Change Starts Now project wins top state prize

A Tacoma School of the Arts (SOTA) team won the grand prize in Washington State University’s 2009 Imagine Tomorrow competition with their “environmentorship” project, “Change Starts Now: an Environmental Revolution.” SOTA will receive $5,000, as will each team member. Imagine Tomorrow is a high school competition that encourages students across the state to think about and tackle energy issues. The topic of the competition is: How would you power your future?

The SOTA team won second prize in 2008 with “Change Starts Now” in the behavior category of the first Imagine Tomorrow competition. The team fleshed out the project for the 2009 competition after teaching their curriculum to Mason Middle School students for a year. Team advisor Cyrus Brown, a SOTA science and math teacher, said the team put in more than 1,000 hours on the project.

The SOTA team also won a 2009 Tacoma City of Destiny Award for environmental sustainability with the project. Furthermore, Jake Stortini, one of the seniors on the team, was presented the Jonathan R. Ketler Award for leadership at his June 1 graduation ceremony.

Stortini and team members MacGregor Tadie, Isaac Solverson and Logan Jones graduated this spring, leaving Joe Holcomb to carry on the team’s spirit with new members for the 2010 competition. Emi Brizuela, a member of the first team, graduated in 2008.

“Change Starts Now” is a year-long mentorship-type project to teach eighth graders about energy, environmental issues and sustainability with the expectation of impacting their attitudes and behaviors about these issues. The course uses an integrated approach with the Tacoma Public Schools’ science curriculum to help students put their learning in context; it is taught once a week.

Brown said, “Our team chose to develop curriculum to teach eighth graders because eighth graders are on the cusp of making their own decisions about many things. And, high school goes so fast.” Having high school students teach the curriculum reduces the teacher-to-student ratio in the middle school classroom, and the high school students serve as peer mentors.

Several of SOTA team members had attended Mason Middle School and had support from their former teacher Brent Beckstead. He allowed them to come in every Friday for two hours in the morning to teach the energy and science curriculum they had developed through research.

They also taught themselves to write curriculum through meeting with people such as Gilda Wheeler, environmental and sustainability program supervisor at the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, who wrote the team a letter of support. The team also met with University of Puget Sound teachers who helped them learn about measuring changes in behavior.

“Change Starts Now” was one of more than 90 projects entered in four categories by high school teams from across the state: technology, design, behavior and multidisciplinary collaboration. Each team can include two to five students in grades 9 through 12. All team members must reside in the state and their high school must be located in Washington. Home-schooled students are also encouraged to participate. The team adult advisor must be affiliated with the high school, and each high school may send as many as eight teams.

Brown said he hopes to have more teams from Tacoma enter the 2010 competition. He expects to use some of this year’s grand prize money to give SOTA’s teams a budget. Using last year’s winnings helped this year’s team have a very professional presentation. He said, “I am there to give students vision and a framework for the project and to give them things to think about, but it is so much ‘their’ project.” The SOTA team even hired a former SOTA student to create a graphic design for them.

Teams must present their ideas before a panel of expert judges, which includes Washington State University professors, as well as leaders in enterprise and public service from throughout the state. The panel uses the following criteria when judging the entries: objective, creativity, inquiry, thoroughness and presentation.

The team advisor pointed out that the judges had six projects in the behavior category to review. When the category winners were announced, the SOTA project was not among them. The SOTA team knew they had a good project and did not understand why it had not won at least third place—after all, they had won second place with a smaller project the year before. When the grand prize winner was announced on May 30, there was much rejoicing among the SOTA team members. Brown said it turned out that all the judges for the behavior category had selected the “Change Starts Now” project as the grand prize winner.

He added, “It was a very happy and very tired team that night—they have been on their feet talking for six hours straight.”

Contact Cyrus Brown at Tacoma School of the Arts for more information at 253.571.7900.

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Superintendent Arthur O. Jarvis, Ed.D., ajarvis@tacoma.k12.wa.us
Superintendent-Elect (Interim) Carla Santorno, csantor@tacoma.k12.wa.us
Central Administration Building, P.O. Box 1357, Tacoma, WA 98401-1357, 253.571.1000

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