By Amy Shelly, Principal, Helen Keller School of Alabama
A large part of the vision for our students at the Helen Keller School of Alabama (HKS) is to learn and practice skills so that when they graduate, they will be employable adults. Many of our students have off-campus jobs. While we do have some on-campus job experiences, our transition department is always looking for other opportunities. During a collaborative planning team meeting, recycling was brought to our attention. As we began to look into this, we realized that by beginning a recycling program, we would create a variety of job skills on campus as well as teach our students to take care of our environment.
At the beginning of the 2024-2025 school year, our transition program started a recycling program. We currently recycle plastic water bottles and cans. We have recycling cans placed in all buildings on our campus. We are currently collecting aluminum and plastic in our bins. Students collect the items placed in the bins daily. From that point, our students sort the materials into the correct location. Our students utilize can crushers to make the material as compact as possible and then take the items collected to the local recycling center in Talladega. The city allows us to access the recycling bins so we can ensure that the materials collected will be recycled.
While these activities sound trivial, the skills that are being developed are far from that. We begin by showing the students where the recycling bins are located and they travel with the transition specialist from location to location with our goal being that students will be able to independently navigate our campus and collect the items. When a student is employed, they will need to be able to learn their new work environment and navigate this as efficiently as possible. We teach students the importance of efficiency alongside quality. We want our students to understand that while the quality of our work is important, so is our efficiency in the task. For some individuals, remaining on task and at a good rate of productivity is a skill that must be taught. Our recycling program works on this when we are sorting our cans and crushing our cans.
We have also started shredding services for our staff and teachers on campus and are working to develop a relationship with United Ability and/or Gone for Good to take our shredding to be recycled. As the team planned and looked further into this project, we realized that due to the nature of our school, there was a need for documents to be shredded to protect confidentiality. Our students will pick up documents to be shredded from our staff and teachers and take care of this. Tying into teaching about our environment, shredding fits right in. The shredded materials will be given to another entity that will recycle them.
Our students who participate in our transition program take pride in the jobs that they perform. They understand that these skills that we are developing on campus will lead to opportunities off campus and after they graduate. Amaris Jones, a 10th-grade student at HKS, is one of our most efficient members of the shredding department. Her favorite thing about this job is emptying the containers. She thinks it is funny when the shredded materials make a mess. She is quick to clean this up. Another student who is a part of this program is Gracie Miller. She is a part of the recycling program and her favorite part of the process is crushing the cans. She likes being active and moving around. Keimonta Carr is also a part of the recycling team. He enjoys this job and really likes collecting the bottles and cans. He likes this because he can go around the school and visit while working.
HKS takes pride in our environment and recycling program and we were named a Green Ribbon School by the state of Alabama. This state honor recognizes our contributions to protecting our environment and all that our school does to create a cleaner world for future generations.
