Senior Level School of the Year

Sandwich High School
365 Quaker Meetinghouse Rd.
East Sandwich, Massachusetts 02537
Project Title: Mother Nature NEEDs Us
Project Adviser: Gilbert Newton

Our main goal was to educate various groups of people about renewable energy and energy efficiency building applications focusing on Sandwich. Also, to help set up an energy fair at the Oak Ridge school, make a movie for the Energy Film Contest and volunteer our time at the elementary schools teaching the children about energy.

We completed the movie for the Energy Film Contest which our group started by getting background information on the subject of renewable energy in our town of Sandwich. We first visited Doug Lapp, the Assistant Town Manager, and received information about energy application in Sandwich, such as the Big Belly solar trash compactor and solar panels at the Forestdale School. Our basis of the movie was interviewing students and teachers about their knowledge and beliefs about renewable energy. We created a set of questions revolving around energy for the interviews. We then interviewed Michael Lavers, a Physics and Math teacher at Sandwich High School, about the solar toys he received from a grant. We additionally helped create an energy fair at our town’s elementary school by consulting Debbie Fitton from Cape Light Compact who has experience setting up previous energy fairs. Debbie has given us materials for various stations at the energy fair. Our final project we undertook was Project Life where we went to one of our town’s local elementary schools and taught them about the energy cycle and its uses. We received information from our town Nature Center for the lessons. 

Our main focus as a group was to spread awareness about conserving energy and promoting renewable energy. The most important aspect was to expose the information we have learned because if society is not educated on energy then we will not be able to save the energy sources we have left before it is too late.