Eco Experience
with Eco Chick
Hey People!
My name is Tana Shepard aka Eco Chick and I am a K-12 Climate, Energy, Conservation specialist and coordinator of the 4J/EWEB Education Partnership. Our program provides free educational opportunities for 4J teachers and their students.
Each month the Eco Experience newsletter includes monthly environmental themes & resources, learning/PD opportunities, Eco tips and tricks, EWEB Education Partnership updates, and climate change education lesson links, videos, book recommendations and MORE.
I am looking forward to working with you ALL this year.
Best wishes,
Tana aka Eco Chick
In this issue:
- Fall with the 4J/EWEB Education Partnership (4J/EEP)
Classroom Resource Conservation Tips
Be Aware of What Goes Where
Recycle ON...NEW Commingle Recycling Guidelines in Oregon
Eco Experience newsletter archive
Fish Eggs to Fry Salmon Education
We are so excited to work with teachers and students from late October to winter break raising salmon in your classrooms and releasing them into the "wild". This experience is has great science and social studies connections with Tribal History, Shared History and the NGSS standards, especially 3rd and 4th grade.
We have space for up to 60 classrooms to raise salmon in their classrooms with the ODFW Fish Eggs to Fry program, a priority to third and fourth grade. If you are new to 4J, check in with your team/building leadership to find out which grade level participates in your setting.
Register here: 2025 Salmon Registration by September 15th.
Note: New teacher training will be provided on Tuesday, October 7th from 4-5:30 pm at the 4J/EEP space at Kennedy Middle School. Stay tuned for a detailed email soon!
Start or Strengthen a Green Team at Your School!
Are you interested in starting a Green Team at your school—or giving a boost to one that already exists? Need a little help or a few resources to get going?
We’re here for you!
One of our key district climate action goals is to have active student Green Teams in every school. These teams give students meaningful opportunities to lead, collaborate, and take real action on sustainability.
Elementary and middle school teams help students build community, develop leadership skills, and prepare for high school involvement.
High school teams provide powerful platforms for student voice and climate advocacy—but often struggle with participation if students haven’t had earlier experience.
That’s where you come in!
💬 Meet the 4J Climate Justice High School Team
This district-level group brings together representatives from each high school to:
Support building-based climate/green teams
Advise on district climate initiatives
Lead student-driven sustainability projects
We need two new student reps from each high school this year—last year’s leaders graduated, and it’s time for a new wave of climate leaders to step up!
Ready to Get Started?
Whether you’re building a new team from scratch or reviving an existing one, we’d love to partner with you. Let’s work together to create opportunities for students to lead, connect, and create change.
--> Click here to request a meeting
We’ll set up a time to talk and help get things rolling at your school.
Let’s empower students to be part of the solution—one Green Team at a time. 💚
Classroom visits with Eco Chick
Understanding the value of natural resources, what they and and where they come from, as well as how to conserve, protect and regenerate them is important knowledge to carry forward as humans sharing planet Earth.
Schedule a classroom visit with Eco Chick. We will work with you to streamline the visit to your teaching needs. Visits typically include a story, information and an activity.
Tips to go beyond the 3 R's!
5 R model:
Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rot
Resources cost money! We can alleviate unnecessary waste AND wasteful habits by adopting a few new ways of operating in our classroom and school spaces.
1. Lighting-Go natural or use only one bank of lights when possible
2. Save energy-turn off your projectors and doc cameras when not in use, close doors and window when A/C or heat are on.
3. Decrease the amount of paper you print and reuse single sided paper for notes, scratch paper, etc. by having a single sided paper basket available
4. Use only one paper towel to dry hands-if you fold it in half, it works like more than one!
5. Create waste stations for trash and recycling and (next level-food waste!) and train your students/staff on it (see below for recycling guidelines)
6. Be a role model: Encourage and model using reusable cups and water bottles.
7. Reuse decor year after year...the students don't care if you re do your decor every year.
8. Use the staffroom refrigerator and microwave or bring a mini-cooler-individual frigs and microwaves are one of THE most wasteful things we can do in our buildings. (Or, alternately, consider sharing in a common space with your colleagues.
9. To laminate or not laminate-that is the question...usually not. Once paper is laminated, it is not longer recyclable.
🌍 Be Aware of What Goes Where: Waste SORrTing for a Healthier Planet 🌱
It takes a village to manage our district’s waste—and everyone plays a role. Our hardworking custodians do an incredible job keeping our schools clean and safe, but they can’t do it alone. That’s why we’re asking everyone to step up and Be Aware of What Goes Where.
This year, we’re rolling out SORrT across our schools, a simple system to help us all sort waste correctly:
Separate
Organics,
Reusables,
recycling, and
Trash.
Here’s what goes where:
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Organics = All food and liquids. Food goes in food waste bins; liquids are poured into liquids buckets.
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Reusables = Currently available at the elementary level and coming soon to secondary schools as funding allows.
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recycling = (Yes, lowercase "r"!) Think tubs, empty cartons, and clean containers—these go into commingle recycling. Recycling comes after reuse in the 5R hierarchy.
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Trash = Anything that doesn't fit into the other categories.
Thanks to ongoing efforts and partnerships with the City of Eugene, our district diverted nearly 905,000 pounds of food waste from the landfill last year through the Love Food Not Waste program—helping reduce methane emissions and keep Short Mountain landfill a little shorter.
This fall, we’re expanding our program with:
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New SORrT posters (developed with Creative Commons Students at CALCI) arriving by the first day of school.
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New educational resources for classrooms to reinforce cafeteria routines.
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Recycling stations in alignment with Oregon’s Recycle On campaign and the state’s new Recycling Modernization Act.
💡 Reminder: Cafeteria refreshers take place when going over routines after each school break (September, January, April), with extra emphasis on incoming K, 6th, and 9th graders.
We encourage you to explore last year's resources:
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24/25 Elementary Love Food Not Waste Resources
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24/25 Secondary Love Food Not Waste Resources
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Be a Waste Warrior – WWF's FREE K–12 curriculum
(Lessons and activities focused on the planetary impact of what we eat and throw away)
By making small shifts in how we handle our waste, we can make a big difference—for our schools, our community, and our planet.
Let’s SORrT it out—together. ♻️
4J/EWEB Education Partnership
TOSA-Climate, Energy, Conservation
Grant Coordinator-EWEB, SPLASH!, Love Food Not Waste
Email: shepard_t@4j.lane.edu
Website: https://bit.ly/4J-eep
Phone: 541.790.5533