HATFIELD — Prompted by both a 19th century poem by Emily Dickinson and a 21st century short story by Naomi Shiab Nye, Smith Academy seventh grader Calvin Wall reflected on what might happen to the world if people stopped caring about the planet and having a clean environment.
In responding to the writers, Wall says he worried about climate change, but also sees opportunity in producing more electric cars and taking other actions to address a warming world.
“We could even possibly create more laws that enforce keeping this planet healthy,” Wall said.
“I think there’s a lot of things we need to do about this, and there’s a lot we can do, but a lot of people are oblivious,” said fellow seventh grader Conor Prew. “It’s important. It’s our Earth.”
Prew said he will practice making sure lights are turned off at his home when no one is in the room.
Both students were at the Cooler Communities/Hatfield 2040 Student Projects Showcase event that was part of the larger “Hatfield’s Getting Cooler” event on Thursday, an afternoon and evening to promote what is happening in the town’s public schools, both to the Hatfield community and beyond.
The climate fair, an element of the ongoing “Hatfield 2040: A Vision to Protect, Prepare and Prosper,” was followed by the annual cornhole tournament and pizza, and then a band concert and art show. Hip hop artist Tem Blessed also performed.
Smith Academy Principal Conor Driscoll said the day was about showing families what is happening in classrooms and allowing students the chance to engage with others.
The event was advertised throughout the region. Driscoll said the hope was that people could drop by who may not have thought about Hatfield as a school choice option and the education that is offered in its small schools.
For students in the middle school English class of Katie Guiel, they were taking works written 153 years apart, 1858 for Dickinson’s “Nobody Knows This Little Rose” and 2011 for Nye’s “Allied with Green,” but both deal with environmentalism. Many of the student responses focused on the need to recycle, reuse and reduce, Guiel said.
Each student did a “one pager” that Guiel displayed on the screen.
“We had to write about certain things around what our thoughts on global warming and climate change are and all that stuff,” Prew said.
In a lobby of the school, one of the posters that greeted those attending showed an eighth-grade project in which six students surveyed their grades 7-12 peers to get their thoughts and opinions on climate change.
Kevin Wall, a middle school social studies civics teacher, said a lot of data is displayed on the poster and that some of the statistics are interesting, such as 69% want to help to confront climate change, but didn’t know how to help out or get involved.
His students also made observations of snowfall and temperatures and how that indicates changing climate.
More importantly, though, the students learned how to seek responses. “It was also a nice opportunity for students to look at how to develop questions,” Wall said.
Wall said half the students felt empowered to make changes and understand they can do something.
“It’s nice to see that they thought there is something they could do about it,” Wall said.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
