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Making Durfee School Cooler with Trees and Flowers

June 17, 2015
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Durfee students measure the circumference of a tree as part of the data they are collecting to better understand how trees keep the ground cool | Photo: Amigos de los Rios Facebook

Youth Voices is working with middle school students from three schools in the El Monte City School District: Columbia, Durfee, and Wright. The students, participants in the English Language Development program at their schools, formed teams to explore, investigate, and write about an important issue in their community; all the while they are learning and expanding their knowledge of civic journalism and community engagement. Follow their work on social media by using the hashtag #KCETYV.

 
Team Name:
Flower Power

Team Members:
Amanda Pruitt
June Singson
Anahi Garcia
Veronica Chavez

School
Durfee

Our vision to improve our school is to make the place bright and beautiful. We need to take action because the place currently looks dead and boring. We want to improve the view of our school by making it look more alive with trees and flowers, making it feel clean and fresh. This affects the health, life, and temperature of the school and students, and each and everyone at the school is affected by this issue. If the land temperature is lowered and the air is made fresher by the flowers, it would make the school's environment healthier.

We plan to advocate for this issue by first raising people's awareness, and then asking for volunteers to help clean the area, and eventually plant new trees and flowers. We will also ask for donations of trees and flowers, or we could buy them. We will recycle bottles, cans and paper so we can make money and also make some new things from the materials.

If anything is possible, we would like to plant a bunch of trees and flowers on the school's nature walk.

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