Gale Elementary goes green with new club

To learn about biodiversity in the rainforest, students in the new environmental education club at Gale Elementary School compared leaves from Biosphere 2.

Older students peered through magnifying glasses at the various species. Younger kids painted their observations.

The after-school Gale Greenies PTC Science Club launched at the end of March. For six weeks, 43 students from kindergarten through fifth grade met once a week to learn about environmental and wildlife conservation.

“We picked animals because elementary school students are fascinated by animals,” said Kelly King, the club chair and a member of the school’s Parent Teacher Club.

As a finale for the club’s first semester, Gale Elementary, 678 S. Gollob Road, hosted brother and sister Carter and Olivia Ries from Georgia on Friday. In 2009, the Ries siblings started One More Generation, a nonprofit organization focused on conservation and endangered species. Carter was 8, and Olivia was 7.

“We wanted our students listening to be impacted in the way of, ‘If they can do it … and they started when they were 7 and 8, when they were my age, what can I be inspired by?’” said King, who is also the chief operations officer and executive producer for the online radio network Mrs. Green’s World.

The club’s $3,000 operating budget, along with support from Mrs. Green’s World, Lodge on the Desert and the Tanque Verde Ranch, funded the trip.

One More Generation works with kids around the world, and has a youth advisory board with representatives — most of them teens or kids — in places such as Australia, South Africa, South America and China.

On Friday, the siblings spoke at a schoolwide assembly and in individual classrooms. Saturday evening, the Gale Greenies will present Carter and Olivia with a panel dotted with students’ footprints as part of One More Generation’s 1,000,000 Footprints to Save Africa initiative.

“It’s an international art project where schools around the world create panels of footprints to demonstrate 1 million youths standing up against poaching in Africa,” King said.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

And that’s what Gale Greenies is all about: empowering kids to act.

“Sometimes kids feel like they don’t have control over anything,” said Maura Clark-Ingle, the principal at Gale Elementary. “They’re kids. They live in an adult world and adults tell them what to do, so this is a way to let them be more in control.”

Trish Wheeler, a Parent Teacher Club member and Palo Verde High Magnet School marine biology teacher, designed the six-week curriculum to engage kids. To learn about plastic pollution, Greenies pulled items such as carpet or fleece out of a bag — examples of what recycled plastic can produce. While learning about marine life, they played a game of tag as kelp, urchins, otters and sharks.

Gale Greenies is part of Clark-Ingle’s desire to see a more eco-friendly school. With new solar panels, the school runs on about 85 percent solar energy, Clark-Ingle said. She also plans to reduce the school’s use of plasticware at functions by asking parents to bring their own and would eventually like to see crops from the school’s garden certified for use in the cafeteria. In future years, Gale Greenies material may end up in classrooms.

“It’s great to think globally, but it’s important to act locally,” King said. “What is happening with our habitats here?”

They want kids thinking about solutions, both big and small.

“Don’t throw trash in the ocean,” said Sophia, King’s 5-year-old kindergartener, adding that dolphins and horses are her favorite animals.

Her 7-year-old brother Nolan’s takeaway: “Plastic is pollution. Don’t use too much of it.”

Molly, Wheeler’s 7-year-old first-grader, added, “My favorite part of it was learning how to help the Earth be a better place and how to make it live longer.”