What is GTCC?

Hi, my name is Charley, and I am going to tell you about GTCC, Green Team Climate Change.

GTCC is an environmental after school club, where we strive to make the Earth cleaner for people now and in the future. We also work on projects that make our community a more eco-friendly place.  Last year GTCC wrote letters to State Senator Frockt asking for some donations for solar panels, which will be installed soon.  We also wrote letters to different restaurants and organizations asking them to think more about what they do with their waste.  Just before the coronavirus hit, we met with Nicole Parish of Foxberry Education to talk about the school garden we are planning to build!  Those are just things we have done in the past year!  We do all this because we care about our world and the creatures that live on it.  I hope you have a great day

What are GTCC’s goals?

Our number one goal is to increase awareness of climate change by TALKING about it!  In addition to increasing awareness, every year we pick a few specific goals to tackle.  This year, we have five ” task forces ” targeting different projects:

1. Assembly Crew: to create, organize & perform a school wide GTCC assembly
2. Garden Guardians: to design, plant and maintain our school garden troughs
3. Legislative Liaison: to help our group stay current about legislative efforts to address climate change, as well as meeting with targeted legislative members to learn more and share any concerns we may have 
4. Tipsters : to write & present targeted facts & information twice a month during our Wednesday STARS assemblies
5. Websters: to create and maintain information on our new webpage!

Stevens is an EarthGen School!

Led by GTCC, Stevens continues to our efforts to become a multi-certified EarthGen school (formerly known as Washington Green Schools).  There are seven categories of certification (recycling & waste, energy, water, school grounds & garden, healthy buildings & transportation, at-home). Stevens was certified four years ago for recycling & waste (Go Green Team Captains!) and renewed that certification last year (renewal is required every two years).  We are also pursuing our school grounds & garden certification this year (Go Garden Guardians!) as we install our new garden troughs and pursue efforts to redirect more of our rain runoff into our planting beds.

This year, GTCC members will also lead their classrooms in the newest certification category, at-home, where individual students chose an at-home project to pursue.  We’ll be using EarthGen’s carbon calculator tool to quantify our impact on the Earth!

With the upcoming spring installation of our solar panels (!) we hope to pursue our energy certification next year.  As part of that energy certification, students will learn about the solar energy cycle and monitor the energy our own panels create.  We also hope to reboot our Energy Captains program, with each intermediate classroom having designated Energy Captains to guide the classroom in its efforts to conserve energy & decrease general consumption.

Tips from  the Tipsters!

Twice a month, our GTCC Tipsters write and present targeted facts & information during our Wednesday all-school STARS assemblies.  Please visit  Tips from the Tipsters! to read all the presented tips!

Garden Guardians

We are patiently awaiting district approval for our school garden trough placement!  We hope to have these in place and planted by the end of April.

Some of the goals we are targeting for next year: 

“We want some kind of water way that will drain dirty water through the soil because the soil acts as somewhat of a filter so that the dirty water will get (cleaned) before draining into Puget Sound. We also want to add filter to our (playground) drains to prevent trash from going into Puget Sound and other bodies of water.” — Calla

“We want to also make a sign to put in the garden at school.  Also, maybe make a rain garden using drain water.” — Clio

Listening, Learning and Leading: our Legislative Liaison!

On March 16th, our “Legislative Liaison”, Simon, met with State Senator Jamie Pedersen to learn more about proposed bills and pending climate change legislation, discuss our club concerns and plot future action. In particular we learned of SB 5022, targeting increased use of post-consumer recycled material in plastic packaging and decrease reliance on styrofoam packaging.  We think a letter-writing campaign is in our near future!