Youth Yellow Pages

Two eighth grade classes from Turner Middle School have been diligently working on many service-learning projects this year under the direction of Ms. Phyllis Green and Mrs. Carrie Duarte. The students not only learned about their environment and surroundings, but also have taken their knowledge and used it to benefit themselves and their community.

One of the major environmental projects was their work at the Cobbs Creek Community Environmental Education Center. Both of the eighth-grade classes learned about the impaortance of trees and the protection of animals, and the role humans play. The two eighth grade classes were able to plant over 300 trees in the park. They were also able to replace gravel on the trail, which was destroyed by a flood earlier this year.

Another environmental service learning project involved cleaning our neighborhood storm drains, identifying our watershed, and encouraging our community to maintain the quality of our drinking water. After the classes cleaned around the storm drains, they placed a decal on the storm drains that read, "NO Dumping, Drains to the River." These decals were donated by the Philadelphia Water Department (P.W.D.). This helped the community understand our role in keeping our drinking water clean. The trash we throw on the ground goes through the storm drain, is carried to the water treatment plant to be cleaned, and eventually gets returned to our homes.

After studying about environmental science and the effects nature has on our surroundings, the students came up with the idea of a Turner Youth Yellow Pages (T.Y.Y.P). This incorporated the character education training teachers received from Delaware Valley Earth Force. T.Y.Y.P is a phone directory created as a service learning exit project by Turner’s graduating class of 2005. The purpose of this directory is to help educate and encourage positive behaviors for young children of all ages, and to distribute it to the community as a reference tool. We want our youth to be inspired to do something positive, and to help better their community. This book is not only for children. We want to bridge the gap between parents, children, the community, and the schools. We need to work together to maintain a higher standard of living. To help accomplish this task, we have provided a list of agencies that can help answer different questions and assist the community with various problems. T.Y.Y.P is designed to provide a way for us to all work together.