Greener School Project

The students in the National Honor Society wanted to rekindle the recycling efforts at Tamarac. They planned the Greener School Day with five other secondary school service organizations: National Junior Honor Society, High School Senate, Middle School Senate, Biology Club, and Key Club. These student groups 'took over' the schedule for one morning in May 2008 and taught the students and staff about recycling and reusing, renewable energy, composting, legislation on global warming and environmentally 'good' practices, and the recycling program that we are currently using. During the presentations some groups produced videos, others did PowerPoint presentations, some had skits/gaming to encourage participation, others did straight out 'speeches', and in addition, outside speakers who were experts in these fields were brought in to share information too.
Human Energy Machine	Recycling Game

They wrote grants to the BEF and Children for Children and got enough funding to pay for the bins we will all be receiving for our classrooms, hallway bins and signage to encourage recycling in our school.

In the course of doing this project students did research on these issues, contacted local waste management companies, worked with a professor at RPI, and worked within the 'system' at the school district including meeting with the O & M department, the superintendent and the BOE to forge a plan.

As an extension of this project and to include our younger learners, the NHS visited the elementary school and did a presentation on 'green practices' and introduced the recycling program in the elementary school.

The entire school district is now recycling paper and plastics.

This is service learning at its best, a project initiated and carried out by the students.