On Oct. 14, Bonita Vista High (BVH) Biology, International Baccalaureate Environmental Societies, and Advanced Placement Environmental Science teacher Jennifer Ekstein hosted an open clean up event on campus; Beautify Bonita Vista. The event involved students, teachers and other school staff taking on tasks like raking leaves, trimming trees, picking up trash and other eco-friendly activities that help sustain the environment on campus.
“This is an event to clean up our campus, every day we mass tremendous amounts of trash and garbage and it ends up on our campus. Students don’t necessarily put it into the trash bins,” Ekstein said.
Ekstein coordinated Beautify Bonita Vista with the intent to combat the increasing amount of trash on campus, acknowledging the issue of students neglecting available trash cans at BVH. Apart from cleaning up the campus, Ekstein emphasizes the importance of helping students academically and physically with the laborious work in return for community service hours and opportunity to excuse tardiness.
“Students are helping beautify the campus but they also get a lot in return, for example they can clear three tardies per hour and get two hours of community service. This is a physical job and so they’re getting exercise, they’re outside, in their environment, getting sun, and Vitamin D so it’s also very healthy,” Ekstein said.
Junior Diego Montes explains how students attending Beautify Bonita can each have their own reasons as to why they chose to participate in the event. Furthermore, whether it is simply the desire to keep the campus clean, clear up tardies, or receive community service hours, Montes expresses his support for events and ideas like this at BVH.
“Ms. Ekstein pushes us to clean after ourselves and clean the environment. She invited us to clean up the school and cut the leaves to make it look better. I thought it was a good idea,” Montes said.
Beautify Bonita benefits all students by creating a cleaner school and offering a variety of tasks that require different approaches. Piles of leaves are raked into clumps to dispose of and compost, shrubs are trimmed and trash is picked up or recycled. Carlo Zapata discusses how the clean up event compares to his own personal life and chores back home.
“[Completing the tasks at] Beautify Bonita Vista is similar to [things] like cleaning your room. When you clean your room you’re a lot more organized, you can get a lot of stuff done.” Zapata said.
Not only is keeping the campus organized and clean a necessity, but is also connected to the pride the school shows within the community. Seeing as the Bonita pride plays a large part in the BVH culture, beautifying campus events show what the BVH community has created together.
“[At BVH] there is also this pride factor, in that I have pride in my school and I wanna make sure my school is perceived in the utmost professional manner.” Ekstein states.
Although BVH is known to be one of the older schools in the Sweetwater Union High School District, students and staff understand the responsibilities in relation to keeping the campus’s maintenance in order. To essentially have the school look as respectable and mighty as possible.
“It’s cool how through events like these we make the school look better because it’s a very old school and so we have to keep up the maintenance.” Montes says.
Ekstein confirms that there will be future clean up events along with Saturday schools in the near future. Ekstien explains how these future opportunities will be a great way to further enforce the idea of a well-kept campus and protection of the Bonita pride.
“[Providing these events] is another opportunity to meet those requirements [of maintaining an organized campus and sense of pride] so we’re planning on giving students [more] opportunities to help them graduate,” Ekstein said.
