Planting the Seeds of Change

This past Friday, BIS Houston organized their own, slightly belated, celebration for Earth Day. Partly an opportunity to improve House spirit, partly a way to promote sustainability at school, this event was mainly spearheaded by the efforts of the Earth House Captains and the rest of the House leadership team. 

While the event began to be planned weeks before the actual day, there was an issue with holding the event on Earth Day, April 22, since BIS Houston was on end-of-term break on that day. The next week was also an issue because the Year 10s and the Year 12s were undertaking their midcourse assessments for iGCSE and IB respectively. Nevertheless, the House Captains persevered, and after discovering many of the following weeks were already booked for other events, they landed on May 20 as the day to finally celebrate Earth Day. 

Now they had a date, the team began planning what activities and special features they would provide for the day. After going through a number of ideas, they decided on a few of the most feasible ones including selling plants, an Earth Day quiz and outside activities. A meeting with school leadership brought the approval of the project, leaving Earth House ready to start implementing their ideas. 

On the morning of the day, Earth House Captains as well as other House Captains met together before the beginning of school and set up a stall selling plants and seeds that were donated to the school. Following this, the House Captains went around the school to collect donations from students who decided to dress up in Earth themed colors for the day or who just wanted to donate. These funds will be given to the Coastal Prairie Conservancy to support their efforts in preserving Texas’s natural biodiversity.

Later that day, a variety of fun activities were set up outside on the Astro Turf. Students had the opportunity to compete in ring toss, tug of war, ball toss and bean bag toss. These events drew a large crowd and were well attended by secondary students at both break time and lunch time. 

While BIS Houston students participated in activities at lunch, the House Captains were readying some soil plots for the planned House gardens. To support green initiatives at school, the House Leadership Team decided to revitalize the school gardens which had been eft unattended for some time and were overgrown with weeds. Together with some student volunteers, the House Captains spent their lunch out in the hot sun weeding four gardening plots in preparation for plants that would be maintained by each House.

The whole day was a great success among the student body with many people dressing up and participating in activities. Hopefully this will be the start of a long tradition of House Days organized by each House and providing fun opportunities for BIS Houston to express their House spirit.