Green Captains in Georgia: Students Present at National Service-Learning Conference
As “Green Captains” from Lowcountry Prep, we were given the opportunity to present this week at the National Youth Leadership Council's 2011 National Service-Learning Conference in Atlanta, Georgia.
On March 7, we gave a presentation about what we’ve done at our school through the Project Learning Tree GreenSchools! program. We talked about how we’ve saved energy and money by switching to 32 Watt CFLs and delamping, and how we started a recycling program.
The the conference has a focus on service-learning, so we talked about the lessons we’ve learned about responsibility and leadership while investigating our school. At the end, we gave everyone a chance to use the tools given to us by PLT that we used to investigate our campus. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and were ready to try to implement something similar at their own schools.
Some students and teachers expressed that they would face challenges, for different reasons, in starting a program like GreenSchools! at their various schools. In response, the advice we gave was to first bring together a small group of enthusiastic students and teachers who are willing to spearhead the program at their school, then to focus on educating the student body.
There was certainly no lack of enthusiasm in our audience, which was really inspiring. The National Service-Learning Conference was a great chance to get together with like-minded people, to share our passion for the environment, and to show more people the value of GreenSchools!
We had a great time thanks to PLT and Learn and Serve America who made the trip to Georgia possible. We learned a lot this week and are excited to get back home and keep working!
This guest post was written by 10th Grade student Madeleine (Maddy) of Lowcountry Prep in Pawleys Island, South Carolina.
Visit www.pltgreenschools.org to learn more about how to bring the GreenSchools! program to your community.
Photos credit: Al Stenstrup
