The Assignment

My son (who is 11) was given the following assignment.

What I did for Earth Day?
Why is this important to me?

On "Earth Day", well a few days after Earth Day, 4/24/09 many schools' went to Miller's Cornfield to plant trees as a "giving" for Earth Day. Why it is important to me? Well, technically I wasn't really thinking it was important to me. I mean I went because I had to. I planted trees because I had to not because I wanted to. That's my side of the "field trip".

Now, I was told he didn't do the assignment correctly. I tend to disagree. He was honest and as far as I can tell, he answered the questions.



After much thought and discussion this week-end, Brock and I worked on this:

On “Earth Day”, well a few days after Earth Day, April 24, 2009, many schools went on a field trip. Our school, St. Joseph was one of the schools that participated in planting trees at Miller’s Cornfield. Miller’s Cornfield is located at Antietam Battlefield. This was a way of “giving” for Earth Day.

When we arrived at Miller’s Cornfield, we were in divided into groups to plant trees. I was with my friend Sean Buchanan. We planted a total of 4 trees. We planted all Dogwood Trees from what I can remember. I know that there were different types of trees to plant. The trees that were planted were Flowering Dogwood, Red and White Oak, Black Walnut and Locust trees.

The question presented in the assignment is “Why is this important to me?” Well technically, I wasn’t really thinking this was important to me. I went because I had to. I planted trees because we were there to plant trees, but not because I really wanted to. So, in my opinion, it wasn’t really important to me.

Now, if asked “Why is Earth Day important?” I would have to give a different answer. Earth Day is important to the environment and life cycle. We need to try to preserve our Earth.

I thought in closing I would provide some facts about Earth Day:

 Earth Day is celebrated April 22nd which is also my birthday
 Founded by Senator Gaylord Nelson in 1970
 Observed by 500 million people and national governments in 175 countries