Carmel Clay Schools Green Team
2015-16
Under the leadership of Marcia Roberts, the CCS Green Team met 7 times throughout the year to share ideas and plan events.
Scroll down to see how groups at individual schools made a difference!
Woodbrook Elementary Green Team
Kelly Stemnock
- Educational displays (about reduce, reuse, recycle) in the school's hallways
- Holiday lights recycling
- Paper recycling in the classrooms
- School Spirit Day to celebrate Earth Day
- Art workshop about global climate change
- Recycle America Day celebration with free give-aways
- Building-wide education on CCS Food Rescue program
- End-of-year marker collection for recycling
Orchard Park Elementary Green Cubs
4th and 5th grade students
- Wrote and received a grant to plant a Tulip Poplar tree on campus
- Did a crayon drive with teachers
- Holiday lights drive with staff and student families
- MakerSpace activity where students created a project with old boxes and other things
- Provided weekly green tips on the announcements
- Made signage to promote recycling to students and staff
Mohawk Trails Elementary Green Team
Beth Whitaker, Hella Rumschlag, and Deb Gastineau
3rd and 4th grade students
- Weekly tips by Green Team members on the morning broadcast
- Created a US map made of cereal boxes with Mr. Barajas, art teacher
- Green tips on posters and on slides for the flatscreen slideshow in the lobby
- Holiday lights recycling drive
- Mrs. Gastineau taught us how to make reusable bags from old t-shirts
- Spirit Days for Earth Week
- Marker collection for recycling
- Garden plot in the CCS Community Garden
Prairie Trace Elementary Green Team
Teacher Liaison: Nick Manuszak
Parent Rep: Sara Carlisle
- Rain barrel decoration and auction for Bowen Engineering
- Holiday lights recycling drive
- Biweekly disposal of staff recycle bins
- Participation in the Carmel Climate Change Recovery Ordinance
- Guest speaker Maddie Adkins (Promise Project)
- Earth Week awareness initiative
- display case
- theme days
- environmental announcements
Forest Dale Elementary Green Team
Jessica TenBrook
- Collected lights for the Holiday Light Drive
- Students created signs for staff members to place by their light switch to remind students and staff to turn off the lights when they leave the room
- Entered the Earth Day Art contest where one student was a Finalist and another was a semi-finalist
- Our green team members went on our school news program during Recycle America Day and Earth Week to give helpful tips on how to be more green.
- Created a bulletin board in the school to encourage turning the lights off when leaving a room.
- End of the year marker collection for recycling.
- Created recycled snowman ornaments using bottle caps.
Smoky Row Elementary Green Team
Stacey Summers
- Our Cafeteria Manager, Dianne Tamez, came to show the kids what could be recycled and what could not – from there the kids were in the cafeteria daily standing by the trashcans and helping students with their recycling
- Learned about reducing, reusing, and recycling from Ray’s Recycling
- Our adult helper, Lauren Gibbs, talked to us about composting
- Christmas Light Recycling
- In March we received a Carmel Green Teen Micro Grant for our project “It’s In the Bag!”
- We bought 810 reusable bags and passed them out on Earth day to everyone at Smoky Row. In the bag was a flyer that told facts about how long it takes for plastic bags to decay and other facts to get everyone to start using reusable bags. It also listed many ways the bags could be used.
College Wood Elementary Green Team
Abby English, Staff Liaison
Susan McCord, Cafeteria Manager
- CWE has held weekly Recycling Club meetings. At meetings, students would collect and dispose of recycling around the school, brainstorm ideas for CWE green initiatives and spirit weeks, and work together on recycling related activities and projects.
- CWE Recycling Club participated in College Wood’s Annual Carnival, by creating a “Cardboard Arcade” of games, only using recycled/reused materials to create the games. The Cardboard Arcade Project was inspired by Caine’s Arcade .
- The CWE Recycling Club led 2 spirit weeks this year: one in November for America Recycles Day and one during April for Earth Day. Recycling Club members posted facts in the cafeteria, delivered facts on the announcements every day, and challenged CWE students to show their green efforts and wear colors every day to raise awareness of various ways to recycle and live in a sustainable way. CWE students all over the school could win the prize of carrying the Recycling Club spirit stick and/or extra recesses for showing how they go green!
- Our cafeteria participates in the Food Rescue and has daily “Recycling Rangers” to help students decide what to recycle every day.
Carmel High School
Carmel High School's Freshman Locker Clean-Out:
The CCS Green Team and nearly 30 sophomores helped the freshman sustainably clean out their lockers. Books, binders, school supplies and locker shelves were collected to be donated. Many, many boxes of paper were recycled in the commingled bins.
Plots to Plates Community Garden
For the 2015-2016 school year, the Plots to Plates Community Garden welcomed nearly 700 students to the garden to plant seeds, learn about wise watering techniques, soil and composting, the importance of eating healthy and more! We welcomed 5 2/3 challenge classes, 5 first grade classes, 17 3rd grade classes and, for the first time, 19 student's from Woodbrook's life skills classes.
We welcomed many new gardeners to the garden and have partnered with Deborah Woods Associates, whose employees have volunteered to take care of the food pantry plots for the summer, thus taking the "community" aspect of the garden to a whole new level.
Compost Bins Built at the CCS Gardens
Members of Boy Scout troop 202 built a large, wooden, 3-compartment compost bin system at the CCS Plots to Plates Organic Community Garden. Educational signs were added to the bins to teach gardeners how to use them. The community garden generates lots of organic waste, and composting will allow the garden scraps to be broken down and utilized to feed future garden plants, reducing the need for purchased compost. Because much of the heavy garden waste will now go into the compost bins, the garbage trucks will use less fuel, and less pollution will be created. This project is co-funded by United Way of Central Indiana’s Youth as Resources and the Carmel Green Teen Micro-Grant Program. It is an Eagle Scout project.
Woodbrook Butterfly Garden
Scouts in Boy Scout Troop 109 replanted a long neglected Teaching Butterfly Garden in a Woodbrook Elementary School courtyard area. The area now contains a mix of hardy annual and perennial flowers that will create habitats for Indiana’s native butterfly populations and pollinator insect and bird species. Second grade students now use this garden as part of their curriculum, learning about the life cycle of a butterfly. This project turned unattractive, unused area into a beautiful, environmentally beneficial area used for teaching. This is an Eagle Scout project funded through the Carmel Green Teen Micro-Grant Program. This program funds youth-led environmental projects in Carmel. See CarmelGreenTeen.org.