This fall a group of students at Rock Point applied for and were accepted into Teens Reaching Youth for the Environment (TRY). The TRY program was developed by UVM Extension and their environmental partners, and the goal is to coach teens how to teach elementary students about environmental issues. Besides getting to learn a lot about a particular environmental issue, these students will be developing mentoring and leadership skills, while increasing environmental literacy and responsibility in younger kids.
On December 4, our TRY team got up before dawn to travel to the Green Mountain Tech Center in northern Vermont for our training day! Our group was selected to work on a water curriculum, and so we joined eight other school groups to learn all about the water cycle, watersheds, water quality and health, and aquatic life. The day was filled with information about the subject, but also strategies for teaching younger students, hands-on learning, and expectations for how to run a successful program. It was a long day, but an engaging one, and we returned to school excited to begin practicing and planning for our program lessons in the second semester!