For many Sept. 11 was a day to remember the horrible attack on the United States and its freedoms through thanking firefighters, first responders, law enforcement and military members. For students at Elkin Middle School it was a day to show appreciation through acts of community service.
Part of the day for seventh-graders included going off campus and out in the area to help others – one of those groups spent Friday morning assisting the local Watershed NOW group in marking 11 storm drains on Hugh Chatham Memorial Hospital’s property so people will know that anything going into those drains directly feeds into waterways without being filtered or treated.
The water drain marking efforts of Watershed NOW includes using yellow spray paint to put graphics next to the storm drains to get people’s attention.
With four options for community service projects to participate in Friday, teacher Taylor Erickson said the seventh-graders ranked their interest in the projects on a Google form and then they were divided up for the activities. Options included the Watershed NOW project; cleaning the trails with the Elkin Valley Trails Association; volunteering for the day as a teacher’s assistant at Elkin Elementary School; and the third option split students between cleaning fire trucks at Arlington Fire Department and working at The ARK and Tri-C Christian Crisis Ministries.
Eight-graders at the middle school also had Sept. 11 projects in which they participated around the school, including doing a car wash to benefit the school’s backpack program which provides food for low-income students on the weekends, mulching in an outdoor classroom being constructed and making quilts to be sold as a fundraiser.
Erickson, who is this year’s Elkin City Schools’ Teacher of the Year, explained last year the Watershed NOW group led a creek clean up for the Sept. 11 day projects. Charles and Erickson are friends, and the relationship between the school and the environmental awareness group grew from there.
“I’ve been interested in the question as a Presbyterian pastor of how we can move from the sacredness of our baptismal water to the sacredness of all water,” said Taylor, explaining how the Watershed NOW group was created. “I go to western North Carolina hiking and vacationing near the waterfalls there, and I fell in love with water.
“I believe in the sacredness of all water, and I don’t think we can take clean water for granted,” he said. “It is very dangerous to take clean water for granted, so we launched the community movement and preserving our water.”
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