The third and final day of the unit had us take a walking field trip to Cleveland's local public park, Eldon Park. At the park, there are tennis courts, two baseball diamonds, a playground, a mini water park and a surrounding forested area. Lots of places for careless folk to leave their trash and recyclables on the ground! Before getting started on the "Great Eldon Clean" (as I affectionately called it with the class), we paired the students up and split the class in half so that I could be responsible for one group on the field and the classroom teacher could be responsible for the other in the forested area. Each partnership got a plastic bag each, a pair of tongs to pick up the garbage with and some plastic gloves. Their job was to pick up every piece of garbage they spotted. The teacher and I had our own bag, tongs and gloves as well, as the best way to teach students is to model the behaviour you want from them! The two of us also had a separate bag, which was for our group's recyclables. Whenever a pair found something that should be recycled, they were to bring it over to myself or their teacher (depending on whose group they were in) and put it in the recycling bag.

Another component to the clean was that, prior to starting, we accepted estimates from the class as to how many pieces of garbage they thought we would find. We wrote everyone's estimate on a piece of paper so we could see which student would be the closest. Then, we instructed them to, every time they picked up a piece of garbage for their bag, count each and every piece. And off they went! Simply counting the garbage they were finding was enough to keep them entertained and interested for the duration of the time we were there (about 50 minutes) ... if a task is turned into a game, suddenly it becomes a lot more fun! I was glad that I'd thought of the counting idea, rather than just having them tediously pick up piece after piece of trash; I'm sure that would've gotten a little old after 10 or so minutes.

At around 2:30pm, we reconvened to tally up the class total, as well as to discuss the process of what we'd done, how we felt about it, etc. Every one of us was astonished when we learned that collectively, we'd collected 2,311 pieces of garbage and recyclables! How proud those students looked. Beaming smiles all around. During our discussion, one of the students said it best: "I feel really good about what we did, but I'm kind of mad at the people whose garbage we picked up. I mean, it's not our job to pick up after them!" She'd hit the nail right on the head. "That's right," I said to the class, "if only everyone acted responsibly and put their garbage in the garbage can where it belongs, we'd have a lot nicer of a park to enjoy". "How about the plants and animals?" I asked them, "why do you think they'd be happy with what we've done?" One of the quieter boys in the class raised his hand and said, "Garbage hurts their homes. Also, sometimes little snails and things think a piece of garbage is some food and might eat it and it could hurt them". Smart little group! A few of the major points I wanted to address and they were getting all the right answers.

We ended the day by each depositing our garbage bags into the park's dumpster, which I thought was a perfect way to end the unit. Overall, it was a very successful experience - I know the students learned a lot, the classroom teacher said she was going to use the lessons to future classes and I, of course, will too.

One of the main things I liked about the unit is that it incorporated many subjects into one easy-to-teach 9 period unit. A little bit of everything was offered - Language Arts with the speaking/listening of the discussions and the reading/writing of the homework assignment, Computer Skills with the online interactive games, Art with the Recycle Art lesson, Math with the estimating and counting of the park clean, PE with the walking, running, picking up garbage aspect of the walking field trip and Health & Career/Social Responsibility of the whole unit itself, teaching students how important it is to do these things to keep our city, country and world as clean and healthy as we possibly can.

Next year and the years to follow of my teaching career, I will definitely teach this unit to my classes of students. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to create it for the purpose of this course, Education 493. I enjoyed making it and I very much enjoyed teaching it!

Tara Parkinson
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