Excited Recyclers

Several weeks ago, one of my students came in and said that she had been hearing on the news that the state does not have any money to give to teachers to buy school supplies. She asked me if we could do a project to raise money so that we can buy things we need for our classroom. Her suggestion was that we recycle. She and two other girls went to the principal to get his permission and returned to class with huge smiles on their faces. Not only had he granted permission, the principal said he would transport the items we collect to a recycling center for us. Can you imagine my surprise a few days later when a lunchroom worker arrived at our door with a huge bag of aluminum cans that she and her coworkers had saved for us after the same little girls told them about our project?
At our first class meeting, the students voted on the name "Earth 911" and discussed things they want to do for our project. During that week they found locations of recycling centers ,what items will be accepted, and how much is paid for the items. They collected boxes and labeled them "Plastic", "Paper," and "Cans" and placed them in all three buildings of our school. Each day the boxes are collected and brought back to our room to be emptied.
This week the children enjoyed researching reasons to recycle, ways to recycle, what happens to materials after they are taken to recycling centers, and ways to protect the earth. Their excitement was uncontainable and from every area of the room I could hear my "environmentalists" exclaiming, "Wow! Did you know this?" "Hey, listen to this!" Man, we really do need to do this!" Two of the websites they visited are http://www.ecocycle.org/, and www. resourcefulschools.org.
I realized that my students are truly living what they are learning as I was grading reading tests this week. One of the questions required the students to write about something they had come to care about that at one time had been unimportant to them. One of my learners wrote that he used to not care about recycling until our class started this project, and now he believes that everyone should recycle, reuse, and reduce!