Reagan, LBJ, and Eastside Memorial Green Teens brightened up the 2010 KAB Awards Luncheon with handcrafted centerpieces made from recycled egg cartons, glass jars, packaging peanuts, and plastic bottles. Interesting sculptures emerged from a little paint and a lot of hot glue. The project was an eye opener of how much waste we generate on a daily basis, where that waste ends up, and how we can reuse and recycle our way towards an environmentally friendly lifestyle. The final centerpieces - a green fan turned alien, and yogurt cups and chip bags transformed into a butterfly caught the attention of guests. Chris Blackman from Eastside Memorial High School attended the Luncheon to represent his fellow Green Teens and to be inspired by the winners. 

 

 

KAB is building partnerships to provide new opportunities for Green Teens. On Saturday, December 18th Green Teens joined forces with Urban Roots for a day of service. Youth from both programs completed landscape and garden projects to improve the McKinney Roughs Nature Park grounds. As a thank you for their service and a perk of the new partnership with LCRA, students re-visited the park in March to raft the Colorado River, rock climb, and participate in team building and adventure course activities where Urban Roots and Green Teens tirelessly cheered each other on.

Social Networking - Green Teens social network the old fashioned way - in person! Green Teens are making friends with other Green Teens during routine weekly activities and on Saturday fieldtrips…

Travis High students hosted Eastside Green Teens this spring for a day of touring the nearby Blunn Creek Preserve and Creek. While there the students teamed up to take apart macro leaf traps and find aquatic bugs and Travis students shared their favorite wonders of the Preserve.

 

Teens from LBJ and Travis geared up with helmets, head lamps, and knee pads to crawl through Whirlpool Cave. After touching 45,000 year old rock and exploring the flow of water teens headed to Eliza Springs to see the endangered Barton Springs Salamander.

 

Thank you Texas Cave Management Association, Barton Springs Edwards Aquifer Conservation District, and Watershed Protection for leading this fun and educational aquifer adventure!

Nature surrounds us but what does it mean to be a naturalist? How can we reduce our environmental footprint? What are the essentials for surviving the outdoors? These are just a few of the questions students answered during KAB’s first ever intensive Naturalist Unit which included making wilderness survival kits, mammal tracking, adopting Leave no Trace principles, nature scavenger hunts, fishing and our first ever overnight camping trip.

With fishing gear from Texas Parks and Wildlife’s (TPWD) loaner program and TPWD Master Anglers expertise Green Teens from Eastside and LBJ were able to successfully go catching (and releasing) instead of just fishing. Master Anglers provided one on one instruction to teach students how to tie knots, bait hooks, id fish, cast effectively, and sit patiently!  

 

 

Loaded up with REI gear and supplies for what looked like a 5-day camping trip, KAB staff and students headed to McKinney Falls for our first ever overnight camping trip.

 

Upon arrival the students set up camp as though they were old pros and then cooked their own elaborate meal of rice, beans, and fajitas. It turned out delicious! Before the food could settle the thunderstorms blew in. Any fears we had about the rain dampening the evening were blown away within minutes as students embarked on a game of hide and seek in the dark. What better way to get comfortable in the outdoors. During a night hike the sky put on a light (ening) show, and cricket and bull frogs croaked up music in different tunes.

 

Bright and early Saturday morning Texas Master Naturalist Valerie surprised the students with a diving beetle she had collected from the Upper Falls and then guided them on a hike to id terrestrial and aquatic bugs. With a short break we hit the trails again led this time by Leslie an archaeologist by trade who volunteered her time to show the students edible and useful plants in the park. While hiking the students noticed lots of litter so set out to clean the Upper Falls. We didn’t get a before and after picture but you will have to trust us when we say the area looked remarkably cleaner after. After a full day of hiking the teens cooled off in the Upper Falls and relaxed casting.

 

To reflect on their experiences and as a reward for their service the students were treated to dinner at Galaxy Café.

 

Learning about gardening is best done from the ground up and in this case from the top of a twenty-foot compost pile that students from Travis and LBJ High School climbed while touring Organics by Gosh. From vermi-composting to 3-bin composting and large scale composting students knew that good soil quality was key to a successful garden. Sometimes Green Teens recruited outside volunteers to help them with their gardens and sometimes they were the volunteers to help with the service. Volunteer workdays were held to help the students at LBJ and Eastside turn over the soil in their gardens and amend the soil. While for It’s My Park Day students volunteered to remove invasives from Blunn Creek Preserve.

 

The job description of a KAB instructor is environmental educator, career counselor, mentor, and tutor! Throughout the year Green Teens from all of the participating schools asked a lot of questions about life as a college student. KAB instructors shared their college experiences, identified career paths both environmental and other, and guided students on how to obtain scholarships for schools. KAB instructors Emily and Alecia can also be found helping students with their homework, proofing papers, and just been asked to offer general advice on the pressures of being a teenager. KAB’s staff is amazing at filling these many roles.

