Envirothon 2021 Competition; How Envirothon provides learning experiences to students

    According to Envirothon.org, students learn to empower and educate others with the Envirothon program. Thus, they can then take action in their local communities, encouraging them and those they influence to become involved with careers that consistently assist in environmental and resource conservation. Around 500,000 students in 45 U.S. States along with certain areas of Canada participate in this program.

    One of the many clubs at North Harford High School is Envirothon. Envirothon “is an academic club where we compete with a team on tests centered around the environment,” says NHHS senior Erin O’Leary. This competition consists of several parts, including presentations that are judged based on different categories with both written and presentation-based testing methods.

    This club meets on a weekly basis throughout the school year every Thursday at 2:15, which is after the second dismissal. The purpose of this club is to compete in environmentally based activities on a countrywide level. These students compete for recognition as well as scholarships by using and being able to demonstrate their knowledge of the environment, natural resources, and the science behind it.

    “Normally, there are two parts to the test, one where we have to present to a panel of judges our ideas in response to a certain prompt they give us,” O’Leary states. These said prompts are usually meant to solve a specific environmental problem.

    While another part of this test consists of five entirely different tests. These topics are “forestry, aquatics, wildlife, soils, and the fifth topic which changes every year.” This combines the in-class material and new out-of-class skills from these hands-on activities.

    As of this year, there are only 10 members on the NHHS Envirothon team,” split up into an A and B team” due to the number of members that can be on one team.

    The pandemic also affected their ability to have in-person competitions, so they are held online. Therefore, this year is also very different from previous years of Envirothon competitions. “Last year the full contest was cancelled, and this year we just took the tests at the state level. We are all still learning, especially since the state test covers very different material than usual,” says O’Leary. 

     Though the club and competition may be drastically different this year, the enthusiasm to compete remains, especially for Mrs. Laura O’Leary, the club advisor who brought snacks for the occasion.

     Erin knows that “we are all still learning, especially since the state test covers very different material than usual. It was online this year, and though it was disappointing to not be able to do both parts of the contest, I understand it is because they don’t want to risk people getting sick.” The club may be run differently and online-based, but the competition happened nonetheless.