[singlepic id="534" w="320" h="240" mode="" float="" ]This summer when I was in Alaska I had the opportunity to visit a glacier. As my three friends and I approached this amazing wonder of nature all we could say is, “Wow.” Over and over again we kept repeating: “Wow.” We couldn’t seem to find any other word to express the thrill of being there and the awe of what we were seeing and touching. It was simply a “Wow” experience.

When I returned home to North Carolina, I was struck anew by the beauty of my own surroundings. Unfortunately, Western North Carolina is not as pristine and untouched by human excesses as the Alaskan wilderness. I felt a tug, a call to present a project to children at my school and around the world that would empower them to take steps in their young lives to take care of our planet. As educators, don’t we need to instill a respect for our physical world and its limited resources? After careful consideration, I came up with an environmental awareness project called “Don’t Forget the Bag.” It is a project that shows students they can make a difference and show compassion to their planet by just changing one behavior. The effects of that change can be felt locally and globally. The goal was to not only raise awareness, but to also begin a new habit. For one week, students and their families were asked to use cloth or reusable shopping bags and refrain from using the plastic bags that are provided at checkout counters in most stores.

At my school we kicked off “Don’t Forget the Bag” week with a fifteen minute PowerPoint presentation. The slides gave statistics and showed photographs of the harmful effects of plastic shopping bags on the environment. It was a wonderful eye opener for the students to see how plastic bags pollute our communities, our waterways, our forests, and, in particular, how they endanger wildlife that inhabit each of these places all over the world. To give students an idea of the magnitude of this problem they were asked to bring in all the plastic bags their families used in one week. The week prior to the presentation they were collected in a washing machine sized box in the entry hallway to the school. After the PowerPoint presentation, the curtains on stage were opened and you could hear the audible gasp as they looked upon the mountain of plastic bags gathered in one week. Students were told that we/they don’t have to wait for legislative action to make a difference: “Let’s try to make new habits starting next week by only using reusable bags.”

To conclude the presentation, faculty, staff, and students were presented with reusable fabric bags. Target®, my sponsor as the 2009 Iditarod Teacher on the Trail, provided 800 bags for this project. Thank you Target® for investing in the environmental education of our children.

I have included the PowerPoint, the letter sent home to parents, and the lesson plan for the “Don’t Forget the Bag” week project. Please consider having your own program during your Iditarod studies.