States F through K
Florida
Elementary Level School of the Year
A.K. Suter Elementary School
Finalist Elementary Rookie School of the Year
Floresta Elementary School
1501 SE Floresta Drive
Port St. Lucie, FL 34983
(772) 340-4755
www.stlucie.k12.fl.us/flo/index.htm
Project Title: Dolphins NEED Energy
Project Advisers: Tari Sexton, Donna DeVane, and Mollie Mukhamedov
Student Directors: Jerome Moss, Aida Brumlop, Rasheed Qaem, Danielle Finchum, Isabella Rodriguez, and Alyshia Hogan
We started our NEED Project in August 2007. We studied the Energy Infobooks and learned the differences between renewable and nonrenewable resources. We learned the Energy Chants. We worked with the solar panels to show how solar energy can make a fan rotate. Our 4th and 5th graders did the Harry Spotter and the Quest for the Right Light play and participated in the Energy Star Change a Light, Change the World campaign. We had 109 pledges for 319 bulbs to be changed.
In our 5th grade classrooms, we worked on wind energy. We made pinwheels and used different wind speeds to see how fast the wind moved the pinwheel. We also did the Wind Can Do Work activity. We made wind vanes to investigate which way the wind was blowing. We performed the play Harry Spotter and the Chamber of Windy Myths, in which we learned where to put wind turbines. During our entire project we learned that wind comes from the uneven heating of the earth’s surface.
We chose to do the wind project because Florida Power & Light plans to build wind turbines along our local beaches. There are people in our area who don’t want these turbines. We are trying to teach everyone at our school and our families that wind turbines are good for our area, will help save money and natural resources, as well as help our environment.
J.H. Workman Middle School
6299 Lanier Drive
Pensacola, FL 32504
(850) 494-5665
Project Title: Green is the Theme
Project Adviser: Andrea Hussey
Student Director: Luke Bosso
This year’s Enerjags project was busy! Our goals shared a common theme--the color green. Some goals focused on going green, while others helped us earn green. However, none of these goals would have been accomplished without energy. Let me explain. Kinetic energy let us pick up garbage from Pensacola’s white sandy beaches. We felt a radiant glow from the students’ faces as they purchased Holiday Grams to support their energy club. Thermal energy dug into our skin as we washed car after car to fund more projects. Solar energy fed itself into Workman’s campus flowers during our campus cleanup.
Every Wednesday, I used electrical energy to get on TV and remind all participating teachers to extinguish their lights to conserve energy. Wow, that’s a lot! Oh, man! I almost forgot. We also recycled over a thousand pounds of paper, plastic, aluminum, and cardboard. We sent off ink cartridges to be recycled. We made some radical t-shirts and hosted Cici’s Pizza night. We still have big plans to make bags for grocery shopping. I mean, if going green is cool, then we’re the coolest kids in school.
Indiana
Elementary Level Rookie School of the Year
St. Richard’s School
33 East 33rd Street
Indianapolis, IN 46205
(317) 926-0425
www.strichardsschool.org
Project Title: Little Effort Big Return
Project Adviser: Peter Connallon
Student Directors: Zach Li and Andrew Hammond
This project was done by the 5th grade students at St. Richard’s School. At the heart of the project was the idea that a little effort can make a big difference. This project used high and low tech. The high tech was the rental of an infrared camera to take thermal pictures of homes to help owners see their energy flaws. The low tech was the use of foam tape to weather strip all external doors on the school and church campus to reap a savings of $3, 165.95 over three months, which was verified by Citizen’s Gas. This project was integrated across curricula and the students learned much more than energy conservation.
Kentucky
James A. Caywood School
3300 Turkeyfoot Road
Edgewood, KY 41017
(859) 341-7062
Project Title: Changing the World…one CFL at a time
Project Advisers: Lisa Dern and Renee Topmiller
Student Directors: Kennedy Webster and Carson Elliott
Our main goal throughout this year was to educate the students, staff and community about ways to conserve energy and to inform them about Energy Star’s Change a Light, Change the World campaign.
The students completed various activities to convince families to switch from incandescent light bulbs to CFL light bulbs in their homes. The students created posters, wrote a speech and even dressed up as the two light bulb types to perform a song and dance. Our team was fortunate enough to present their information to our school, the school board, and even representatives from Duke Energy.
The students also had the privilege of working with engineers from Louisville, Kentucky to help design a new middle school building. The engineers created mock windows in a few classes at our school, then taught the girls how to use light meters to record the amount of natural light coming into the rooms. The team is continuing to record the data and send it to the engineers to help them further along their design process.
Throughout all of these activities, we were hoping to contribute to a better and brighter future.
