Oxford School’s Green Classroom Awards were presented at a school assembly on June 7th, as a culmination of their first year of school-wide greening efforts. Oxford began a partnership this year with a local organization called Green Schools. Efforts to go green include composting paper towels and food waste in the classroom, stepping up all paper recycling, starting plastic recycling and reducing waste by increasing the amount of compost in the lunch room. Oxford’s goal is to become a zero waste school. All classrooms have been participating in this effort and the awards celebrate the different levels of participation and serve to raise awareness and effort.
Green Classroom Awards
The beginning level of the award acknowledged classrooms that are recycling their paper in blue bins; have little or no recyclables in their trash cans; use recycled paper as scratch paper, and are using their compost pails for food and paper towel composting.
Beginning level honors went to:
Room 7 – Ms. Lewis’ K class, Room 4 – Ms.Cohen’s K class, Room 2 – Ms. Ellsberg’s K class, Room 6 – Ms. Vines’ 1st grade, Room 8 – Ms. McGilvery’s 1st grade, Room 28 – Ms. Archuletta’s 3rd grade, Room 20 Ms. Muller’s 4th grade, and Room 9 Ms. Hosmer’s class.
The next level award recognized the classes that are recycling their paper, paper towels and food waste effectively and have students that have volunteered their lunch breaks to serve as compost monitors that help all students compost and recycle during lunch.
Special second level trophies went to:
Room 27 -Ms. Nielson’s 3rd grade class, Room 25 – Ms. Sheppard’s 2nd grade class, and Room 10 – Mr. Della Penna’s 2nd grade class.
Finally the class with the highest level of participation was given the GREEN CLASSROOM AWARD for not only recycling paper, but they can be spotted emptying their classroom compost can daily. This class has, without supervision and entirely through their own efforts, taken over running the lunchroom composting program while performing duties in a respectful and responsible way, with nearly half the class serving as compost monitors. Students are now independently keeping a log of the daily amounts of compost and landfill waste. The Green Classroom Award was presented to the students of Room 26, Ms. Brollier’s fourth grade class!