Summit Summary (February)

     I, like everyone else I'm sure, am so glad the weather has changed. The snow has melted. The side walks are clear. The weather is warm. And during a French class today a pleasant breeze blew through the room. I can move my car. I can walk on the side walk. I can ride my bike. 

     The snow, although beautiful (before the snowplows tainted it with dirt) made everything a little more difficult. Drury and Springfield just weren't prepared for this amount of snow. Mais, c'est la vie. Drury had a couple of snow days as a result. And Boyd Elementary (our organization) had even more snow days. We'd scheduled some in-class presentations with them. We'd talked with one of the fifth grade teachers. The fifth-grade class had been discussing environmentalism, so we'd planned on doing a presentation on "Going Green" for a couple of the classes. With the original plan, there were a few scheduling difficulties. First, there's the schedule of the class and when it works best for the class and the teacher. Then we are all full-time college students, so there's that. The teacher gave us some options for the two presentations we were going to do (one for each fifth-grade class). Of course, we couldn't all make it at the same time. Our best compromise was to pick a couple of times when each of us could go to at least one. Which is what we did. So we went through this process a couple of times, doing it all over again each time class got canceled because of snow days. 

     We finally got to present for the kids. We mostly worked with them, seeing what they already knew about being green, and building further off of that. It was exciting to hear that they already knew quite a bit about environmentalism. Maybe not all schools are like Boyd, but it's great to know that that has become a part of school curriculum. 

     Over the course of the next semester, I'm excited to continue working with the kids. It's refreshing to work with this age group. They're smart and imaginative. They bring a new perspective to these issues. I hope we can encourage more students to join the Green Team (the after school group). It'll give us a chance to work with more students more often. 

     I'm most excited for the Green Carnival we're going to have around Earth Day. We're planning on working with Central High School because they usually do an event like this. So there's an established event which means we'll have some structure, but then we can also bring new ideas and new energy to this project. 

     As far as leadership roles, I think working with Boyd has helped my ability to work within a team. It's also helped me with my time-management skills. 


-Desirée