Partnership in Education
Jenkins Middle Project Description
Brief Summary of Project:
Environmental stewardship and employee involvement go hand in hand at the Palatka Pulp and Paper Operations. There are so many GP employees that really care about the environment and try to find ways to reduce our impact on the environment and the communities that surround the Palatka facility. The employees decided to take that passion for environmental stewardship and share it with middle school students in the Putnam County School system.
Myra Carpenter, environmental superintendent, located a partner in the Putnam County school system that shared the same vision for expanding students understanding of industry’s role in reducing environmental impacts. Linda Matzke, a sixth grade science teacher at Jenkins Middle School, saw the Environmental Workshop concept as a great opportunity to broaden her teaching curriculum. A four-week partnership was established with Jenkins Middle school students and GP Palatka to incorporate learning opportunities in the students’ language arts, math, science and social studies classes. Following the guidelines of the Florida Sunshine State Standards, more than 30 mill employees created classroom sessions, labs and mill tours unique to anything the students had ever encountered before. Each year more than 300 sixth-graders participate in the environmental workshop. A complete program guide has been developed and distributed to ten of the fourteen consumer products paper mills operated by Georgia-Pacific.
Project Description:
The Palatka Pulp and Paper Operations provides funding for educational programs throughout Putnam County from GP Mini-Grants all the way to local Junior ROTC programs. GP feels very fortunate to be able to give back to the community it calls home. However, the employees at the Palatka Operations felt it could do more through a personal commitment to being more involved with the local school system. The concept of visiting a local classroom isn’t new, but making sure the classroom visit meets the curriculum standards for the State of Florida is what makes this program unique. The added bonus is the Environmental Workshop curriculum offers insight to the paper industry’s role in protecting the environment.
The Environmental Workshop consists of two phases, the first being a weeklong training session inside the classroom. The classroom subjects cover the history of paper during the students’ social studies class, how to generate electricity during science class, papermaking and measurements during math and during language arts students learn about recycling and write an essay that they enter in a contest for a special prize. The students also receive a grade for the essay.
During the second phase, students travel to the Palatka mill for a tour of the entire papermaking operation and environmental labs where Ph, conductivity, temperature and dissolved oxygen are all measured. Upon completion of the labs, the students then see the practical applications of their experiments while visiting the wastewater treatment facility. After the tour, all of the students enjoyed a lunch prepared by Palatka’s own cooking team.
More than thirty employees are responsible for covering the classroom and mill visit activities for the 300 sixth graders. Employees team up in groups of five to present the classroom curriculum. This prevents one or two employees from being responsible for up to 40 hours of classroom instruction. After the program is completed, a select group of students from the more than three hundred that experienced the program, are responsible for preparing an overview presentation describing what they learned, which is presented to the Putnam County School Board and the mill’s management team.