M-R Green Team kids will be training Mason-Rice students on composting in the lunchroom!

With the support of Principal Bultema and our head custodian Leo, and Newton's fantastic Sustainable Materials Management Director (Waneta Trabert) and Waste Diversion Coordinator (Erica Braman), we will be able to have Mason-Rice lunchroom food waste composted!

To help train Mason-Rice students on composting in the lunchroom, the Green Team Kids received an exciting assignment: to create a compost training video to be shown in classrooms during the composting roll-out in late February. Eleven Green Team students came together for two long evenings in February with our superstar videographer and Mason-Rice parent Neal McConnell to film the video. (Thank you, Neal!!!)

The final video is complete and will be shared on this blog at a later date!

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2/28 UPDATE:

During the last week of February, the Mason-Rice Green Team Kids composting video was shown in all K-5 classrooms to complement the lunchtime composting training they received from the City of Newton's DPW sustainability team. Here is the final video!

Many thanks to our fantastic Mason-Rice parent and videographer Neal McConnell, the support of Newton's DPW Sustainability team Waneta Trabert and Erica Braman, and our amazing Mason-Rice Green Team Kids.

Our last meeting!

On June 7, we Green Team coordinators were happily surprised and showered with beautiful flowers, cards and gifts from our Green Team Kids and their parents. Were were thrilled to hear how much the students enjoyed the programming over the year, and we thank the parents for their ongoing support and generosity! To cap off a great year and to enjoy the beautiful summer afternoon, we enjoyed a scavenger hunt outdoors that covered numerous topics we've discussed over the course of the year followed by frozen treats, a short presentation by Kate and Audrey about eating vegan (this was a topic we were going to cover in an earlier session, when we went to visit the Mayor instead!), and then a photo slideshow of the year. Thanks everyone for an amazing year, and have a great summer!

Our Kickoff Meeting (10/26/2018)

On the afternoon of October 26th, we launched our first Mason-Rice Green Team Kids meeting for the year. We had approximately fourteen 3rd and 4th graders with a mix of knowledge and interest in environmental issues and actions they can take to help protect our planet. As a group, we discussed what they would like to do as members of Green Team Kids (the most popular response was "making posters" to raise awareness, which we will be doing at the next meeting). Then we launched into our first substantive topic: TRASH. Below is a copy of some of the slides and videos from our presentation. October 26 Presentation Slides For those who would like to learn more about how the City of Newton manages its trash and recycling, please check out the "Where Does My Trash and Recycling Go?" section on the City's website .

Summary: 11/9 Meeting & Playground Cleanup!

On Friday 11/9, we continued our discussion on the problem of trash, focusing specifically on oceans and ocean plastics. We were blessed to have our veteran Green Team member, former Mason-Rice parent and children's book author/illustrator, Claire Nivola open up the meeting with the students by reading an excerpt from her book, " Life in the Ocean: The Story of Oceanographer Sylvia Earle" . We were all absolutely engaged with Claire's beautiful illustrations of the ocean. Next, we took the students through a brief presentation and set of short videos to learn about the magnitude of the ocean plastics problem facing us today, and how everyday trash from faraway cities can make its way to the oceans. A copy of the presentation/videos can be viewed here . Given the nice fall weather outside, the students were all ecstatic to work our way out to the playground to do a playground cleanup. With an empty bag in one hand, each of the kids quickly filled up ba...

Mason-Rice Green Team Kids!

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