The Green Footprint Project: How Middle School Students Inspired Their Community and Raised Their Self-Worth

       How does this sound for a school project? - “Students complete Internet research, create pamphlets, give presentations, and take on other activities to alert the school community to local environmental issues.”  With the focus on the human environment’s impact on Earth, a fifth grade teacher embarked on an experimental project with her students and reports very positive results in this article. Students brainstormed ideas and collectively chose the focus of local air pollution.  This was inspired by their observation of idling cars outside their classroom’s open windows.  The project was multidisciplinary. Of course, science was used to design research like collecting data by timing how long individual cars idled over a three week period.  Critical thinking skills where taught and developed as well.  Using math, students analyzed the data on idling cars and computed such things as amount of gas and money wasted by idling.  This led to ideas like parents walking their students home, carpooling and turning off the ignition while waiting. Social studies came into play with students attempting to get community and governmental support for “idle-free school zones.”  English Language Arts were incorporated into the project with written and oral presentations.

It is difficult to be critical of an article and project that I feel has great merit.  The one problem I had with the article is the “Self-Worth” factor.  If this factor is important enough to include in the title of the article, I would expect much more attention and discussion devoted to it within the body of the article. The only mention of this aspect is the author’s sense that students’ observation of their project’s impact on their community gave them a stronger sense of self and that research suggests that students who use their own ideas and language develop a positive sense of self-worth. I’m not sure how one would measure self-worth, but I feel it is essential to expand on this if one makes the claim, or leave it out of the title and have it be more of an interesting side note to the project which, again, is a great idea, was implemented well and deserves acknowledgement.

Cortez-Riggio, K. (2011, January). The Green footprint Project: How Middle School Students Inspired Their Community and Raised Their Self-Worth. English Journal, 100.3, 39-43.