Rowan Elementary students win Department of Energy poster contest
Three Rowan Elementary students demonstrated their environmental consciousness for Earth Day by finishing in the top places of the National Energy Technology Laboratory’s annual Earth Day poster contest.
The NETL is a national laboratory with three sites across the country: Morgantown, W.Va., Albany, Ore., and Pittsburgh. For each of the three sites, the agency hosts an annual Earth Day poster contest and invites students from the surrounding school districts in each area to participate.
Finishing in first place in the fourth-grade category was Yasmeen Fahs, whose winning poster beckoned onlookers to “Invest your time and effort for the clean future” by, among other things, recycling batteries properly.
Rowan Elementary students also took the top two slots in the second-grade category, with Alex Reiterovych taking first place and Nash Caldwell coming in second.
Fahs’ first-place poster was actually a side project which accompanied something much larger. Recently, she has started a long-term project entitled “Batteries That Last and Last,” dedicated to collecting and properly recycling used batteries. This involved, among other things, creating a collection box at Rowan Elementary to allow students and teachers to drop off their used batteries.
According to Fahs’ mother, Anjela Begmatova, the project is a continuation of research she performed last year when she was in third grade. That year, she participated in the National PTA’s Reflections arts program and took home both the Award of Excellence and the Award of Outstanding Interpretation in the Film Production category.
