How Local Students Celebrated Earth Day
Earth Day Essay Contest at Walker Upper Elementary School
This year C3 staffers Teri Kent and Andrea Bostrom were asked to step in as judges for the Earth Day essay contest held at Walker Upper Elementary School. They had the pleasure of working with Ms. Crystal Beasley, a passionate educator and collaborator there, to spread the climate action word at Walker (more to come on that in the fall when Walker takes part in our Classroom Climate Challenge!)
60 students from Ms. Washburg, Ms. Farrar, Ms. Smith, Ms. Bertram, Ms. Ramicone, and Ms. Beasley’s class wrote essays on various aspects of environmental stewardship including recycling, gardening, and renewable energy. Below are some of our favorite quotes from the essay contest winners, Jack Weiler, Serena Davis, and Henry Busching.
Jack let his voice shine while espousing the importance of recycling for his essay: “Well if you don’t recycle, you better hop to it because it’s 2020!”
He also offered some helpful recycling facts. “If you recycled an aluminum can, they can make 20 new cans with the same amount of energy used to make the original can. Also, recycling just one glass bottle saves enough energy to light a 100 watt light bulb for four hours!... [Also] recycling one ton of paper saves 17 trees.”
Serena wrote about the importance of reducing plastic use. “If we continue to throw plastics on streets, beaches, in oceans, etc, then it’s all gonna come back to us and harm the Earth in more ways than it already does.”
Henry touted gardening in his essay: “Bored during quarantine? Well, have you ever thought of making a garden? Today I will tell you about the importance of gardening to the earth! Growing gardens are beneficial to the earth in many ways.”
Other Earth Day Student Activism
Field School held a problem-solving session on Friday from 9-2pm in virtual classrooms. They invited Andrea Bostrom to kick off the session to talk for 20 minutes on the key factors contributing to climate change. Then students broke out into groups to brainstorm their solutions and innovations which they presented at the end of the session.
Agnor Hurt student, Reed Chrobak, challenged his fellow students to create Earth Art outside to inspire others. See the CBS19 News Story about Reed. He also included a shout-out to classmates about our virtual climate camp, in the school’s Environmental Club newsletter (which he founded). Our climate camp was also shared with students and families at Peabody School, Walker Upper Elementary, and Field School.
Gudrun Campbell, who organized the local youth Climate Strike and had planned to host a larger event for Earth Day moved to digital activism by taking part of the Earth Day Network’s 24 hours of digital climate action at earthday.org.
The staff at C3 feels so inspired and energized by the advocacy and climate action of local students, on Earth Day and every day. Keep up the great work!