MILWAUKEE — More than 500 people attended the 8th annual Green and Healthy Schools Conference at the University of Wisconsin on Wednesday.
It’s an effort by Reflo to promote environmental education and projects.
“We are working on sustainability and climate education and climate change issues. We are doing collective fundraising, and we are really working to support each other and not work against each other in all of our efforts,” said Lisa Neeb, Green and Healthy Schools program manager.
One of the projects is how Agriculture in the Classroom is teaching educators how to make bioplastics and to share those experiments with their students.
Traci McKean is a first-grade teacher at Bryant Elementary in Milwaukee.
At the conference, she tried to make a bioplastic using vegetable oil, corn starch, water and some heat.
“Just looking at when you change different ingredients or variables, how does that change your outcome at the same time?” said McKean.
McKean is one of the local teachers hoping to one day share this experiment with her students. Thanks to Agriculture in the Classroom, McKean can get a lesson kit on how to make bioplastics.
“There’s ways you could scaffold it down into whatever area you are working with or age level that you are working,” said McKean.
The second part of the experiment is making bioplastics with heated milk and vinegar.
Beth Schaefer is the Agriculture in the Classroom coordinator. Schaefer said bioplastics can be very important to the health of the environment.
“I know that what is in the instructions we follow, that’s one of the follow-up activities. It’s like, ‘Hey, go bury this in your school garden and see how long it takes to decompose,’” said Schaefer. “It’s one of the reasons that we are investigating because we want that environmental impact once we are done using that item to be more minimal than the plastics we have today.”
Susan Richardson teaches third grade at Milwaukee German Immersion School. Richardson said her goal is to open students’ eyes to new possibilities.
“When kids have hands-on activities, they are more engaged and when they are more engaged, they learn more and that’s our end goal, right?” said Richardson. “To teach kids more about the environment because they will be the ones taking care of it.”
McKean said she believes there is added benefit to running this experiment with students.
“I think it’s important for our urban students to be able to know where things are coming from and in the younger grades to show the steps that led up to bioplastics, going into the soil, composting and how everything is interconnected,” said McKean.
For McKean, Richardson and the others, learning about bioplastics not only makes a difference in the classroom but also for the environment.