Category: The Green Footprints

Follow The Green Footprints At Southwest Middle School

Hanna MohnFall 2022 Project Teams

Greetings, we are The Green Footprints! This fall of 2022, our EACAP team focused on sustainability in grades K-12 in order to bring awareness to the negative effects of implausible building sites for America’s youth. We had the honor of partnering with Southwest Middle School in Reading, PA, in order to spread knowledge and create pieces of art on ceiling tiles inspired by environmental topics.

Team Members: Haili Baxter (Front Right), from Florida, takes an interest in playing Volleyball and watching TV in her free time while majoring in Criminal Justice. Lauren Burisky (Back Left), from Pennsylvania, is majoring in Hospitality and likes to spend time with friends and family. Paige Barrineau (Front Left), from Pennsylvania, spends her free time drawing and watching Netflix and plans to major in accounting, and Hanna Mohn (Front Middle), from Pennsylvania, is majoring in Criminal Justice and works/studies in her free time.

Research: Our research project focused on sustainability within schools across the U.S. as well as internationally. Since school is essential for educational purposes and students’ learning development, they will not be leaving anytime soon. In return, we wanted to research different ways we could improve the quality of schools and their effect on the environment. Linked above is our narrated presentation, which reviews our project. We looked at schools in recent years that have been in the spotlight for making greener choices, as well as the timeline of environmentalism itself. We discussed how widespread this problem is, what factors are most brought up when environmentalism is looked at in schools, and the problems schools can cause for the environment. Lastly, we discuss solutions that faculty and students can use to create a more sustainable environment while on campus.

Our Service Project Summary: In October we were tasked with visiting Southwest Middle School and obtaining two tiles per group member to turn into environmental paintings that related to chemical science as well as physical science. Lauren chose to paint the food web (physical) and Nitrogen element (chemical), Hanna chose to paint the energy pyramid (physical) and Oxygen element (chemical), Paige chose to paint photosynthesis (physical) and the Sulfur element (chemical), and Haili chose to paint the moon phases (physical) and Carbon element (chemical).

EACAP Service Video

Hanna’s Progress and Finished Tiles:

Paige’s Progress and Finished Tiles:


Lauren’s Progress and Finished Tiles:

 

 

 

Haili’s Progress and Finished Tiles:

Reflection: As our EACAP project is coming to an end, along with our collaboration with MSU team Rumechi Uni, we have learned some valuable lessons that will be useful to us throughout our lives. We became more comfortable talking to a variety of students, including those out of the country. We gained social skills by learning how to communicate in critical situations in order to solve problems, and we realized we would not have been able to complete such a large project without each other’s help and insight. We had trouble with the time difference and making progress when the other teams hadn’t, but we overcame these problems by setting a weekly time frame that worked for all of us in order to be on a google meet, and focused on our progress so we weren’t held back.