Cool Summer Experience 2023
A CLE Parent Speaks
"CLE is more than just a STEAM learning program: it is a community, a family of students, educators, and parents dedicated to building up the whole child. CLE is cultivating our future leaders, academically and socially, and bringing awareness to our connection with nature and their role in preserving the environment in which we all live. My hope is that you will continue to support and partner with us. On behalf of all CLE families, thank you."
~Azuree' Winston
Our CLE family of children, parents, and staff thanks you for making 2023 a COOL Summer Experience!
The Young Explorers - Grades 2/3
As a team of Young Explorers, every week we visited local places and people who also practice the 7 R’s we value here at CLE. We focused on reuse, recycle, reduce and rot (compost) and traveled right outside to our native plant garden, Mellody Farm Nature Preserve, and Mindful Waste. These eco-excursions helped us to connect our R’s by touching, feeling, watching, and - eeewww - even smelling! The R’s were also prominent in our time with Ms. Nancy “Liatris” Fencl, who gave us composting lessons during Waste-Less Wednesdays and taught us fun rhythms on bucket drums.
The Green Team - Grades 4/5
We met our major summer goals of understanding connections between healthy soil, healthy food, and healthy people, including how we can create healthy soil by composting food scraps. CLE’s Waste Free Lunch initiative and Waste-Less Wednesdays, plus our cool excursion to local wormery Mindful Waste helped connect the classroom to real life. Besides learning about the “end” of our food's life cycle (rot/compost), we learned a lot about the beginning stages of our food, too. Not only did we dissect seeds, but we harvested an average of 50 pounds of vegetables per week during service learning at Greentown Grows community garden.
Planet Protectors - Grades 6/7
Our nature buddies experienced wetlands and their functions up close while visiting local sites such as Sedge Meadow Forest Preserve and areas along the Waukegan River and Ravine system. They also focused on ways to work together to craft an eco-message about how to conserve our section of the Lake Michigan watershed. The class worked with Karl “Summer Azure” Thomas, a local musician and recording artist, to write, produce, and perform a song about how to maintain healthy water and avoid water pollution. In addition, students collected mud samples from different places to compare the health of the wetlands, and collaborated on activities such as the celery stalk and dye experiment that simulates how water moves into a plant to carry nutrients from the soil.
Career Pathways My Pathway - Grades 8/9
CPMP lead teacher, Vickie "Wild Turkey" Brown, paired her background in career development with Karl “Summer Azure” Thomas to guide students through career exploration and visualization. For the first time at CLE, students simulated an enterprise they called Green Garden Composting (GGC), complete with a logo, business activity, mission statement, and even a slogan! We sparked systems thinking by having students identify and design their individual role and then see how each part connects to the whole to meet a goal. Our amazing students developed superhero monikers that reflected their career titles - a fun way to express themselves and their career choices! To see how a business operates as a healthy, sustainable system, students visited local small business owner and composting entrepreneur Jeffery Williams of From Hood to Table.