Students in a German language class at Libertyville High School recently won an international award for a pair of sustainability projects, and will get to workshop their ideas with experts at a virtual conference in June.
The projects were for the “Our Sustainable Future” international competition, which is sponsored by the Goethe-Institut. LHS German instructor Heidi Lechner said the projects were started back in December.
The projects were tackled by two separate groups. In the “Plastic on Park Ave.” work, students are looking at how prevalent plastic is at school and they are finding methods to reduce and reuse. Those students are Belinda Li, Jack Distenfield, Sam Gilson, Kenneth Junas, Willem Roelandts, Liam Wesselink, and John Stokovich.
“You look in the trash cans …. people aren’t recycling the right way,” said Stokovich, an LHS junior. “Our kinda focus was to reduce the amount of plastic so people couldn’t make those kinds of mistakes.”
The second piece, “Life Under Water,” is aimed at drawing attention to the community and gathering volunteers to help clean Butler Lake, located right behind LHS. The students working on that project are are Adam Campbell, Hunter Maheu, David Gilson, Ethan Jun, Isabela Schultz and Connor Stelter.
“The lake, our group described it as (turning into) an eyesore,” said Stelter, also a LHS junior. “Not a lot of people go there to hang out anymore so we want to clean it up and get it back to where it was before.”
There were originally three groups, but that was combined into two groups over time. In the past six weeks the students have worked to bring more focus to what the projects are trying to accomplish, Lechner said.
As a part of that, the groups will now get to participate in the Goethe-Institut’s international virtual sustainability conference. Lechner said there will be experts to help the students with their projects.
Stokovich said he didn’t fully expect to win the competition. Of the 30 projects submitted across North American, 12 were chosen.
“We kinda went into it on a whim,” Stokovich said.
And with meeting the experts, the students will have to present their projects in German. Stelter said he’s nervous about it, but also excited. He also credited the class for giving him a chance to participate in the competition.
“It’s kinda interesting to see what they think about our ideas. But speaking only German …. There’s a nervous aspect to it ” Stelter said.
Lechner said the endeavor first began last year during the Goethe-Institut’s first year of the competition. She had students researched a topic, but elected not to submit the project. This year, though, she said it was a chance for the students to use their German-speaking skills.
To go along with this, Lechner, Stokovich and Stelter said they tackle a lot of subjects in the classroom while learning about the German language and culture. This has included projects that had students connect with people in Switzerland and Germany.
“German is kind of a niche subject,” Lechner said. “So I’m always trying to make it more modern and applicable to the real world.”
The high school class offers dual-credit, and Lechner said many of the students in her class can expect to have up to eight hours of college credit after taking two years of German at LHS.
“I think it’s a great opportunity for these kids,” she said. “Because I can always say this is a college course where we are looking to expand our horizons and push ourselves. So I think all the different factors really make German a pretty unique program here.”
