Sustainability Spotlight: Co-Champions at Park Middle School
October’s Sustainability Spotlight is shining on Park Middle School! Stephanie Tabor, Park Spanish teacher, and Marina Bush, Park Science teacher, are sustainability co-champions for their second year now. As Sustainability Champions, they facilitate green projects and engage students with environmental topics. Last year, Park Middle School was celebrated as the Greenest Secondary School in LPS for their participation in the Green Schools Recognition Program. Schools can earn points by completing activities and earn funding to support sustainability projects.
“Our plan is to invest our $500 into a meaningful project that has a lasting impact on the school.”
Tabor and Bush became interested in the role of Sustainability Champion after seeing what the former Champion, Shawn Roberts, was doing for sustainability at Park Middle. Roberts made a huge impact at Park and they expressed wanting to keep her legacy going. The co-champions stay motivated by seeing how passionate and excited the students are about the Green Team. One way they explore those interests is by inviting in community partners. For example, last year to celebrate Earth Day they welcomed a local architecture firm to lead a discussion on sustainable design.
“The architects from BVH came and talked about what it is like to create buildings and they talked about making them sustainable, and then they had students create buildings. One group made a water-powered building, one had a garden on the roof, one group made one solar powered. So the architects told them logistically what would work and they showed them prototypes for potential future buildings.”
Park’s Green Team is very hands-on with their sustainability efforts, organizing activities and promoting environmental campaigns throughout the school. They meet every other week to plan and run activities like a community litter cleanup and a recycling and trash bin tally. The team spent one of their meetings walking around the school building counting how many recycling and trash bins they had and where they were located so they could assess their needs for recycling. The team also created posters and news ads to promote the Water Waste and Bring Your Own Water Bottle Campaigns. These activities and resources the students created have expanded their environmental knowledge and experiences to become a greener school. Park also has an active garden club that meets weekly to take care of the garden.
Some other activities completed last year include:
- Water Waste Campaign
- Cans4Books Recycling Drive
- Lower Platte South NRD Guest Speakers
- Trex Plastic Film Recycling Challenge
- Outdoor art lessons
This year, the team has already done a litter cleanup around the school and brainstormed some projects the students want to do this year. A great point-of-view that the co-champions emphasize is to let the students take charge in the schools’ sustainability efforts, while helping them steer toward the right direction.
“Our only advice is to let the students run the group because last year was our first year, and we learned so much from them.”
Updated October 3, 2022
