Recyclables are helping Columbia Falls students help their school - and themselves

A group of students at Columbia Falls High School is learning something about setting long-term goals.

Linda Hall and Karen Crowe, teachers in the school's special education department, set a goal of recycling all the newspapers, paper, cardboard and aluminum cans possible - and collecting 1.5 million Campbell's soup and other product labels - in their quest to purchase a new mini-van for the department.

They're working hand-in-hand with their students to get there.

It makes sense. It will be those students in the Community Based Education class and other special education programs who will be traveling in that new van.

And, if you would like to get in on the effort, there are a couple simple ways to help:

Think along lines of how much Campbell's soup your family would eat - or SpaghettiOs, Swanson canned chicken, Pepperidge Farm bread, Pace salsa or a wide range of other products. Then save the labels and send them to the school.

And consider how many pounds of paper, cardboard, aluminum cans and milk jugs you toss in the trash every week that you could recycle instead. Next time you're in Kalispell, drop them off at Valley Recycling on the west edge of town and ask the management to chalk it up to the Columbia Falls special education department's account.

THROUGH THE EFFORT, Hall and Crowe are not simply mustering finances.

They are helping solidify workplace and life skills among the dozen students in their Community Based Education class.

By participating in the class, students get on-the-job training and do job shadowing with local employers. This way, they gain skills that could help them live more independent lives after high school.

Job coach Cheryl Forke drives them to their jobs - this quarter at Town Pump, Montana Veterans Home, the Costco tire shop and Glacier Animal Hospital.

Students in the department also need transportation to events that provide other ways for them to learn from community interaction - grocery stores, movies, music in the park.

Often, the teachers must go through the expense and paperwork to arrange a bus when the entire group is going.

A department-owned van could solve a myriad of problems.

Hall and Crowe want to help supply the cash to buy one, and the self-described self-starters have worked up a couple ways to raise it.

For some time, students in the class have been recycling paper, cardboard and aluminum, more for the discipline it teaches than the cash it brings.

The class solicits the cooperation of each teacher in the high school and junior high, asking them to toss recyclables into a classroom box.

At the high school, the dozen Community Based Education students spend time each week making the rounds to empty the boxes. Crowe makes a trip to the junior high for their materials.

Students load all recyclables into a school-owned car, then everything gets hauled to Valley Recycling. There, students take note of the weight of materials redeemed for credit.

Back at the school, they chart each week's weights by using Excel computer software. They compare and contrast - what is being recycled in greater and lesser amounts this week, what does the community tend to recycle, how wasteful or recycling-minded is the population?

Three of the students - Kenny McCully, Danielle Dorman and Kayla Ekern - are producing the program's first newsletter explaining this data and giving a comparison between the high school and junior high recycling results. The newsletter will be distributed throughout the high school.

With the program, Hall and Crowe said, the students feel like a part of the school community. They learn to do a job on a consistent basis. They realize the importance of completing a task on time. They learn to behave in a socially appropriate way.

In short, they get a lesson on what is expected of employees in the workplace.

Recycling in general has worked so well that the teachers have talked of expanding the program.

"It gets the kids into more of the community and lets them practice more of the behaviors with the same expectations," Hall said. "The more they get to practice, the more the parents see a difference and the teachers see a difference.

"We're helping them see the expectations we have are the expectations the world has."

With the start-up of the Campbell's Labels for Education program, Hall and Crowe are looking to bring in the participation of community members who may not be saving labels for other schools.

A couple of the other elementary buildings in District 6 already ask parents to collect labels for their own goals. The Special Education department has no intention of detracting from them.

But the whole community is invited to collect labels, lids or UPC bar codes from Prego pasta sauces, Swanson broths, V8 juices, Pepperidge Farm cookies, crackers and frozen foods, or Campbell's products like Supper Bakes meal kits, beans, gravies, canned pasta, soup and more.

To check out all the products which qualify for the Labels for Education program, log on to labelsforeducation.com

Tuck the labels in an envelope with Hall's or Crowe's name on it and drop it off in the school office. Or mail it to them at Columbia Falls High School, P.O. Box 1259, Columbia Falls, MT 59912.

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com.