Teacher Cathryn Dykstra and her grade six class at Erin Public School have been very busy with a project that began in October.
The students head downtown once a month and visit stores to share their research on local and world water issues and encourage people to use reusable water bottles.
The class has teamed up with Transition Erin and is apart of the BLUE W program.
Its goal is to have all the stores in Erin join the program by June, and celebrate customers who visit the stores carrying reusable water bottles by giving them free water refills or a discount on coffee or tea where sold.
The grade six students call themselves “The Water Rockers” and designed their own shirts and the logo “Erin: Our local water rocks!” for the reusable water bottles.
Dykstra gave a presentation to the local BIA recently, and as a result many stores have the water bottles on display, and have started selling them. The water bottles are being sold for $15 and $10 of that goes back to the school to put towards environmental programs.
Jeremy O’Donnell, a State Farm agent in Orangeville, has chosen to sponsor the Water Rockers and on Nov. 26 he presented them with a cheque for $1,500.
A State Farm press release states, “The competitive grants, offered by State Farm in partnership with YSA (Youth Service America), support educators in YSA’s Semester of Service, an extended service and learning framework that engages students in addressing real-world needs in their communities by connecting service activities with intentional learning goals and academic standards.
“Independent evaluations confirm that Semester of Service has a positive significant impact on student engagement and related measures of academic achievement.”
The grant has paid for the Water Rockers’ shirts and water bottles.
State Farm chose 75 teachers who showed a student-directed initiative that benefits the community for the State Farm Good Neighbor Student Achievement Grant this year. They chose 74 teachers in the U.S. and Dykstra.
“My hope is that I’ll get this grant again next year and we’ll keep building on it,” said Dykstra.
Over the next eight weeks, three students will have their writing in a local Newspaper on a weekly basis and three students were recently on the local 88.1 radio station discussing their initiative and why people should be using the reusable water bottles.
