at the school’s drinking fountains are a good start for getting ahead the foreseen changes to the Earth and Life science courses.
“Instead of being curriculum-driven, the new standards are process- and skill-driven,” said Ferri. “Climate education is big in the new Earth Science standards. Energy conservation and that sort of thing are in there because a good piece of the new standards has to do with what students can do.”
Scaltreto and Ferri have already started to make plans for the next school year, even before they’ve had a chance to rest and unwind from the year they’ve just completed. Several key students behind the JGMS recycling and energy conservation efforts are moving up to the high school and Ferri and Scaltreto hope an early fall assembly from the Alliance for Climate Education will inspire a new group of students.
“It starts with the kids,” Ferri said. “If we do nothing more than educate them—what they can do and what their responsibility is—hopefully they will carry it through, carry it back to their families.”
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