By Julie Blum, ACE Field Correspondent and Student at Westbrook High School

The start of the new school year has been filled with many hours dedicated to the college search, and so not much has happened yet with our new projects.

This year our Energy Committee will begin a recycling awareness campaign, and there have been some field trips scheduled to the Connecticut Resource Recovery Authority Trash Museum in Hartford, CT. More to come…

The end of the last school year finished with great enthusiasm for helping the earth. We had an ice cream celebration for the entire elementary school (“keeping our planet cool”.) All the students went home with an eco-friendly gift and were armed with the knowledge of ways to conserve.

At the graduation ceremony, one student was talking about a website that she and two friends had designed to help teach the world about conservation. I was so thrilled to hear what an impact our project was having!

One final thing that we needed to do was to present the hallway audit letters and posters to school administrators, and to have an official release of the Conservation Song Video. The meeting began with some conscientious 4th grade energy patrol students presenting their creations to Dr. Charles, our superintendent, and Mrs. Bishop, our elementary school principal. Just before one of the students read her letter with suggestions for some reductions in light usage in the hallways (see photo), Dr. Charles asked her what she had learned from the project. I was so proud to hear her reply, “When we work together, we can save the earth!”

With some expert technical help from the high school principal, Mr. Hale, we were able to present the video on a large screen with an awesome sound system. After many hours of rallying, organizing, scheduling, filming, dealing with software problems, and editing clips, the moment was finally here to show the world the final product! After the video was played, everyone seemed to be impressed and some board members complimented me on a job well done. I feel as though our team has definitely impacted our community with this video, and conservation awareness is circulating better than ever!

The video was uploaded to YouTube and is now up to 472 views, and is still rising. If you missed seeing it in my last blog entry, here is it again:

Finally, I just got some thrilling news a few weeks ago – on November 18th, I will be given the honor of a certificate of appreciation from the Rockfall Foundation for my work on this project. Rockfall is an outstanding organization dedicated to environmental education, conservation, and planning initiatives in our area.

The concept that this relatively small effort could make a difference and be recognized as a meaningful contribution to the preservation of our earth warms my heart!