Teachers Go Green Ahead of the New School Year
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (KEYT) — Local teachers are finding new ways to turn discarded materials into hands-on classroom lessons as they prepare for the new school year.
Explore Ecology’s Art From Scrap gives paper, art supplies and other reclaimed materials another purpose instead of sending them to the landfill. The Santa Barbara creative reuse store diverts thousands of pounds of materials from the Tajiguas Landfill each year.
“We focus on all of these things that we’re surrounded by every day and how to repurpose them, reuse them, give things a new life,” said Lindsay Johnson, executive director of Explore Ecology.
Upstairs in the Makerspace, educators have been cutting, folding and creating handmade journals while exploring projects they can bring back to their students.
“It’s very inspiring,” said Jared Kedzia, a teacher from Camarillo. “They basically have a writing prompt every time we do one of these, and today’s writing prompt was just to observe the space.”
The workshops combine creativity, sustainability and environmental education, giving teachers ideas they can adapt for their own classrooms.
“We want to make sure that we serve the community in the best way possible, we connect with other people and we shape futures,” said San Luis Obispo teacher Juan Luzuriaga.
Explore Ecology and UC Santa Barbara are also helping educators find ways to incorporate environmental literacy into everyday learning.
“I think environmental literacy is important because there’s a lot of ways we can bring it into the classroom, but we also have to understand what our students bring into the classroom and their knowledge,” said Camille Despain, associate director of the South Coast Writing Project.
As summer winds down, materials once headed for the trash are getting a new life, and teachers are taking new ideas back to school.
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