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Project Teaches 6th-Graders They Can Help the Planet
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Most middle school students who fiddled with the school's electrical wires and turned off the hall and bathroom lights would probably wind up in the principal's office.
But over the past week, sixth-graders at Seneca Ridge Middle School in Sterling have roamed the halls in semi-darkness.
It's part of an experiment designed by their science teacher, Rick Peck, to teach them how they can help reduce their carbon footprint by conserving energy.
"If we save energy, we'll, like, help the world," said Kurt Funkhouser, 12. "So we won't be killing the world, basically."
The experiment focuses on the school's C wing, which houses the sixth grade. Electricians tapped into the wing's transformer and put a doughnut-shaped meter around the wires to monitor how many kilowatts were being used at a given time.
Photo Gallery
Students Save Carbon
Rick Peck, a sixth-grade science teacher at Seneca Ridge Middle School, shows his class a graph that illustrates the power usage in the sixth-grade wing of the school. (Tracy A. Woodward)
Peck shows his class a ceiling light in the sixth-grade wing that will be darkened because it is using too much energy. (Tracy A. Woodward)
Sixth graders at Seneca Ridge Middle School walk into a hall in the sixth-grade wing that has been darkened to save energy. (Tracy A. Woodward)
Seneca Ridge sixth-graders Meghan Kelly, Kurt Funkhouser and Jake Browning, all 12, are also working on reducing energy usage in their homes. (Tracy A. Woodward)
One morning, teachers plugged in every electrical appliance they could, and students monitored the usage. The students also checked to see how much they were using on a typical day, then turned off the hall and bathroom lights and some classroom lights, and checked again.
"We were able to see the actual kilowatts at a particular moment being used by us, and not by PE, not by the seventh grade and not by the library," said Peck, who received a $5,000 grant from Dominion Virginia Power for the project, as well as $500 grants from the Chamberlain and Hrdlicka law firm and the Loudoun Educational Association. The school PTA has promised $2,000.
The idea took two years to bring to fruition, and its goal was to enlighten students about the source and consequences of the energy they consume.
"They learned that the actions that they take have physical consequences," Peck said. "Students don't care too much about the kilowatt hours, and they certainly don't care about saving the school money, but they absolutely care about the environment, and they absolutely don't want to be the ones responsible for killing off the last polar bear cub in the Arctic."
Some students had more ambitious ideas for reducing their carbon footprint, such as planting grass on the roof, and Peck said he would have liked to have experimented with turning off the air conditioning, which uses a large percentage of the school's electricity.
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But the air conditioning is centrally controlled; for the C wing, monitoring light use proved to be the most practical. Of the 750 lights in the wing, 56 were disabled. According to the students' calculations, it has reduced their energy use by about 4 percent.
At first, the older students at the school wondered why the sixth-graders' halls were so dim, illuminated only by security lights.
"All the seventh- and eighth-graders walk by and they're like, 'What happened to the sixth-grade wing?' " said Meghan Kelly, 12, one of Peck's students. "We're like, 'We're saving energy,' and they say, 'That's cool.' "
On Tuesday, the students will hold a town hall-style meeting about what to do next to promote conservation awareness. But Peck has already seen signs that they are more aware.
"They now know that the leading way light bulbs get powered is by power plants that burn coal," he said. "Most kids had never thought about the connection, that every time they use the TV, the computer, the lights, the refrigerator, somewhere there's a smokestack, and somewhere someone's producing coal."
Kurt agreed. "My grandma has been trying to make us turn out the lights, and we'd always forget to," he said. "But now I turn the lights off more."
Jake Browning, 12, said the program has supplemented what he learned about energy use as a Boy Scout, and Meghan learned that besides turning off lights, she can conserve energy by taking shorter hot showers and unplugging electrical appliances when they are not in use.
"I knew that we were hurting the Earth" with overproduction of carbon dioxide, she said. "But now I know that I can make a difference."
Tagged: energy, environment, schools, Seneca Ridge Middle School, students
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"I knew that we were hurting the Earth", but if we save energy, we "won't be killing the world, basically."
Yikes.
So, this was in a comparative religion class?
Posted by BarbaraMunsey (anonymous) on May 7, 2009 at 10:57 a.m. (Suggest removal)
This is tiny savings but educational.
Significant green impact could be had if we used our existing school buildings more hours per day and more days per year instead of building new ones. For example, our high schools could have two student shifts. A morning shift that starts class at 8:00 am and had sports and extra curricular activities in the afternoon. Another group that has sports and extra-curricular activities in the morning and classes from noon to 6. Instead of buses that run empty have buses take kids home while it is bringing kids for the second shift. No need for activity buses since students can ride the regular bus for the second shift. The morning school's football team has away games on the weeks when the afternoon school has home games so we get twice as much use out of the sports facilities.
The point is that our school infrastructure is terribly wasteful from an industrial engineering perspective. The administrators and school board talk about building greener buildings but miss that the biggest green impact occurs by eliminating the need for more buildings. The plus of using scheduling changes to achive greeness is that it would also have tremendous budget savings.
Posted by EdwardMyers (anonymous) on May 7, 2009 at 11:44 a.m. (Suggest removal)
BarbaraMunsey,
Way to go, lets attack the way 6th graders speak during an interview. This seems like an awesome experiment that might awaken people to their surroundings and how they impact them.
Posted by the_nard_dogg (anonymous) on May 8, 2009 at 12:21 a.m. (Suggest removal)
EdwardMyers. You are right that the schools could make a significant green impact if they had two shifts. Except for the increased travel of busses to bring kids from further away to use one building. And most parents would love coming home from work early to take their kids to school or make sure they get out the door to the bus stop. And most kids would love going to school and get home after dark. Teachers would love working at night also. I am sure those kids would also enjoy their parents missing their morning football games because they were at work. Would these teams ever play each other, or just hear about the other teams that play in the morning or at night? Where would the fans park if the lots were full of student's and faculty vehicles?
Your idea sounds great, but is completely impractical.
Posted by the_nard_dogg (anonymous) on May 8, 2009 at 12:31 a.m. (Suggest removal)
the_nard_dogg, I'm concerned about who so indoctrinated them that they speak in terms of themselves as destroyers and killers of the planet.
As far as I'm concerned, THIS is where we could really trim the school budget; on religious/political indoctrination taking time away from legitimate science isntruction.
However, as it was grant funded(in itself carrying a whiff of politics, given Dominion and PATH, all the more concerning that the kids seem to take as a given that humans are destructive killers), not much can be done.
If the PTA wants to fund it, their business.
But it appears to me that the lesson obviously already learned has less to do with the science of energy than it does with a religious and political philosophy of self-hatred.
Posted by BarbaraMunsey (anonymous) on May 8, 2009 at 2:27 p.m. (Suggest removal)
the_nard_dogg: football games are at the same time you just have a home game every week -- but with different kids and parents. (The other team is at an away game, get it?) Yes some kids would love getting to sleep in and parents would love to know their kids were in school in the afternoon instead of running around the neighborhood getting into trouble. And some parents work shifts (flex schedule) so having some flexibility with child schedules means an easier commute and a better home life.
Posted by EdwardMyers (anonymous) on May 11, 2009 at 12:27 p.m. (Suggest removal)
100,000 years after the last human draws breath, there will be no trace of humanity. So how exactly are we hurting the Earth? It will be here longer than we are!
Posted by bschweiker (anonymous) on May 15, 2009 at 12:40 p.m. (Suggest removal)
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