On May 22nd of 2025, students from the Community School of Social Justice’s Green Team took the journey to go to Governors Island. Students from various NYC high schools also took their Green Team representatives to participate in many activities and presentations on how to make your school’s environment healthy again. This year, CSSJ’s sustainability coordinator John Garvey assisted the students on their environmental journey. The group enjoyed food, the activities, the beautiful view and best of all, each other’s company.
And although this was a time for fun learning and quality time, students, and teachers were concentrated when dealing with tasks like writing to the Governor to improve environmental concerns around the city, such as sanitation, composting, recycling and energy use.
The group also took part in some fun activities during lunch like painting oysters, and decorating their own NYC tote bags. Earlier in the day, students worked to help with the Billion Oyster Project to design domes for oysters. At this year’s youth summit, students helped think about ways to better their school. Students also learned how to incorporate dealing with money when thinking of solutions to environmental problems in CSSJ.
Mackenzie, a Green Team member, gave their accolades on the trip by saying “This was a very enlightening experience because I learned about oysters and how amazing and very important they are for our ecosystem in the water. During one of the presentations we also learned how to be persuasive and convince higher-ups to listen and what we have to say about problems in our school that can directly affect us.”
Mia, who did not go on the trip but heard about the Green Team said, “The Green Team will continue to have a good impact on making our communities stronger by having more knowledge about the importance of our environment.”
Ultimately, the Green team succeeded on another yearly journey to better their school. See you next year!
