Rockville Teens become part of the NOAA Climate Stewards Community this Summer: Part Three

This year, the Residential Energy Program Manager, Larissa Johnson, became part of the NOAA Climate Stewards Community. As part of the community, she had to develop a climate stewardship action project with students from Montgomery County. This summer she partnered with the City of Rockville to complete an action program titled “Source to Socket: Learning the FUNdamentals of Energy Literacy.” Students from the City of Rockville Community Services Youth Programs participated in a four day training session which connected them to their energy sources and encouraged them to make energy conscious choices.

One of the students, Jasmine Jackson, a rising Senior at Richard Montgomery High School documented the entire experience for us, for the My Green Montgomery blog. Each day, the students focused on a different area in which energy impacts their lives. This is Jasmine’s fourth and final blog post.

Rockville teens through a thermal lens

Day Four: Energy and Solutions

July 27, 2017

Today I am writing about my final day project with the County to work towards being consciously aware of our energy usage and impact on our world. On this final day, our goals were to take all the information we have learned during the last three sessions and come up with campaign ideas for the City of Rockville. We also needed to understand how thermal cameras can be used when communicating with the public and to reflect on how our choices impact the world.

This is the last day doing this project with Ms. Johnson, Ms. Erica, and Ms. Dianne and it was bittersweet.

We started with an activity outside, as always, and this time we played two new games. The first game was called Jedi Mind Trick and was super fun. Then we split into group of two or three and played a game called This Week in Energy Conservation where each member in the group had to be either the cameraman, the desk reporter, or the field reporter. You can see a picture of me doing the activity to the right.  

Both games were fun and when we were done, we walked to City Hall into the Diamondback room where we all sat down to discuss the final activity. Before we broke up into groups, Ms. Erica presented information on the City Climate Action Plan and we learned about climate change and how it affects our lives and Rockville. In the future, it is predicted that by 2050 there will be heatwaves and we need to make changes now.

After learning about that, we went over the projects we did yesterday on Community Based Social Marketing and then we split into groups to take iconic pictures of Rockville Town Center with the thermal camera.

It was a nice long 15 minute walk around Town Center as we visited different spots. It was as if we were on a treasure hunt but we didn’t get no real treasure and that was fine with everyone. By end of the day what matters was having fun while learning something new. After 15 minutes, we walked back and discussed our experience as we all wrote down our final ideas to try to convince others around us to save energy as much as we can.

After coming together and discussing our ideas, we learned that it is hard to convince people to do things. I also earned that dark surfaces are hotter than others and about the temperature on things like buildings. I learned that it is hot outside but cooler in the shade under or near trees.

After this program, I learned that I want to help and somehow teach others to care about their energy use. If we don’t start worrying about our future for our generation and for future generations, who will?

I hope this blog reaches many people and gets you to think about how you are using (and wasting) energy every day. The only way we can change the world for the better is by working together and coming up with creative solutions like solar ovens made from pizza boxes.

On behalf of the other students in the program, I want to thank everyone: Ms. Johnson, Ms. Erica, Ms. Dianne, Ms. Kate, and all the other people we met and worked with during this wonderful cool experience. Thank you for teaching us about energy use and how we can make a difference in our own lives and in the world.