Lake Ridge STEAM Day highlights environmental awareness

Fifth graders at Lake Ridge Elementary stepped outside the classroom and into a STEAM Day event hosted in partnership with Appalachian Environmental Resources, Inc. The visiting organization worked with students across multiple activity stations designed to highlight environmental science and introduce potential career paths. Rees Burt, vice president of Appalachian Environmental Resources, Inc., said the company's work centers on environmental compliance and safety. "We're environmental compliance and health and safety consultants," Burt said. "We work with manufacturing companies to keep them in compliance with state and federal regulations. It's kind of like one of those weird hybrids between engineers and lawyers." He explained that their role involves helping businesses interpret and follow environmental laws while protecting natural resources. "We're taking the regulations that are born out of laws and working with manufacturing companies to help them stay in compliance, protect the environment and not pollute," Burt said. "That gives them the ability to have maximum operational flexibility, so they can do what they need as a business to employ people and thrive in an economic capacity." Burt said the organization's outreach efforts grew from working with college students to engaging younger audiences in the community. "We believe in partnering with not only our clients, but our community through teaching people about science and the regulations that are born out of that," Burt said. "We've hired a lot of young staff from local colleges, and they do a great job of teaching the science there, but we realized there's not a lot of regulatory information in their coursework. And so we wanted to reach out further into our community with the youth and teach them more about science." Throughout the day, students rotated between stations set up around the school for some hands-on outdoor time. Stations included places where students tested water quality, simulated oil spill cleanups and recycled paper embedding them with seeds. Burt said the goal was to make environmental concepts tangible for students. "I think it's more about creating a level of awareness," he said. "Kids, they need to see things in action." Ultimately, he said he hopes students leave with a broader understanding of their role in protecting the environment. "I hope they take away an appreciation of the Earth and how they, even as kids, have an impact on it," Burt said. "We hope they take the lessons into their homes and teach their parents as well." Ryan Glenn, STEAM lab teacher at Lake Ridge Elementary, said the event featured a wide range of interactive learning stations designed to keep students engaged. He described activities including groundwater testing, an oil spill cleanup simulation using large containers of water and a blind water taste test comparing bottled and tap water. He said one of the most popular stations challenged students' assumptions about water quality. "My favorite one, I think, is the blind water taste test," Glenn said. "We have Fiji water, cheap water and tap water from the school, and they're trying to taste it and figure out which is which. Then they test it to see different qualities, like total dissolved solids and the amount of chlorine." The results surprised many students. "So far, every single group, they think that the best tasting water is actually the water that came out of the tap," Glenn said. "The one that gets the least amount of votes every time has been the Fiji water — which is crazy. You can test your preconceived notions. Everybody thinks, 'oh, Fiji is expensive, it must be better' — that's marketing and business." Glenn said the event reflects the school's emphasis on STEAM, which adds an arts and creativity component to the traditional STEM model. "I do STEAM, but most places call it STEM," he said. "I think that you can't really have it without the creative side. I don't teach art as in how to draw or paint. I teach more how to be creative." He said encouraging creativity is essential to problem-solving. "You have to be creative," Glenn said. "That's one piece. Our focus is teaching them how to think outside the box, because if every engineer solves the problem the same way, you'd have one brand of everything. You'd have one type of car, one type of computer. There's beauty in being creative and solving problems in different ways."