The Seed of Flame, an environmental STEM project created by seventh grade students at Mount Madonna School (MMS), has won First Place in the Lexus Eco Challenge and a total of $25,000 in award money. The Mount Madonna team is one of four middle school teams to earn first place in this nationwide competition.
Earlier this school year, the team was awarded $10,000 for as a finalist in the initial challenge, and now as a winner in the final challenge, will receive an additional $15,000 to be shared by the school, science teacher and project mentor Katrina Leni-Konig, and participating students.
Lexus and Scholastic began the challenge 10 years ago with an intention of encouraging middle and high school students to develop and implement environmental programs that positively impact their communities. This year more than 1,700 teams entered either or both of the challenges, addressing issues related to land and water, or air and climate.
“Seed of Flame is significant to me because it showed me how working together, even for a short time, can have a big impact,” said seventh grader Amirah Alexander. “I believe our project stood out to the judges because we were one of the few teams trying to raise awareness.”
“I think our commitments and ideas proved us worthy of first place and captured the judges’ attention,” shared classmate Ben Pearson. “It was a fun project to do and I will remember it forever.”
Their project was inspired by the Loma Fire, a nearby wildfire that occurred in fall 2016. Students developed an action plan to benefit the local community by transforming a school greenhouse into a forest nursery to restore forests after wildfire, disease, and other human impacts.
“We need to understand that wildfires are a necessary part of our forest ecosystem, but climate change is making it more difficult for forests to regenerate on their own,” commented Leni-Konig. “Wildfires in California are larger, burn hotter, last longer, and are more frequent than usual. The forests need our help!”
During the initial challenge, students began a small seed bank in their science classroom, with seeds gathered from the forest property surrounding the MMS campus. Once established, the forest nursery and seed bank will serve as an ongoing educational resource for the school and broader community. At present, the students estimated that the forest seed bank contains thousands of seeds including acorn, redwood, manzanita, madrone, and coyote bush.
Students have begun planting seeds in their forest nursery. Once established, the plants will be transplanted to areas needing restoration at Mount Madonna, as well as coordinating with Cal Fire in regards to a restoration project at the Loma Fire site. Students are planning to provide plants for habitat restoration, as well as installing equipment to measure erosion.
For the final challenge, students were asked to think globally and extend their impact beyond local action. They engaged social media and art as activism to raise awareness about the local impacts of climate change. They launched a social media campaign, #hugatree, and were able to raise enough money for the organization Trees for the Future to support a family in Sub-Saharan Africa to plant a forest garden, providing food security and helping to alleviate regional poverty.
They also asked friends around the world to plant trees in their local communities, and compiled a film of the global tree planting action to demonstrate that we are all stewards of the earth (view their film).
A week-long summer camp for middle school age kids to learn about forest ecology, stewardship, and human impacts will be held Mount Madonna this summer. To learn more about their project, visit the project website.
“We accomplished a lot with Seed of Flame,” commented seventh grader Summer Howley. “We made STEAM science kits, a Claymation, seed packets and we got people from all over the world to participate. Despite being seventh grade kids, we had help from all over the world and were able to reach and educate many people.”
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Nestled among the redwoods on 355 mountaintop acres, Mount Madonna is a safe and nurturing college-preparatory school that supports students in becoming caring, self-aware and articulate critical thinkers, who are prepared to meet challenges with perseverance, creativity and integrity. The CAIS and WASC accredited program emphasizes academic excellence, creative self-expression and positive character development. Located on Summit Road between Gilroy and Watsonville.
