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Blue Ridge Holds An Experiential Earth Day

2008-06-01 14:08:02

The entire Blue Ridge School community celebrated Earth Day on Tuesday. As part of the celebration, every student and faculty member participated in an outdoor activity. One group worked the low ropes course while keeping issues such as oil, plastics, the food and water supply in mind. Another group mountain biked under the guide of two members of the Bike Factory Race team. Other groups hiked on and off campus (some barefooted with Barefoot Tim), canoed and climbed. Mrs. Eareckson and Mrs. McKowen taught a yoga class. Several groups tested the water quality on campus with Robbi Savage of the Rivanna Conservation Society. Robbie brought test kits she helped develop with alumni parent David LaMotte and the LaMotte Company, which makes a wide array of water and soil test kits for the environment, commercial and pool markets. The program was spearheaded by senior Daniel Desenberg, who worked with Mr. Brown and Mr. LaVoie to pull the day of activities together as an independent-study project for his Advanced Outdoor Leadership class taught by Mr. LaVoie. “Earth Day relates to me because I use the environment every single day for things I enjoy, like mountain biking,” said Daniel.

“I was surprised at how well it went. I thought all the times and number of sessions would confuse people. In the beginning, people were skeptical, but it sounded like everyone had a good time. I heard very few complaints afterwards. I asked the guys to go into each activity with an open mind. I think they took my words to heart. I tried to put people in activities they had not tried before. The whole point was to get people exposed to the outdoors, and hopefully after I’m gone in 28 days someone will be inspired by what we did and will take on Earth Day next year.”

To learn more about the activities at Blue Ridge School and what is has to offer as a boys private boarding school, click here.

Posted by lina