American School of Dubai update

Project Highlight #1: White Board Marker Recycling Program

This year’s Roots & Shoots club has initiated a plastic marker recycling program. Supporting a US-based recycling effort by Crayola, students have reached out to all elementary school teachers as well as a number of middle and high school teachers and offices to determine which markers are no longer usable. The markers are then packaged and sent to the US for recycling. The program has resulted in the recycling of hundreds of markers to date and we hope to expand the program more systematically across school as well as have conversations related to the type of markers chosen in hopes that we can utilize reusable markers over the long term.

Project Highlight #2: New Student Growing Community

Our school is a very garden-friendly campus. Our Roots and Shoots students, in their conversations related to supporting our new students, wanted to plant a new garden so that they can ‘grow’ their support of students recently arrived to our school. The ideation process included a presentation to administration related to the Sustainable Development Goals and sharing ideas.In this project, new students are invited to plant the garden jointly with Roots & Shoots members and take part in small discussion groups to encourage connection. The idea behind this project is to plant food on our campus, in a newly created space, so that when the food grows they can enjoy a food-based event with our new students, bringing our community together, both literally and metaphorically.

Project Highlight #3: Presentation and Participation in Eco-Schools Advisory Board

Our Roots and Shoots club has standing membership in the school-wide Eco-Schools Advisory Board. Meeting several times a year this Board is a strategic planning and decision making board facilitated by students with the participation of the entire community (students, teachers, administration, parents, vendors, facilities team members, etc.). This year’s focus is energy and waste reduction and our Roots and Shoots members are integral in the awareness and planning going into the collective work of our community. We are looking forward to supporting systems to engage our community in our goal to reach a zero-food-waste-to-landfill school!

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