7th – Compost for sale

Posted on 12th April 2021 by nkaufman

As a grade, we have been collecting food waste from the school the entire year (when in person). That food waste gets collected by Compost Crusader. Compost Crusader then drops the food scraps off to a processor and in 2-3 months, that food waste becomes compost.

The compost that is created by our food waste (and millions and millions of pounds of organic waste from other homes, schools, and businesses) is now for sale. Any bag that is purchased through this fundraiser earns money for our class. That money raised will be reinvested into our garden program; allowing us to grow more vegetables, which will be sold (and money donated to local food shelters) or given to local food shelters.

The link for the compost ordering is located here. We will have compost available for pick-up from MJDS on Friday, May 21. If you need it before then, please let me know and we can arrange for an alternative pick-up date.

7th – Cleaning Compost Buckets

Posted on 23rd March 2021 by nkaufman

It is a dirty job, but someone has to do it! Every week, we clean our compost buckets out. Sometimes, like this week, they stink (we missed last week because of student led conferences).

If only we did a better job during the week scooping the left-overs off the bottom, we might have less to clean come Tuesday! Maybe try mentioning that when talking with your student; see how they respond.

7th – Guest Speaker

Posted on 19th March 2021 by nkaufman

We had the pleasure in class of having a Zoom guest speaker, Melissa Tashjian of Compost Crusder. We have been using Compost Crusader the entire year for our compost collection program (Melissa’s company picks up our compost pile on a biweekly basis).

It was an awesome time to hear from the starter of such an influential business in making our world a better place. We all had our questions answered and got to visit (virtually) with an entrepreneur. Feel free to ask your child some of the questions they asked and some of the answers they found out during our visit.

7th – Compost Clean-up

Posted on 17th November 2020 by nkaufman

Today was a stinky day. Over the last month or so of composting, turns out we were not as careful as we should have been as it relates to our compost. Many of our buckets had little bits of food scrap left after emptying them…which meant two things: mold and mice (potentially).

Today, we remedied the situation a bit. We spent a great deal of time cleaning each and every one of our buckets out. The process was nothing if not smelly. Hopefully though we have learned to be a bit more careful when it comes to maintaining our compost buckets in a clean state.

7th – Pausing Compost Collection

Posted on 29th October 2020 by nkaufman

We are participating in remote learning for the next few weeks. Even though we got the compost collection program off the ground (1 week in and we did great), the students thought it best to put a pause on the compost collection.

That does not mean the end of our work though. Even student spent the week keeping in touch with their homeroom teacher (the teacher of the class they are assigned to collect compost from) via email. To see the improvement in professionalism in their emails makes this project all worthwhile!

Keep it up!

7th – 1st Day of Compost Collection

Posted on 19th October 2020 by nkaufman

After working hard the last few weeks to understand the importance of composting and setting up our program, we are finally ready to pick up our compost. Buckets have been delivered to each classroom. Every teacher was sent an introductory email, which included personalized videos explaining what we are doing, and a reminder message was sent this morning. Now, all it comes down to is our moment of truth!

We are going to be recording our compost collection amounts each day and week. Hopefully we have good news to report at the end of the week (in terms of environmental protection; not on your bank account seeing how we are throwing away a lot of food daily).

Quick update…for our first day, we are at 62.5% participation from grades/cohorts across the school! For a first time, we will take that!

7th – Presenting our Compost Project

Posted on 13th October 2020 by nkaufman

It is tough to do an all-school composting program when not everyone is here (some students virtual) and everyone that is here is confined to our own cohort. We are doing it nonetheless. After three days of script writing for our introductory videos, we finally got to recording. Students had to record (masked) their introduction to their grades and their respective teachers. These videos will then be sent to the classrooms on Thursday, with their compost bins (the orange Home Depot 5 gallon bucket (and no, we are not sponsored by Home Depot, but will gladly take some money for this advertisement)), as well as an introductory letter.

Feel free to ask your student to share their video with you.

7th – Composting almost up and running

Posted on 9th October 2020 by nkaufman

The 7th graders completed their look at the media’s bias as it relates to the Vice Presidential debate outside in the Sukkah today (everyone who was less than 6 feet apart had a mask, as per school rules). Afterward, they worked on their composting presentation to their respective grade.

In case you did not know, as part of our quest to make the world a better place (Tikkun Olam), we are starting up our school-wide composting program. Each 7th grader is going to be picking up compost buckets from each grade at the end of the day. Part of this activity involves each group to introduce themselves, their mission, and the composting process to their respective grades.

And just for good measure, during Hafsakaha today, we got a chance to try out the monkey bars for the first time. What a hoot!

7th – How much Trash do we Produce?

Posted on 2nd October 2020 by nkaufman

Our mission in 7th grade is to make the world a better place (Tikkun Olam). After our Sukkah project, we are going to focus more on our local community: the school. Previously, we had a thriving composting program at school; composting hundreds of pounds of food waste per year. Since we went virtual last spring, our composting program has stopped. We are hoping to start back up again; with the help of the 7th graders.

Before starting the composting program again, the students all had to know the WHY behind composting (you know as well as I do they won’t do much work if they don’t understand the purpose). We focused on the WHY by understanding how much trash we actually produce and how much goes into a landfill (in a normal year, we would have field tripped to a landfill…but this is the next best thing). If we understand how much food is thrown away and wasted, maybe we can see the need for a compost program to do our part in helping our environment.

This is a glance at the partnerships in work trying to figure out just how much trash we produce (and eventually, what we can do to fix that problem).