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Why is it anybodies responsibility? If I don’t step up what makes anybody else want to step
up?
Birch Run high school science teacher Jan Pollard worked with 4H to develop a course
on alternative energy that would nature a sense of responsibility in her students and
connect them with their community.
4H provided curriculum so I could show what you really could do.
4H is working with kids in biodiesel projects and it shows a different relationship that
4H has with a school by doing non-traditional projects.
4H we do different projects like the watershed project and all this cool stuff and it’s
cool to be out there in the community.
We took samples from the Flint River and we tested the amount of oxygen, the pH, the turbidity
of it, and the amounts of nitrate and phosphate. We felt it was our responsibility, this is
our local river and the community uses it a lot and we wanted to make sure that it was
safe for them.
Students in the class our helping their district’s bus fleet save money and reduce pollution
by making bio-diesel fuel from used vegetable oil collected from the district’s cafeterias
and local restaurants.
It’s important to me because it’s helping the environment for everybody in the whole
state and whoever else because busses use quite a bit of diesel which will make more
pollution so if they’re using biodiesel it cuts that down.
Birch Run students are now teaching students at other high schools and community members
how to make bio-diesel.
You know what’s kind of cool too is we have people—farmers, individuals in the community
that come up here and say, hey I’m having a little trouble doing what. I say no problem
let them solve your problems so now you have a 50 year old man who can’t get the chemistry
or the titration just right and you have a 14 year old kid out there explaining what
his mistake is. Now tell me does that give you self esteem? They love it.
It puts us in a place where Birch Run is not just an outlet mall, it is not just farm country,
it’s also a place where there is major growth in the area of alternative education for our
students in alternative energy.
I feel if I don’t have part of it then nobody else will because I don’t think you can
rely on everybody because a lot of people don’t understand the road we’re going
down.
Our country is modernizing and as it modernizes there’s a need for an alternative energy
source and so to be able to participate in an alternative energy programs and recycling
programs is definitely something that will be part of our daily lives in the future and
just promote the future health of our country it’s important.
If we don’t step up and try to find different resources all of our resources will decay,
our Earth would pretty much be ruined.
Join the revolution of responsibility!