Props for MARE Participants!

I was browsing through the October 30 issue of The Lacey-Barnegat Times and was excited to see 2010 MARE Summer Institute participant Gina Verderosa featured in an article!  Gina received at $2,500 Go Green grant from the Ocean First Foundation to implement a variety of environmentally themed projects at the Joseph T. Donahue School in Barnegat, NJ.  The grant money will be used to fund the school’s annual participation in the National Green Week in February.  Each grade level will have an integral part in the program.  Fourth and fifth grade students in the MARE Club will be working on landscaping around the school, managing a composting bin with the younger students in grades K-3 and acting as role-model “green-keepers” for the entire school population.  Gina is advising the MARE club with fellow staff member Jane Goddard.   Gina has plans to involve the whole school in going green with projects for each grade level:

• Kindergarten will create and care for an indoor garden using recylced materials and producing plants for Mother’s Day!
• First grade will recycle bottle caps and facilitate awareness that they are not recycled by township recycling programs.
• Second grade classes will start with the compost bin and maintain it daily to eventually produce soil for the gardens.
• Third grade classes will start an outdoor garden to beautify the school landscape.
• Fourth grade students will organize a campaign to increase the amount of paper, plastic, cans and bottles that is recycled in the school. 
• Fifth grade classes will conduct energy audits and monitor recycling efforts at the school. They will analyze data and become the “report card” for the program.

BRAVO Barnegat crew!!! We are so proud of our MARE grads!

Check out your November 2010 issue of The New Jersey Education Association Reporter, in the Classroom Close up NJ section, you will see Rob Causton’s  Oxford Central School as one of the programs receiving NJEA Frederick L. Hipp Foundation for Excellence in Education funding for their Oceans and Estuaries program.  Seventh graders at the Oxford Central School traveled to Long Beach Island for a three-day camping and ocean/estuaries study.  Host Wendell Steinhauer joined the students at the Coast Guard Station on LBI and at the Viking Village commercial fishing port.   Thumbs up Oxford Central!  Thank you for spreading our love of ocean science with your students!