We started off the day by picking up trash surrounding the lake in Newton. First we split up into groups of two and picked up trash for about 2 hours. We picked up a variety of items ranging from bicycles to bottles. Ms. Salazar decided to turn our service into a small competition to find out which group could find the weirdest piece of trash. The group that won had found a bike in the river and salvaged it so sea creatures wouldn’t choke on it. (There was also a pretty awesome purple Space Jam basketball.)
After cleaning, we gathered for a lesson about macro-invertebrates. Michael Hogan for the NJ Land and Water Trust showed us some examples of animals that were resistant to pollution while others succumbed to pollution. We spoke with some of the students about their experiences including Jackson who told us, “It felt great helping out the community and giving back to the environment.” We finished the day by taking a group photo by Newton Lake (see the album below!).
We returned back to school, where we headed to the computer lab to answer questions online on websites like Freerice.com, FreeKibble.com, FreeFlour.com and answer4earth.com which donate food to people and animals in need and plant trees. After a long day of service, we watched a documentary called “Fork Over Knives.” This was an astonishing film about researchers exploring the possibility that people could change their diets from animals-based foods to plant-based foods to help eliminate diseases like cancer and diabetes. All in all, this day was labor intensive but was great.
