Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Macdonough Environmental Club with International Aspects


Maybe you can go home again — at least for a little while. At least that’s what 9-year-old Kendalyn Zipf thinks as she sits in a classroom at Macdonough Elementary School eagerly awaiting for the Skype call to go through.

The group — made up of fourth- and fifth-graders involved in the Environmental Club — is calling students in Ghana, an effort that is supposed to encourage cultural connections between students from foreign lands. The term “foreign,” however, is relative as students participating in the “Dear Mother…Letters to the Earth” project come from all walks of life, from all parts of the world. Some students are from the southern portion of the United States, affected by Hurricane Katrina. Others were affected by the oil spill locally and overseas, according to principal, Jon Romeo.

The brainchild of composer Glenn McClure, the project was kick started as a tribute to the College of the Environment on Wesleyan University’s campus, a program launched this past year. In April, McClure, a faculty member at New York’s Eastman School of Music, hopes to perform a musical composition he is in the process of producing. As a supplement to the piece, McClure will incorporate letters, poems and drawings depicting young students’ perspectives on “Mother Earth.”

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