This was our first year as an Earth Force school and it was an exciting one. We formed an after school club known as the Lower School Environmental Action Club (EAC for short). Twenty-three enthusiastic fourth and fifth graders from five different classes signed up for the EAC’s Monday afternoon sessions, that began in Geoffrey Selling’s science room, but quickly moved out onto our large campus for project work.
As the children worked through the Earth Force process, trying to define their main project, they undertook many smaller projects on the way. Throughout the autumn and early winter, the children planted bulbs: more than 1,200 of them. These were provided by the Germantown Friends School’s Parents Association. A number of classes helped with planting but the EAC did the bulk of the work, planting hundreds of bulbs each week. The center of the school’s campus had just been transformed from a huge ugly parking lot into a mixed play area and green space, known as the Commons.
As the children worked on these projects, they gradually refined their major project plans down to restoration work on the Lower School Woods, continuing the work of a previous science teacher who’d begun the wood’s clean-up. Assisted by school parent, Nicole Juday, a landscape architect, the EAC decided to improve the paths and plantings in the woods this year. It was challenging to work on this during the winter because of the frozen ground and icy conditions and so the children made recycling signs to bide the winter away. As the ground warmed up, the work began. The children dug narrow ditches along all the paths in the woods and laid log slices in the ditches to define the path boundaries. Primex Garden Center helped the EAC by selling us shovels, trowels, rakes and other quality garden tools at highly discounted rates. Thank you, Primex. The school’s Maintenance Staff also helped by loaning wheelbarrows and providing keys and access.
In May and June, as work on the woods continued, the children undertook building a butterfly garden adjoining the Commons. That involved improving the soil with almost a ton of composted cow manure and peat moss, and then planting the plants (provided by the Parents’ Association) and watering them into place. The year finished with a grand EAC picnic, attended by more than 60 enthusiasts: the children and their families as well as Earth Force staff members. The guests watched slides of the children working, were taken on student-led tours of the work, joined in a graduation ceremony for our fifth grade leaders (moving on to Middle School) and finished up with a festive picnic.