Green Works at GUS

4th Grade Cleans Up the Beach

Beach Clean Up has been part of the curriculum in the fourth grade for at least two decades. A natural correlate to the year’s theme, The Sea, the activity has grown and changed with the times. T hese days, fourth grade teachers Laura Doyle and Kelly Zaval organize the beach trip in conjunction with Coastsweep, a statewide beach cleanup organized through the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management and part of the world’s largest volunteer effort for the ocean, Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup. Students visit Dane Street Beach in Beverly where they collect a wide variety of debris and report their data to Coastsweep. They mail in their compiled data, explains Laura, which is used to find solutions for keeping trash out of the ocean. “One interesting change that we’ve noticed over the past four years of cleaning is that there are many more vaping cartridges which isn’t even listed as an item on the data collection form because we think it’s a ‘new’ kind of trash. There are always many, many cigarette butts - often the most common type of trash.”

Most of the trash collected gets thrown away, but there are some exceptions. For instance, there are numbers to call to report stranded animals or hazardous materials, Laura explains, and some fishing gear is given to Coastsweep for reuse.

Collecting the trash is only part of the learning gained from the beach clean up. “We talk about the danger of plastics, in particular, in the ocean,” says Laura. “We learn about single use plastic bags, microplastics, and the harm to marine life. We read about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. We read about big projects in process to try to clean up the plastics in the ocean. However, we also talk about how every little bit helps.”

The students also learn about the ramifications of other types of beach debris. “Sources of marine debris include people littering, trash blowing out of trash cans and cigarette butts washing into storm drains that connect to the ocean,” according to Coastsweep. “Marine debris is more than an eyesore; it can also directly harm sea life and humans. Seabirds, seals and other animals can be choked, starved or poisoned when they mistake debris for food, and wildlife can become entangled in nets, bags, ropes and other trash. Beachgoers may injure themselves on pieces of glass, wood or metal while swimming or walking on the sand. Debris also poses a threat to navigation—propellers can become jammed with fishing line, boats can be damaged by colliding with large pieces of debris, and plastic can clog cooling intakes. Because much of the trash collected each year comes from street litter, it is easily preventable by always using secure trash bins and recycling as much as possible.”

Dane Street Beach Clean-up

In just one hour, fourth grade students collected and logged a number of items - some you might expect, some more surprising! Data from the cleanup was shared with Massachusetts Coastsweep, as part of the Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup.

64 cigarette butts

26 food wrappers

80 plastic pieces

31 plastic bottle caps

73 foam pieces

1 mini silver disco ball

1 plastic eyeball

1 car bumper part

Home insulation

“We want the kids to come away with an urgency to make a difference and figure out ways to clean up beaches and the ocean.” says Laura. “But we don’t want to terrify them or make them think the problem is insurmountable. It’s a balance. More specifically, we also use the data to practice data analysis with a few follow-up math activities. We tally the numbers, we make graphs, we discuss frequency, etc.”

Recycling

Fourth and fifth grade classes team up to handle all the recycling for the Lower School. Before single stream recycling, the fourth grade collected cans, plastic, and glass, and fifth grade collected paper. With last year’s introduction of single stream collection, the classes combined forces. Now, twice a week, the students collect the recycling materials throughout the Lower School, including in offices, the teachers’ room, art rooms, as well as in Braemar and the Dance Studio. The students are divided into three teams (blue, yellow, green); the school is split into different zones; and the teams are each responsible for a different zone each week. Classes sometimes ask for additional recycling days because they have so much, encouraging more discussion about the need to be thoughtful about the overuse of materials. In the upper school, each homeroom is responsible for taking care of their classroom recycling. The teams, who try to reuse bags to collect as much as possible, unload all the recycling into the school’s recycling dumpster. It’s not easy being green! Education about recycling is shared across grades. At the beginning of the year, fourth and fifth graders are taught about items that can and cannot be recycled; they present that information to the entire student body. Then, in the spring, when fifth graders go to Chewonki in Maine for their annual outdoor education experience, they “do a lot of work around sustainability and how to create a sustainable environment,” according to fifth grade teacher Katie McCarthy. “Chewonki does a great job with that instruction.”

Third Grade Handles Composting GUS has been composting leftover food for nearly two decades, with Chris Doyle heading the operation for the past five years in third grade. He and co-teacher Karianna Brace work with Black Earth Compost, a full-service company out of Gloucester that collects food scraps, converts them to compost, and returns the product to customers and garden centers to improve growing soil.

Green Works at GUS

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Every day after lunch, the third grade students fetch the compost in each classroom and coffee area from pre-K through Grade 8 and dump the food scraps in a large compost bin outside. “The compost jobs switch weekly so that each student is in charge of one compost area for a week before they are assigned a new job the following week,” explains Karianna. “The students are also in charge of maintaining the buckets so if they look ‘gross’, they bring them back to the classroom to clean before returning to the rightful home. There’s an element of trust, sending students off by themselves across campus to take care of this important job for our community.”

To understand the meaning of their work, the third graders visit Brick Ends Farm in Hamilton at the start of the year. There, they see how the compost is used to improve the soil quality for growing crops. The students also consider the questions: What is compost? Why is compost important? What can I compost? Later in the year, they focus on the sustainability aspect of composting - how it relates to the broader picture of their place in the ecosystem and ways they can give back to the earth for long-term sustainability.

“The overall theme in third grade is Where am I going? so we like to think of compost as a means of thinking about ourselves in the context of the whole earth,” Karianna explains. “What is our role in keeping our food waste local and how can we responsibly return our waste to the earth?”

The third grade made their own compost in the fall this year and periodically checks in on their compost containers. They also conducted some investigations to assess bean plant growth in various growing mediums, including in composted soil. Karianna and Chris see composting as a natural stepping stone for further school-wide initiatives. Currently, the class grows and maintains the Medieval Garden on campus but they are considering new adventures including hydroponics, more gardening, perhaps planting more natives, and looking into pollinators. “It’s fun talking about this,” says Karianna. ”It gets us thinking more about where we’d like to see ourselves in the next couple of years.”

Here Comes the Sun: Solar at GUS

Solar panels were installed on Braemar in 2014 as a gift from Tim and Emily Collins P’14, ’17. Since then, the panels have generated more than 326 MWh of electricity - the equivalent of 163,101 gallons of water, or 25,310 gallons of gasoline.

GUS currently produces enough energy to provide all the electricity needed on campus - and to put some back into the grid for our neighbors, too.

Greening GUS Grounds

Since 2017, the GUS campus has been pesticide and herbicide free. Our grounds team uses all natural organic fertilizer products that are safe, effective, and sustainable. This effort is important for the health and well being of our students who play on the grass and fields, as well as for the local wildlife and pollinators such as bees.

Ever wonder why our driveway and parking lot are not paved? It’s not for financial reasons or even because we like the rural look! It’s because we sit on a watershed, and paving our driveways could result in runoff that would damage the ecology of the watershed. So, every time you hit a little bump in our road, remember the flora and fauna you are protecting!