This guest post was written by Sarah Davie, an environmental educator.
It is both an honor and privilege to be an educator — we shape the future, and influence tens of hundreds of young children who will grow into leaders and citizens of tomorrow. Knowing this, I feel a huge responsibility to train my students to be conscious about helping re-beautify the planet. I never had the mentality that my students “wouldn’t get it” because I taught children with special needs; I knew my energy and passion would overflow into student engagement and phenomenal class projects.
I had the “Who cares?” mentality with homework — I could not stand the holiday packets administrators forced us to create every extended holiday week/end. We had to show each mid and final year evaluation that we were sending homework to families, even though working in a high-needs classroom in a high-poverty high school district, I found I would get about 30% or less homework back than what was sent home. I abhorred printing out and killing unnecessary trees just to show someone in a higher position that I did what they asked.
In order to find the best balance between my personal values and the expectations of the job, I decided to only send tangible tools and resources
home to parents, instead of pen and paper homework that they were expected to send back to me. I was in constant communication with every family of my students about their academic and social routines at home; I had a small classroom, so it was manageable to do this with 12 students. I used
the app Class Dojo to post and send photos and articles to parents of what we did in school and how to work with them at home to succeed and help their
education.
When I took a job in January of 2018 to teach 5/6th grade students with ‘mild’ learning disabilities, my values followed. These students also had phones, and I was able to add another objective for the academic year: teach my kids that phones are tools, not toys. I sent virtual links to news articles and
online games, and tangible communication boards and science experiments home with students after working with them in the classroom. Instead of a spring break homework packet, I gave each student a plant to take care of from our class ‘window garden’. Using technology in the classroom, I modeled good practices and provided my students with the opportunities to exercise their abilities to use their phones to research and take data.
Along with reading articles and experiments sent home with students, Litterati was also part of their homework. If I want students to make a positive impact every day, why not ask them to pick up at least one piece of litter each day? Litterati is free to use, and I could also create a ‘team’ for my students, where they could see how much trash and what trash each individual was picking up around their homes. Not only were we competing with each other (myself included) and discussing the trash we picked up, we also became a part of the solution for a cleaner world — which was empowering for young
individuals to understand and model.
Urban environments are infamous for their ‘dirty’ streets — when I informed my students that Litterati, or picking up trash, would be part of their homework, they asked, “There is so much trash by my house, how can picking up just one piece help?” One week, a student showed the class photos of the street outside his father’s apartment — it was full of litter. This sparked a conversation, and unit, about spreading awareness of the massive amounts of pollution that is plaguing our planet, and helping living things thrive.
Along with creating a unit on endangered animals and making a ‘classroom store’ in which all money went to a nonprofit that supported animal conservation, we also started a unit on trash pollution. We discussed other forms of pollution (we were in a school that was impacted by Newark’s lead crisis) and concentrated on plastic/tangible pollution in our land/oceans.
We learned about the trash gyres that are in the oceans, the illegal dumping of waste by large corporations, examples of environmental racism, the affect warming oceans have on the coral reefs and icebergs in the poles. We discussed the interconnectedness of the planet, and how our individual
choices have a large impact on the health of the environment. We talked about, and put into practice, various alternative solutions to decrease our waste.
To make the learning real, and illustrate the incredible visual impact of waste, we reused Ziploc and grocery bags to collect trash from breakfast and lunches. It quickly increased, especially when the students discussed the project with their peers, who would also visit our classroom to support our
endangered species store. “Can I be part of your trash project? Can I help make art trash stuff for your board?” I invited students to be part of our Litterati trash group. One week, I took care of my nieces, and they took my phone and blew up my Litterati trash count to over 80 in a weekend — one niece even asked for a trash grabber for her birthday. No matter what, the important thing is that students were learning and DOING what we talked about in school.
After we initially put up our bulletin board, it grew past the bulletin
board and became a hallway staple. Trash was hanging from the ceiling,
facts about the negative impact of plastic pollution on ocean life filled
the walls, and students were saying,
“Wow, this a lot. We need to reduce our waste.”
“Is our trash really in ALL of the oceans?”
“Plastic pollution kills how many animals in the ocean every year?”
“Why are fishnets in the ocean?”
“Why don’t the fishermen take them on the boats?”
This culminating project is the end result of countless research and planning hours, hands-on and technology-driven activities, and backwards planning, concentrating on the objective of educating and inspiring students to act and be the solution for a better world. No matter what political affiliation you have, brands you buy, and choices you make, it is safe to say that most of us agree it is wrong for the human population to be murdering our oceans and planet because of our commitment to convenience. Litterati was the daily
spark of change that made an impact on my classroom, and extended to my school, family, and friends.
With our political (and physical) climate so polluted in this country, it is imperative that we provide students with tools of the future. Children around the world are speaking out in support of data and science, and teachers are at the forefront of change; our role is to provide our students with critical thinking, strategies, and tools that will support their values and shape a better future. This school year, I challenge teachers to use apps like Litterati in their classroom, and if you would like some inspiration, check out my vlog for units, facts, and information!
(Sarah Davie is an educator and environmental enthusiast dedicated to building an inclusive, diverse, and beautiful planet. You can follow her work on her website, LinkedIn or Instagram.)
