by Renee Hunter
Wooster Elementary is the third “green school” in Arkansas, and that’s exciting. But more exciting is what’s happening inside the facility, which opened in the fall of 2008.

To achieve LEED (Leadership: Energy, Environmental Design) Certification, three requirements must be fulfilled. The first – following environmental guidelines during construction – has been achieved. The others – using the building as a teaching tool and adopting “green” practices – are up to the faculty and students who have embraced the challenge with enthusiasm.

The fourth- and fifth-graders heard the architect talk about the building’s “green” design and construction; they heard a Trane representative explain how the heating/cooling system’s design makes it energy efficient. They then committed being “teachers” and passing the information on to the younger students, their parents and the community.

Ambassadors chosen from these two grades serve as tour guides for school visitors, pointing out the automatic lights that dim in response to ambient light and turn off when the room is empty, the energy-conserving north-south facing windows, and other “green” features.

In addition to its eco-friendly design, the school also recycles cardboard, paper, newspaper, plastic and aluminum.

 “We want the kids to learn the habit of recycling so that it will be a part of their lives as adults,” said Principal Lenett Thrasher.

Each classroom has a recycling bin, and color-coded bins are placed in other areas. A “green team” consisting of two students from each third-, fourth- and fifth-grade class is responsible for collecting items from the bins and taking them to a recycling trailer. The trailer and color-coded bins were purchased with a $15,000 grant, written by Kelli Smith, from the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality and Faulkner County.

Plastic, paper and newspapers are taken to the Conway Sanitation Department’s recycling center.

Students learned that recycling a three-foot stack of newspapers saves one tree. Jennifer Richardson’s husband built the school a 3-foot high newspaper collection bin for ease of recording.

“They get so excited; they go nuts,” said Assistant Principal Brian Cossey. “They’re counting the trees that they save.”

The students plan to have a sizable “green” forest by year’s end.

Aluminum cans and cardboard are sold. The can money is used to buy library books, and the cardboard money goes into the activity fund. Students are also collecting worn-out leather tennis shoes and selling them to Nike for shredding and recycling into playground covering.

But all the trash isn’t being recycled; some is being creatively reused.

In October, students held a “Trashion Show” featuring products made from trash. They ranged from plastic-bottle bird feeders, blue-jean lunch bags and baby-food-jar paperclip holders to a toy car rebuilt as a remote-control laundry hamper, a Huggies® Container plastic-bag holder and a juice-jug rain gauge, to name just a few.

For Christmas, students created “trash” ornaments using aluminum cans, milk cartons, scratched CDs and paper. The Christmas program, modeled on the Dr. Seuss story about the Grinch, was called “Christmas in Who-ville” and focused on recycling.

“We’re trying to get the community involved,” Mrs. Richardson said. “The community is invited to use the recycling trailer.”

The “green” motto – “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” – is also integrated into the curriculum. Mrs. Richardson’s fifth-graders found ways to reduce paper usage after studying how, during the American Colonial Period, paper was scarce and people had to find alternatives. Now, most parents receive the class newsletter via the Internet instead of a paper copy, and students are making a practice of taking notes from the dry-erase board before a test instead of being given copied study guides.

The class also researched LEDs (light-emitting diodes) compared to regular Christmas lights and discovered that LEDs use 90 percent less electricity, and that if every U.S. home switched to them, the electricity saved would power 200,000 homes for a year.

While learning about persuasive writing, Ms. Smith’s students wrote speeches designed to convince people to recycle, which were videotaped for presentation to school and community groups.

“They are awake to what the world is going to be like 20 years from now, when they are grown,” Ms. Smith said of their research.

The class’s non-fiction project was to write step-by-step directions for making the “trash” ornaments they had created and put the directions on Power Point for use by the first- and second-graders. ‘This is easy because they are so excited about it,” she said.

Ms. Smith also plans to have the class design and publish brochures on the school’s recycling program. The aim is to encourage community recycling.

During “green week” – the first week in February – students will measure how much trash they generate in a day and then find ways to reduce that amount. At the end of the week, another measurement will be taken to see how they’ve done. Results will be announced at the school’s formal grand opening.