White’s Tower Elementary School
2977 Harris Pike
Independence, KY 41051
(859) 356-9668
Project Title: ‘Aware’ Cats
Project Adviser: Mary Waechter
Student Directors: Ellie Smith and Ali Frietch
Our goal this year was to provide energy awareness to our peers, school, and community. We feel we succeeded at teaching our school about energy and energy usage. Teachers and students developed a keen eye for energy.
Our team accomplished many goals this year. The team went to Cherokee Drug Shoppe and told customers about CFLs at Family Literacy Night. We also conducted energy audits every month and a plug load study to show how much energy our school appliances use. We helped our school conserve energy in many ways.
The Energy ‘Aware’ Cats have also planned Go Green Week—a week dedicated to energy. We will have a pep-rally to celebrate what the team has accomplished this year. The school will dress in as much green as we can, play some fun games and movies, and for the finale of the week, each grade will plant some sort of tree or flower to celebrate! We hope the week will make the students aware of how many tasks our school has succeeded in accomplishing.
Phillip A. Sharp Middle School
35 Wright Road
Butler, KY 41006
www.pendinton.kyschools.us
Project Title: Priorities- Don’t take NO
Project Advisers: Cayeann Cowan and Pat Brownfield
Student Director: Samantha Steffen
Our project includes two major goals and several improvement projects. The two goals are to become a Kentucky Green and Healthy School and to reduce energy usage while creating environmental awareness with our students and staff.
We related our projects to our Energy Audit. The Energy Star Change a Light, Change the World campaign was our first project. The energy savings based on pledges was 244,494 kilowatt-hours of electricity. Environmental benefits included prevention of 354, 603 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions. Another spin-off of this audit related to energy conservation was something as simple as turning off computer monitors when computers are shut down each day.
Information from the Solid Waste Audit reinforced our beliefs in starting a recycling program for our school. We discussed, called in reinforcements for assistance, and decided ‘Priorities - Don’t Take NO’ as we implemented a recycling program. After several years of no, we decided to take a stand.
The final part of the project is related to the Instructional Inventory. As educators in a small, rural district we are committed to providing the best education possible. Using authentic, real world instruction helps students understand their world, environment, and impact on our natural resources.
Russell Area Tech Center
705 Red Devil Lane
Russell, KY 41169
(606) 836-1256
Project Title: Renewable is Doable
Project Adviser: Doug Keaton
Student Directors: Shawn Stephens, Krista Miller, Jaron Bower, and Shyler Elkius
Our goal was to study alternative and renewable energy options using the Science of Energy Kit , as well as other materials. We decided on a three-year plan of action that would focus on a different renewable each year. Last year we had a conservation focus, and this year’s focus was wind. Along with our focus on wind, we wanted to continue to raise general awareness of energy conservation and resources. We began with fossil fuels and a study of current energy resources. We made posters of these resources and did power points of them for presentation in the classroom.
To raise public awareness, we built a full scale, live action wind turbine and put it into operation. It is rated at 1 KW, stands 60 feet tall and operates in as little as 4.5 mph winds. We hope to connect this with solar next year.
We continued to demonstrate conservation with our CFL display attached to each of them. Once again we took this to Wal-Mart during the October Energy Awareness Campaign in connection with Energy Star, and then we scheduled an electrical energy expo at the middle school and demonstrated projects to over 620 students in five days. In all we gave out over 1000 Energy Starpledges and 2000 brochures on environmental awareness and CFL calculations.
We presented to the local middle school, high school, community college, business and industry, political leaders and representatives in our state and community. RENEWABLE is DOABLE!
Senior Level Rookie of the Year
Somerset High School
301 College Street
Somerset, KY 42501
(606) 678-4721
Project Title: Bright Ideas
Project Adviser: Cindy Ham
Student Director: Deepa Patel
Somerset High School’s Energy and Environmental Education Team (the E-Team) partnered with several community organizations during the 2007-08 school year. The accomplishments of the group included educating students from kindergarten through high school about energy concepts as well as energy conservation, not only in our school district’s three schools, but to several students in surrounding school districts as well. We also were able to educate citizens of our community about energy conservation and efficiency.
By becoming an Energy Starpledge driver for the Change a Light, Change the World campaign, we were able to participate in eight community events and distribute over 1,000 CFL light bulbs. During these events, we collected pledges from people who promised to change over 2,500 bulbs, which will lead to energy savings of more than $67,000 in our community, as well as the reduction of 1,000,000 pounds of greenhouse gases being emitted. We were able to do this with the help of Somerset Community College, Kentucky Utilities, KY NEED, the Governor’s Office of Energy Policy, PRIDE, and South Kentucky RECC. We feel that the activities we have completed have given our community some ‘bright ideas’ about how to save energy and help with some of our environmental issues.
District of the Year
Kenton County School District
