JCMS student rewarded for her efforts to clean community

Left to right: Carla and Roanna Newton and Kateryna Savienkova on the Living Lands and Water Garbage Barge in Memphis, TN. (Submitted photo)

Jersey Community Middle School student, Roanna Newton of Grafton, won the grand prize in the Living Lands & Waters Virtual Community Exploration & Challenge (LLWVCEC).
Living Lands & Waters (LLW) continues their efforts to make the world a cleaner place. Headquartered in East Moline, Illinois, LLW is a 501 environmental organization. Spending up to nine months a year living and traveling on their barge, the LLW crew hosts river cleanups, watershed conservation initiatives, workshops, tree plantings and other key conservation efforts.
As the COVID pandemic took hold of the world, the LLW crew continued picking up garbage from the Mississippi, Illinois and Ohio Rivers. The crew also worked hard planting and distributing native trees and removing invasive species, but all in-person education came to a halt. With the need for a new education outlet, LLW educators Mike Coyne-Logan and Rachel Loomis created a virtual education program designed for students from across the country and dedicated to connecting them with nature.
Newton (sixth grade), learned of the online opportunity and, last summer, participated in the virtual classroom led by the LLW team. The LLWVCEC Education Program, educated the participants on garbage reduction, protecting watersheds and other environmental issues. Newton, along with approximately 60 other students from communities around the USA, followed a monthly program schedule that included the following:
■ Students were provided lessons on various natural resource topics. Materials needed were shipped to their homes.
■ Students were challenged to take action in their communities through investigations, observations and data collection.
■ Students met virtually with their educator to discuss and reflect on the monthly lesson and challenge.
■ If the monthly challenge was successfully completed the student would earn a monthly program pin.
■ If all six pins were earned, students were qualified to be a candidate for the “End of Program Grand Prize,” which was a trip to LLW.
Through the LLWVCEC program, students investigated 150 storm drains within their communities, researched and removed invasive species from places they often visited and created 30 bee houses for pollinators. The final challenge was to organize and host a community cleanup. This final challenge encouraged the participants to get outside while fostering the youths to become stewards for their natural environment. The students together led 212 volunteers and removed 5,583 pounds of garbage.
LLWVCEC had 28 students successfully complete the six month program and Newton was the winner of the grand prize, a trip to Memphis, TN to work alongside the LLW crew on the mighty Mississippi River.
On March 11, Newton, along with her mother, Carla Newton; and her sister, Kateryna Savienkova, made the trip to Memphis. Newton and her family were able to visit the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, walk across the Harahan Bridge that crosses the Mississippi River at the Arkansa and Tennessee border and visit the famous Beale Street.
The highlight of the trip, according to Newton, was joining the LLW crew and eleven college-aged students for the second week of LLW’s Alternative Spring Break (ASB). The ASB program invites colleges and universities from all over the country to participate in a week-long clean up event during their spring break to help clean up garbage that has collected on McKellar Lake.
Though quite a few years younger than those college spring breakers, Newton hustled to fill up bags upon bags of garbage: plastic bottles galore, balls from every sport you can imagine, tires, and the toys found in kids’ meals. Newton and her family ate lunch on the LLW barge and got a full tour from her favorite remote educator, Loomis. The ASB students removed 35,670 pounds from McKellar Lake throughout the three-week cleanup event.
LLW will be moving their way up river to Alton in April. They are looking to host a community clean up, but are waiting on water levels to confirm that date. Coyne-Logan and Loomis will be hosting Educational Workshops on the “Floating Classroom” barge, and have a few dates available.
If you are a formal science teacher, you may email Loomis at [email protected] to find out how you can sign up for an Educational Workshop, or for more information.