A walk through the front door of Huber Street will bring you face to face with creatures of every sort – dragons made of tin cans, angels made of rags.
This is part of the fifth grade’s lessons on recycling and how to make use of items people would normally throw away.
According to a fact sheet given to students, each person creates about 4.4 pounds of trash each day, or about 1,606 pounds of garbage a year.
This “stuff” usually makes its way to landfills or is burned in furnaces – or if people are thoughtful, some of it can be recycled.
In their lessons on how to protect the environment, students have become detectives, tracing the route Secaucus trash takes from the can on the corner to its eventual destination.
Under the guidance of the school’s science teacher, Jessica Iovino, students have produced maps and planned communities of the future that would help protect land, air and water from pollution.
One of the more interesting aspects of their studies involved creating animals of their choice (real, imagined or historic) from items that would otherwise get thrown away. Most of the “animals” were on display in the halls of the school last week.
Mammoth idea
Fifth grader Julian Gaimbona created “a wooly mammoth,” a prehistoric predecessor to the elephants.
“I was looking through the dictionary for something I might want to do,” he explained. “I thought about doing an insect, and then I saw the elephant. But a friend of mine said he was going to do an elephant. So I did a wooly mammoth instead.”
This was comprised of discarded fabric and ribbon, no longer usable for anything else.
Allie Agolli and Krystle Vidal made a “mop dog” from a mop.
“We were going to throw out an old mop,” she said, noting that other components included a bottle and an orange juice carton.
“We also used a closet hanger for legs,” Vidal added.
Adam Swift and Augustine Paneque decided to create a fire-breathing dragon.
“We used buttons for eyes and paper cups for legs,” Paneque said. “We also used popsicle sticks for claws and a string for the tail.”
Swift said they used an old olive oil can for the body.
Fun learning
Iovino said the concept was to combine learning with entertainment.
“They got to learn about recycling while they were having fun,” Iovino said.
The students were instructed to collect their trash for one week, paying particular attention to those items that could be recycled. The main idea was to create something out of what they might ordinarily throw away. The assortment of items varied significantly, including aluminum cans, plastic bottles, buttons, cardboard, milk cartons, Styrofoam, paper bags, newspaper and cork.
The only rule was that they could not buy anything.
The majority of items were found either in the trash can or recycling bin, and then transformed into works of art. The top of a soda bottle became a pit. An old watering can became a robot. Cotton balls became part of a bunny.
As part of recognizing the creativity of the students, Principal Pat Cocucci said he is looking for a place where the animals might be permanently displayed.
“I am very impressed by the quality of the work,” he said, “as well as the vivid imagination our students displayed.”
Sidebar: Published authors of Huber Street School
Four students from Huber Street School were published in a national student newspaper in the fall for work they did in classroom exercises last year.
Kelsey Snedeker, Julian Chaves, Kimberly Espinoza and Dania Garcia, all now in the fifth grade, had work published fall edition of The Elementary School Writer.
The Elementary School Writer is a classroom teaching magazine developed to provide a “real audience” for students and to thereby foster the desire to write among young people. It includes fiction as well as non-fiction, essays, and poetry.
The Elementary School Writer is published by Writer Publications of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, which received more than 30,000 manuscripts from all over the U. S. during the 2002-2003 school year. Over 3,000 pieces were selected by the editorial staff and published in six issues during the year. Published students received special recognition for their accomplishment and were presented Certificates of Literary Merit by local school officials.
“Three of the students published mystery stories,” said writing teacher, Sandra Tomza. “This was part of a class project last year. We encouraged the students to submit them. We found out when we came back to school this year that the pieces had been accepted.” – Al Sullivan