End of Year Biology Projects Designed to Give Back to Community

Following are summaries from each of the project teams:

Period Products
We researched sustainable feminine care and period poverty and decided we wanted to make feminine products more accessible to the community. Now, we are creating a Menstrual Equity Club and are leading the change to put free feminine care in our school bathrooms! We sent out a Google Form to the whole Foxcroft community asking different questions about what type and brand of products our community uses and if they would consider switching to sustainable period products, along with other questions. Out of the 106 responses, about 15% said no, 47% said maybe, and 40% said yes to switching to sustainable products. We also asked if they would like to see period products in the bathroom and 100% of participants said yes. We can’t wait to see what happens as a result of our work! — Period 3 class members: Irene B. ’24, Caelyn C. ’24, Sarah F. ’24, Fania M. ’23, Emmy Q. ’24, Elizabeth V. ’24, Mimi W. ’24, Isabella W. ’24

Chicken Egg Hatch
Our Biology class is experimenting with chicken eggs, specifically hatching them from an incubator. A planning document was set up before incubation to answer background questions. While researching and answering these questions, it was determined where the class would receive the eggs from, which brand and size incubator would be used, and where the chicks would go once they hatch. We contacted both JK Community Farm and Oakland Green Farm to see if they were interested in taking in any chicks, and of the two, Oakland Farms accepted the offer and said they would take up to 18-20. As there were no breed requirements, we collected fertilized eggs from Madison’s farm (a student from the class). We put a total of 32 eggs in the incubator on April 29 and were able to hatch 11! We have three different types of chicken breeds: Dark Brahma, Blue Wyandotte, and Ameraucana. The data we are collecting is the growth process, the rate at which the eggs developed compared to other eggs, their appearance after hatching, and the chick’s activity (time spent sleeping, how much they eat/drink, etc.) We presented at a recent Morning Meeting where we educated our community about why chickens are beneficial to the environment. — Period 4 class members: Madison B. ’24, Emma C. ’22, Camie D. ’24, Marley F. ’24, Moriah F. ’24, Sienna H. ’24, Mackenzie J. ’24, Andy J. ’24, Claire M. ’24, Juliana R. ’24, Emili R. ’24, Jayden S. ’24

Pollinator Garden
We would like to install a pollinator garden at Foxcroft School to help improve our Foxcroft environment. A pollinator garden is a garden that is designed to contain food and shelter for animals such as bees, birds, butterflies, and small mammals. This is important because helping the pollinators in our environment is essential to help improve our ecosystem. The plan is to install one of these pollinator gardens in one of the school garden beds. The garden bed that we have been given to design around is about 30 square feet, and in the shape of an L. For the planting process, we are planning to start with two plants native to Virginia — Butterfly weed and Purple Coneflower. We chose these two flowers because they are easy to grow and are native to Virginia. Each flower would get its own separate area of the plant bed and the seeds would be planted 1-2 feet apart from each other. The pollinator garden is a great opportunity for our community to give back to the environment around us and make sure our pollinators are safe and have a home. We plan on planting the flowers at the end of fall. — Period 5 group 1 members: members: Caroline C. ’24, Eva C. ’24, Rynn C. ’24,  Fiona H. ’24, Grace P. ’24, Sofia R. ’24

Food Waste
As the final project for our Biology class, we decided to tackle food waste in our community. This is a worldwide concern that has a detrimental effect on the environment from altering biodiversity and wildlife behavior to increasing the amount of greenhouse gasses produced, which contributes to climate change. Food waste is an undeniable issue that we should strive to reduce. Thus, the week of May 9, we put out in the Dining Hall one special trash can to collect any leftover food waste and another where general trash would be thrown. Then, we used a scale to measure the amount of food that was wasted every day after lunch. At the same time, there was a survey sent out every day to get feedback on how everyone liked the food served at lunch that day. We then compared the data to see if there was a correlation between the liking of the food and the amount of food wasted in our community. 

The results were surprising because the amount of food wasted did not always correlate to how much people liked what was served that day. Overall, we averaged about 17 pounds of food waste per day. We believe that is a good result, but like everything, we are sure that there is room for further improvement. For example, when you get food from the Dining Hall, you should get only the food that you are going to eat and if you are still hungry after that, you can always go for seconds! But if you got too much food, don’t throw it away; you can always store the leftovers for later. Working together we can reduce the food waste in our community and our global footprint! — Period 5 group 2 members: Kennedy C. ’24, Lucie J. ’23, Inés L. ’23, Emma L. ’24, Evie M. ’25, Khujusta N. ’24, Lema S. ’24, Hailey Y. ’25