 

On any given Thursday you can find Travis High Green Teens exploring nearby Blunn Creek Nature Preserve. During weekly hikes students identified native and invasive plants using a dichotomous key, and discovered the rich diversity of color that can be found in nature by sharpening their senses with a paint swatch scavenger hunt. On a routine hike students spotted a red tail hawk. In awe of the feathery visitor teens perched themselves to watch for the remainder of the class period. Inspired by all the preserve has to offer students picked up trash any time they were in the preserve and regularly held workdays including hosting a service project in conjunction with “It’s My Park Day” to remove invasive Ligustrum and plant natives in the area.

 

To gain a better understanding of the preserve and how to care for it, students engaged in studies about watersheds, water quality, litter, aquifers, soil types, and impervious surfaces. In the process, students discovered how easily pollutants from the school ground are washed into the preserve.  If only every school could be next to a City preserve!

 

One feature of the preserve stood out beyond all the others - an old Plateau Oak Tree that was being smothered by the invasive plants. Marveled by the tree students cleared a large area around the tree and nominated it for the Tree of the Year award, and annual City of Austin application process. Nominating the tree included taking hundreds of photos of the tree, its surroundings, and the wildlife found dwelling it; collecting feather and leaves found near the tree; and creating a scrapbook complete with personal reflections of the tree and its importance.

   

Green Teens studies at Travis weren’t limited to the preserve. After learning about the importance of recycling and reducing our waste Travis High Green Teens set out to share the message with other youth (and adults). Students made recycled art signs to encourage other students on campus to recycle and care for the earth  and the teens hosted a table at Clean Sweep to make decorative key chains or magnets from old bottle caps. Travis Green Teens also ventured out to Enchanted Rock, and joined other teens for caving in Whirlpool Cave, and camping overnight at McKinney Roughs.  

 

 

The key ingredient to a successful Green Teens site is repeat student attendance. When students return week after week for programming their awareness of community needs, environmental knowledge base grows and their commitment to making a difference. This fall at Reagan High School a core group of students saw this realized as they adopted a community garden plot, and completed a cleanup of McKinney Falls State Park. Students took their garden responsibilities seriously – watering and checking on their seedlings multiple times a week and feeding the pet chicken! While attending community garden meetings Green Teens found that gardening has career possibilities and is a great way to meet community members. 

 

During a spring McKinney Falls cleanup students climbed through cactus and slid down stream banks to collect trash big and small; they even found part of a broken chair in a tree!  Bringing the focus on litter, waste, and recycling back to their school students made edible landfills and enjoyed munching on “trash” made of chocolate chips, caramel, and pretzels! 

 

LBJ Green Teens define what it means to be an environmental club - gardening, picking up trash, marking storm drains, building bird feeders, making wilderness survival kits, learning about aquifers and so much more! The mighty force of 13 holds each other accountable and attends weekly rain or shine to tend school gardens, create centerpieces, and tackle big projects like relocating a vegetable garden bed and cleaning up the neighborhood. In the fall, after learning about the KAB Awards Luncheon, LBJ Green Teens began designing and building centerpieces made from reclaimed materials to have them ready in time.  They turned a noisy cafeteria into an art studio. In one of the most eye opening sessions so far, the LBJ Green Teens set out to clean the neighborhood. As they cleaned the streets they recruited friends and family members and were alarmed by the amount of trash they collected.

 

Much of the spring was spent gardening and focusing on an all new outdoor unit. Green Teen Traneccia helped LASA’s environmental club harvest their vegetable garden this spring. Traneccia reported back how excited she was to taste a carrot from the GROUND!  

 

Eastside Green Teens win the most points for creating the most unique and distinguishable centerpieces for the KAB Awards Luncheon while using almost 100% reclaimed materials. Creating centerpieces was balanced with enjoying the outside courtyard and installing a square foot veggie garden. A fieldtrip to The Great Outdoors provided an opportunity for students to select plants for the garden. With the help of students and staff from Life Skills Green Teens at Eastside kept the school courtyard green and blooming.

 

    

Green Teens at Kealing and Bedichek Middle School is implemented in partnership with Citizen Schools. Students at these sites participate in 10-weeks dedicated to going in depth on a topic.

 

The Boggy Creek Cleaners of Kealing and Bedicheck Middle School dedicated ten weeks to learning about where our drinking water comes from, how important it is to keep it clean, and what makes local waterways polluted. Touching and identifying aquatic bugs was the highlight of the semester and gave students an understanding of how biotic and abiotic parameters help determine if a waterway is clean or polluted. Fieldtrips to Boggy Creek and the LCRA Redbud Center offered a new perspective on the classroom investigations.

 

At the end of the 10 weeks students showcased their knowledge by leading presentations on each topic at the Capitol.

 

Bedichek & Kealing Middle School Green Teens used their math and science skills this spring to map out and plan a school garden. In the process, they studied and hauled soil, distinguished native versus invasive plants, and toured a local nursery to select plants. Through the process students became vested in their gardens. The Bedichek students restored an existing garden space in their nature-scape area. The students labeled their adopted plants so teachers can explore and identify the garden flora with their students. At Kealing students transformed a once littered area in front of the school into a native plant garden to attract butterflies and birds. The semester culminated with parents and community members teaming up with students to expand the gardens while picking up planting tips from the young experts. With lots of student care to water the gardens they are growing and flourishing.

 

Thank you Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center for the plant donation!