This week marked the annual Adirondack Youth Climate Summit, at The Wild Center, located in Tupper Lake New York.
This is the first year I was able to attend and I came away with not only many things to ponder about but also many great ideas I can implement in my classroom. The two-day conference was filled room to room with local and regional youth attending private and public educational institutions.
They had a wonderful chance to discuss, collaborate, innovate and network with one another to bring new ideas to their schools. Their energy was contagious as each school discussed what sustainable and energy efficient resources are currently implemented in their school; as well as what they hope to see implemented.
One of the many ideas I enjoyed listening to over and over again was how much each of their school’s faculty members and community members encourage them to seek new and fresh ideas to make their school and community a better place. While many of the strategies do require a large start up cost; there were many ideas that required little to none initial monetary funding. One of the ideas from a student was to have each roof, of her school’s buildings, absorb less heat energy from the sun. This would be accomplished by painting each roof a white color. Such as simple action would reduce their energy cost to each of the school’s buildings because the white paint would reflect, not absorb the heat from sun’s rays. Ideas such as these are simple and can be effectively implemented with little monetary funding.
So this got me thinking, I wonder what else is occurring in the Adirondacks. Do you see the youth in your towns taking an initiative to be more involved in their school system? If so, what projects are occurring in your towns? I would love to hear what is happening in our neck of the woods.