Growing Curiosity from Compost Scraps by Max

Growing Curiosity from Compost Scraps by Max - February 2026 Scholarship Essay

I smell awful about once a month. Every morning visit to Dunsmore Elementary school means digging through soil, breaking down vegetable scraps, and crushing dry leaves. I promise that I'm not secretly a raccoon. Instead, I co-lead Pear Tree Foundation's composting initiative and Sustainability Club at Dunsmore. Through monthly eco-education lessons and compost check-ins, I teach students to compost properly and care for our environment.

During our first Sustainability Club meeting, I was surprised by the fourth-grade students' enthusiasm for learning about composting. Hands shot up, and I was bombarded with questions: "Can meat go in the compost?" "How about paper?" and my personal favorite: "Are oysters allowed?" (Fourth graders eat oysters for lunch?) Their curiosity often caught me off guard, but it was also the very thing that inspired me for subsequent visits.

By our second check-up of the year, I discovered plastic sporks mixed into the compost. Even though the students were taught that plastic is non-biodegradable and would reduce the quality of the mulch, stray plastics kept reappearing. I realized repeated reminders weren't enough; I needed to engage with them differently.

To better address their questions and improve their composting skills, I decided to incorporate a game component into each lesson. Game segments varied from "True or False" discussions to interactive slides where students voted on what items were compostable using labeled images. With each collective thumbs-up or thumbs-down, I could recognize more clearly where the students' understanding stood. Beyond being enjoyable for them, the games also facilitated learning and dramatically reduced the number of plastic sporks.

After seven months, our year's final meeting revealed just how much had changed. The compost evolved into nutrient-rich soil, and the students blossomed into little composting experts. More importantly, I matured alongside them. Although I had gotten smellier, I also learned that communicating new ideas requires patience and adaptability. Like compost, a transformation simply doesn't occur overnight. Rather, through the monthly routine and a willingness to get my hands dirty, I achieve lasting change by cultivating curiosity and fostering growth from the ground up.