Most everyone has heard the saying, “Give a hoot. Don’t pollute,” but the word around Hunters Bend Elementary these days is “Don’t be a water hog, be a water hero.”
Fifth-graders at the school on Tuesday shared their lessons on how not to be a water hog with second-graders at their school, with the help of students from Belmont University's Students in Free Enterprise program (SIFE), which developed and piloted lessons with the older students.
In spring of this year Franklin’s Water Management department launched a new water conservation campaign targeted to families and children, titled, “Don’t be a water hog, be a water hero.” The campaign was launched at the Main Street Festival and also at “Touch-a-Truck.”
In the last few months, Belmont’s Students in Free Enterprise Program (SIFE) has created a water conservation book from the water hog/hero theme and a Belmont Honors class has developed and piloted water conservation lessons with fifth-grade students of Hunters Bend Elementary School in Williamson County.
10-year-old Julia Bolin, the daughter of Pam and Paul Bolin, is in Celeste Grider’s fifth-grade class and she said the experience had taught her not just lessons about water conservation.
“I learned how you can conserve water in different ways,” she said, “Like watering plants in the morning or the evening instead of in the middle of the day. I also learned there are different ways you can teach people.”
She and several of her classmates demonstrated that when they went around the corner to Mrs. Bennett’s second-grade class to play “Buckets of Fun,” where the students transported “water” — actually blue marbles — from a “reservoir” in the center back to their individual cups while trying to make as few trips as possible.
Emily English, 10 and the daughter of Eileen Engilsh, said she has used the lessons she learned in the program at home.
“I am doing stuff like taking shorter showers,” English said. “We learned it in more of a fun way, than boring.”
Natalie Welch, 11 and the daughter of Cathy and Ben Welch, said she is teaching not just at school, but at home.
“I am teaching my brother how to turn the faucet off when he is brushing his teeth and not to fill his cup all the way to the top because he just drinks a little and swishes,” Welch said.
City officials are happy with the response to the program at Hunter’s Bend and have approached the Franklin Special School District about adding the lessons in their schools.
“This is an unprecedented partnership between the city of Franklin, Belmont University and the Williamson County School District,” said City Administrator Eric Stuckey. “Our goal is to get the water conservation message out to as many young people as we can, and as this partnership grows we’ll also move it into the Franklin Special School District. By reaching our youngest citizens they can take the message into their homes and teach their parents the benefits of conserving water and becoming a sustainable household.”
This is Belmont’s first program to utilize peer teaching using children’s books. Their goal is to provide educational materials to support the SIFE book series on environmental sustainability, recycling, water conservation, science and general education; outline methods of multiple levels of peer-to-peer teaching to increase learning, retention and application of scientific principles; and increase the interest of pivotal-aged children in the sciences. The SIFE Program’s first book was titled Freddie’s Organic Farm, which focused on a Williamson County farm owned by Freddie Haddox.
“Belmont’s SIFE Chapter and my Honors Analytics class are excited to introduce the city of Franklin’s ‘Don’t be a Water Hog’ as the second children’s book in a series on environmentally sustainable practices,” said Dr. Kimberlee Daus, Belmont professor of chemistry and physics and advisor to this project. “The Belmont students have experienced a wonderful collaboration with the students in Celeste Grider’s class at Hunters Bend Elementary School. The success of this partnership is hopefully a good indicator of the potential this book has to educate elementary-aged students on the benefits of water conservation.”
The Belmont students have been working with the Hunters Bend fifth-graders since September, introducing the water hog concept and preparing activities and work for the second-grade students.
“The children’s book is being incorporated with our unit on how living things interact with nonliving things and connections between human activities and their impact on the environment. I think society is realizing that we are damaging our planet Earth, and that we all need to do our part,” said Grider, a fifth-grade teacher at Hunters Bend.
Belmont’s book is titled "Don’t Be a Water Hog," and was written by Jen Hermanson, with input from the city. Illustrations are by Clare Cannon. Hermanson and Cannon also wrote and illustrated Freddie’s Organic Farm. The original Water Hog-Water Hero campaign was developed by the city of Franklin Communications Division and Water Management Department. Sign up for Franklin Green Tips at www.franklintn.gov/livegreen.
