Earth Day @ Small

Despite the overcast skies and intermittent drizzle, Small students added another 15 trees to our campus grounds today. Advisories, clubs, and classes had the opportunity to purchase a tree for our Earth Day plant-a-thon.

The holes were predug by my student aides and science elective classes. At times the drizzle was heavy, and some groups have opted to plant when the weather is more friendly.

In this photo students are scooping out the loose soil. In the background you can see a section of our Grove of Champions. For each sports championship our school wins, we add another tree to the grove. We have planted 60 trees in the grove so far and still need to add 4 more.

As the trees mature, they will also serve as a wildlife corridor, connecting the wooded area on the south end of our campus to our central native gardens.

The grove is dedicated to our former principal, Sheila Anderson.

We also held another cleansweep, targeting areas that Mr. Rosenberg's classes couldn't get to on April 9th. Though twice as many students participated this time, the amount they collected was less than half. This is a testament to how thorough Mr. Rosenberg's classes were two weeks ago.

Another site where we added trees was the Small Forest. Like the Grove of Champions it is on the Williamson Creek watershed side of the campus. It too is crossed by a usually dry and shallow wash. Most of these trees were planted by students attending our summer orientation camps for the incoming 6th graders. The rest were planted on last three previous Earth Days.

Traditionally we plant a tree (or create a flower bed) to memorialize students, staff, or family members of our faculty who have passed away. The last two trees we planted today were in the memory of the parents of our librarian, Elizabeth Newell.