Sustainability Spotlight: Maggie Elsener at the Arts and Humanities Focus Program
May’s Sustainability Spotlight is shining on Maggie Elsener from the Arts and Humanities Focus Program. Elsener has been an art teacher at Arts and Humanities since 2018 and took on the role of Sustainability Champion in August 2025. Throughout the 2025-26 school year, she has shown that sustainability is not a solo project, but a community effort built on communication, forward thinking, and a willingness to ask questions.
Art and sustainability, it turns out, are a natural pairing. Elsener credits the experimental nature of art for creating an openness to sustainable practices and reuse. When students are already accustomed to asking “what can I do with this?”, it becomes easier to ask “how can I use this responsibly?” This overlap has allowed Elsener to weave sustainability into her curriculum in ways that feel organic rather than obligatory.
Elsener recently attended the Students of Sustainability Summit to present “The Ethical Maker: Adornment as a Sustainable Practice,”–a collection of student jewelry projects made from recycled materials. The project asked students to reevaluate their idea of “waste,” shifting their view of it not as an end point, but as a raw material. Elsener tied the project to the work of contemporary artists focused on sustainable art and “transforming the ephemeral into the enduring.”
“You’re creating an artifact, something that may be in the world forever [...] How can we be stewards when we’re creating something like that, thinking through the materials we are using.”
This question of stewardship runs through everything Elsener does in her classroom. She has spoken about the many ways unconventional and donated materials can be incorporated into student artwork, and how reuse is not a limitation but an invitation to test new ideas.
“When you’re creating artwork, there’s a lot of experimentation.”
Beyond individual projects, Elsener has been promoting sustainability across Arts and Humanities in many practical ways. In 2025, the school upgraded to schoolwide composting, and since then she has introduced waste-saving measures including paper towel waste decals, marker recycling, and hard-to-recycle plastics collection. Donated supplies and the use of recycled materials allow students to work with a wide variety of materials without producing unnecessary waste.
What has stood out most, however, is how quickly students have embraced these changes. Elsener found that they were excited to be involved in the recycling process and have been making more efforts to be sustainable as a result.
“Students ask more questions like ‘is this recyclable?’ ‘Is this compostable?’ ‘Can this go in the marker bin?’ They’re trying to ask each other and be more vocal about it.”
This shift in student behavior points to something bigger: sustainability at Arts and Humanities has become a community effort. Students are already passionate about reducing their environmental impact and have taken on an active role in keeping each other accountable.
“Students have always been really great advocates for making posters to make sure people are recycling correctly.”
Elsener hopes students will carry these practices into their future art projects, and she encourages other teachers and staff to promote sustainability in their own classrooms. Central to her message is the idea that you do not need to have all the answers. Sustainability is a learning process, and being willing to ask questions and sit with uncertainty is part of what makes it work.
“To me, it's always a conversation, it's not something that just Arts and Humanities is focused on, it's common for people to be getting different donated supplies [...] it's okay to not know the answers to everything.”
Elsener has shown that sustainability and art share the same spirit: curiosity, experimentation, and seeing potential where others might not. It starts with asking questions, leaning on the people around you, and being mindful of the materials you use and how you use them. With a commitment to expanding these efforts in the years to come and dreams of starting a school garden, we can’t wait to see what Elsener and her students do next.
