St. Theresa Catholic Secondary School’s interdisciplinary Earth Day project

The Challenge The environmental movement needs people with diverse skills in order to succeed. We need scientists, educators, journalists, entrepreneurs, artists, and more to work together to solve the world’s biggest problems. Using environmental topics as learning themes in a variety of classes can help students see the interconnectivity of science, history, politics, economics, and more in the environmental movement and build diverse skill sets to become change makers! The Project Scott Langabeer, a Business and Economics teacher at St. Theresa Catholic Secondary School in Ontario, Canada, is integrating Earth Day into his Marketing course to give his students an opportunity to develop new skills and make a difference in their school. Scott and his students took part in Earth Day’s 2019 Protect Our Species campaign by developing a series of social media posts and radio advertisements to encourage their community to go green. This project helped his students practice their marketing and communication skills and encouraged their school community to protect the environment by changing a few things in their daily routines. To save electricity, they are turning off their lights at home, in class, and in their hallways. They are also reducing, reusing, and recycling to decrease the amount of plastic and aluminum that end up in landfills. To reduce individual vehicle emissions, students are opting to take the school bus. The students at St. Theresa’s know that Earth Day is not just a day, it’s a movement and they plan on continuing these initiatives year-round with the help of their peers.

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Note from Earth Day Network: Earth Day Network is happy to see students working to make their school a greener place and to build a culture of environmental protection in their community. We also applaud Scott for making Earth Day an interdisciplinary learning experience and building great career skills in his students. What environmental projects are your classes working on? We would love to hear more about them! Email [email protected] with photos, videos, stories, and quotes about what you and your students are doing to Protect Our Species! Tag us in your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram posts with #EarthDay2019 #ProtectOurSpecies and tag us @EarthDayNetwork. Stay tuned for our next Teacher Spotlight. We might highlight your work!

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