Crowther Memorial Junior High students going green

Crowther Memorial Junior High's grade 8F class is going green with various projects designed to make our community more eco-friendly.

Lindsay Walker teaches two Language Arts classes that were assigned projects to help our environment after watching the Pixar movie Wall-E. Walker explained the students had the freedom to choose how they would handle the general assignment of making our community more environmentally friendly, which she said has helped the students become more invested in their topics, as they got to choose what to do.

"I'm excited to see the kids excited, I think this is a really important issue that we are all facing so it's great to see kids step up and be leaders in our school and in our town because it's something we need to address," she said.

She's seen several groups handle a wide variety of topics, including composting, recycling, rain barrels, pollination gardens, and more. Walker is particularly happy to see the younger generation step up and find creative ways to reduce waste 

"They are leaders of tomorrow, but they're also our leaders today. If we are going to reduce emissions and meet our goals for 2030, we need to all participate."

Lilly Drake, Malaya Stordy, Rachel Hwang, and Emma Johnson make up one of the student groups, and their focus was on a butterfly and bee garden. On top of helping the bees and butterflies, Malaya said it's also a great way to liven up the school.

"Other than the grass and the trees around the school we don't have a lot of flowers or stuff like that, so we wanted to do a garden," Malaya said.

Lilly added the group specifically wanted to help the bees because of their current dwindling population 

"The bees aren't doing very well because of pesticides and stuff, so we're making this garden because there are no pesticides and it makes it a very safe place for all the birds and bees and butterflies so they can be safe and have an easy place to come to whenever they need food," Lilly said.

Lilly added the group was also inspired to focus specifically on plants because in Wall-E, all the plants except for one died due to pollution and neglect.

"We're trying to make it so that in the future we can have plants, because the bees, the butterflies, and the birds will be able to still be around to take care of the plants and pollinate." 

While the weather currently won't allow for an outdoor garden, the group hopes to start planting some plants and flowers inside, and once the weather gets nicer they'll transfer them to the garden boxes outside of the school. 

The group added if anybody has any spare seeds they don't plan on using, they would gladly accept them as a donation to get their garden started. You can donate it to Crowther Memorial Junior High's main office, and from there the group will get it. 

 Send your news tips, story ideas, pictures, and videos to news@strathmorenow.com