Wisconsin School for the Deaf - The Wisconsin Times Vol. 133 No. 4 Summer 2012 | Page 5

Earth Day & Arbor Day Celebrated
The elementary and middle school students enjoyed participating in the daily Earth/Arbor Day activities
throughout the week. A brief introduction to Earth Day and Arbor Day challenged students to reduce, reuse,
and recycle in order to receive nominations from staff and peers for the ‘Environmental Hero of the Week’
award for the next three weeks. Two elementary students, Alicia Arispe and Lucero Uriostegui were honored as
heroes. The original movie, The Lorax, was used to discuss the meaning of and images in the movie that were
disturbing such as cutting down the trees and the terrible smog. Their favorite activity was the scavenger hunt to
locate trash and identify parts of nature such as branches, pinecones, and flower buds around campus. Students
enthusiastically located each item on the long list and learned some new vocabulary along the way.
The high school also celebrated with various activities. One of the highlights was the polluted sock event.
Students met in the parking lot during study hall to place clean white gym socks over the exhaust pipes to the
WSD pick-up truck, the WSD lawn mower, as well as a couple of volunteer staff cars. Each car idled for thirty
seconds. Amazed at the blackened socks, students debated the outcome. The worst offender was the pick-up
truck which runs on diesel. The cleanest sock went to a hybrid car owned by WSD teacher, George Drymalski.
On Wednesday, during both lunch periods, science teacher Amy Dignan and Joan Armfield had containers to
save and weigh all the food, beverage and condiments that would have normally be tossed into the trash. From
this one day of lunch, enough waste was collected to feed a family of seven for three full meals.
The high school students also participated in a Scavenger Hunt where staff literally ran to keep up with the
enthusiasm of the students! Each team was given clues to locations around campus. At the correct location,
teams were given answers to a cloze activity and clues leading to the next location. The team that finished in
first place included: Hannah, Elizabeth, Alex, Elijah, Dakota, Sarab and Alvin. Becky Epple was the teacher
assigned to this group. Each of the cloze activities contained a pledge to one part of our Earth. At the end of the
hunt each cloze phrase was strung together to create a pledge to be more environmentally conscious at school,
home, and in the community.
Our WSD Maintenance workers were very glad for Friday to arrive as they had been asked to save all the school
trash that would normally have been tossed into the dumpsters. Watching the bags of trash collect, brought
awareness to students about the amount of trash thrown away in just one week. This year’s Earth Day and Arbor
Day celebration brought reminders to all of us about awareness that the Earth is i