Shoreline Clean-Up
On Monday September 24, the grade 8 classes of St. Augustine’s elementary school in Dundas did a shore line clean-up along Van Wagner Beach.
It all started one morning in Literacy class, when Mrs. Stayshyn showed her class a short video of a shoreline clean-up in British Columbia for the class’s “Global Citizenship” unit. Inspired, Teaghan Kay and Mikayla Nevills decided that they wanted to do a shoreline clean-up with their class. They went to their teacher to tell her their idea. Mrs. Stayshyn told them that it was a great idea, but they needed to run it by the Principal, Mr. Trotta before they could move forward. Mr. Trotta agreed that it was a great idea, and said that it would be no problem, as long as it was student driven. They would have to organize, fundraise and most importantly, get the rest of the students on board. And, that’s what they did.
Teaghan and Mikalya coordinated schedules, sold popcorn at the school barbeque and at recess, once they explained their goal of helping to clean up Hamilton’s waterfront, it didn’t take long before everyone wanted to join in.
Once at the waterfront, students were split into groups of four or five, and given a specific area to clean. Each group was given two garbage grabbers, one or two pairs of gloves, and a clipboard to keep track of how much, and what kind of garbage and recycling they found. Once back at the school, the information from the clipboard was submitted to Mrs. Stayshyn who will submit the information to shorelinecleanup.ca. By the end of the morning students had collected roughly a dozen bags of garbage and recycling. Overall, students were really happy to help.
“It was awful seeing how some people treat the environment. That’s why it felt so good to give back,” said Kate Murphy, a participating student.
“We did quite a bit for that one beach, but we barely scratched the surface of pollution and garbage all over the world,” said another student Alexandra Farkas.
“I felt it was our duty as stewards of the Earth to clean up our mess,” commented Kathleen, another volunteer.
The students are planning on going back in May to do another shoreline clean-up, and if everyone does their part to reduce, reuse and recycle, hopefully they’ll find less garbage then we did on Monday.