Every year New Jersey Community Water Watch organizes a unique, service event known as Education Week in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in January. As AmeriCorps members, we commemorate the late Dr. King not by taking the day off, but by spending the months prior preparing lessons, coordinating with teachers, and gaining the support of local businesses to make our Education Week a success. All this effort culminates into a week-long tour of the state where we travel to some of New Jersey's most urban areas to educate thousands of young people about the local water quality issues that are relevant to their neighborhoods. 

This year, our focus was “Community Solutions to Water Pollution.” We spent the months leading up to the week creating a new lesson plan that enabled us to teach the importance of civic engagement in solving our water quality problems.  The lesson presented students with the story of a water pollution problem in the imaginary town of “Riverside” that was much like any town in NJ.  The students learned to work together to decide the fate of a polluted river by participating in a mock town meeting as different stakeholders including concerned parents, environmentalists, and the factory workers and owners.

Water Watch Organizer Katie Feeney demonstrates how overdevelopment creates pollution that affects the health of NJ’s waterways.

Our first day was spent in New Brunswick along the Raritan River, the 14th dirtiest river in the nation.  We taught the entire 6th grade at Livingston Elementary, Woodrow Wilson Elementary, and McKinley Community School. We were joined by Raritan Riverkeeper Bill Schultz and New Brunswick Environment Commissioner Donna Caputo, who ended the lessons by talking to the students about their roles in solving local water quality problems in the community. 

The next day we headed north to Newark, a city whose major river, the Passaic, suffers from a toxic legacy of industrial pollution.  We taught thirty-six lessons in third through eighth grade classrooms at Maple Avenue Elementary, Dr. Alma E. Flagg School, and in afterschool programs at Peshine Avenue and George Washington Carver schools.  In one class, a 4th grade student’s answer to making positive change in his community was “to put up posters everywhere and get 100 of his friends, family, and neighbors to clean up the Passaic… every day.”

Moving south, the second day was spent in Trenton, home of the Delaware River, which is no stranger to oil spills or chronic flooding. We taught twenty-four lessons in classrooms and afterschool programs at Hedgepeth Elementary, Columbus Elementary, Robbins Annex, Rivera Elementary, and Wilson Elementary.

DEP Commissioner Jackson addressing the Water Watch Americorps members and volunteers during Education Week’s Launch Event.

Between our morning and afternoon lessons DEP Commissioner Lisa Jackson showed her support for our efforts at our official Water Watch Education Week 2008 Launch Event and highlighted the importance of teaching environmental stewardship and civic engagement to youth today.  “It takes an incredible amount of energy to turn the Titanic,” Jackson said to the college student volunteers. “Continue to serve as a model so others can see activism at its fundamental level – so they can see the issue and believe in it enough to act on it.” Jackson also shared her own personal motivations for working to protect NJ’s natural resources. “By the time I was 10 I believed the planet would be over,” Jackson said. “Rivers were on fire, you couldn’t breathe in Pittsburgh. Now I think we’re back to a generation of kids who are going to grow up thinking they need to do something.” 

We were joined by NJ Commission for National and Community Service Director Rowena Madden; CEO of NJafter3, Mark Valli; NJ DEP Environmental Education Officer Tanya Oznowich; Environmental Education Specialist Marc Rogoff; Environment NJ Field Director Doug O’Malley; and Education Works Program Director Katrina Looby at the Launch Event.

Our last day was spent teaching lessons at the Jersey Shore, in both Neptune and Long Branch, where summer beach closings continue to plague popular swimming spots.  We were joined by Joe Reynolds and Mike Fedosh from Monmouth County Environment Council, Joe Martin from the Middletown Environment Commission, and Anna Will from Clean Ocean Action to educate the youth about the connection between streams, lakes, and the ocean.

By the end of the week, we educated a total of 1875 students with the help of 21 student volunteers from Rutgers, Princeton, and Monmouth Universities, and Stockton, Brookdale Community and Ocean County Colleges. We were also joined by eight community leaders in the classroom, and eight members of our state leadership to help highlight the need for community solutions to water pollution. 

Throughout the week, we sprayed water over aluminum foil covered sponges to simulate parking lots and storm water runoff , we poured food coloring into water to show pollution, and we donned Mayor McCheese’s top hat as we listened to students wearing cardboard ties voice their concerns for their community.  We brought these hands-on educational lessons into the NJ’s classrooms to serve our communities by doing our part to ensure that today’s youth grow up educated about the environment and informed about what they can do as future citizens to help fix our water pollution problems.