On April 15 at 7:00 p.m., six students from Bethany Morris’s 3rd grade Magnet class, with help from Andrew Boatright of the Westerville Electric Division, presented their Service Learning Project Portfolio to the Westerville City Council. During the third and fourth quarters of the 2013-14 school year, Morris and her students participated in the Youth Awards Program for Energy Achievement Project sponsored by OEP (The Ohio Energy Project) and NEED (National Energy Education Development). This project required students to successfully learn the Grade 3 Energy Content Standards and create a Plan for Conserving Energy as an extension of their learning. The project also required documentation in the form of a Project Portfolio with the following criteria to be scored by a panel of judges (educators, students, business people, members of energy organizations, and others) following submission to OEP: Project Goals, Activities to Reach these Goals, Energy Content of the Project, Student Leadership, Community Involvement, Use of Resources, Evaluation, and Documentation in the form of a Scrapbook Portfolio.
The students decided to create neon light switch plate covers with messages about saving energy and installed them first at Robert Frost, and then out in the community. Data collected by the children before and after the light switch plate covers were installed indicated that the reminders were helping the Robert Frost community save energy! Through this project, pupils experienced leadership opportunities that they would not have had otherwise, and were able to feel like true advocates for energy conservation.