Suburban sprawl is one of the most serious environmental problems affecting our communities. Our wish is to reforest Hillside's backyard meadows and trails. We wish to create forest habitats for native wildlife, and provide a home. One of our goals is for students to learn and research our forest, so they are able to help and know how reforestation helps the wildlife that live here.
Our project started with our own classrooms. In our 6th grade curriculum, it is required to go outside and research a spot, called adopt-a-spot. With this opportunity, students can make recommendations for habitat enhancement, which will be transferred to our participants for backyard workdays. Backyard Workdays are after-school or during weekends, and all parents students and staff are welcomed. These are days where we work on maintaining the habitats we have already created and reforesting our backyard further,and this way our classrooms can help out with this project. We work on this by planting various native trees and shrubs, adding mulch to our trails, and generally beautifying our backyard.
