A display of student creativity for environmental sustainability Friday at Duluth Marshall school.

Students have been studying the three pillars of sustainability – social, economic and environmental sustainability. One student, concerned by how many golf balls his dad loses in water hazards, came up with a potential solution to get golf balls out of ponds and rivers.

“My dad hits a lot of golf balls in the river while he’s playing golf ya know, and to reduce pollution we could put a magnet in the golf ball. You could use a magnet, pick up the golf balls.”

Lisa Swenson is the 7th and 8th grade science teacher at Marshall and the faculty coordinator. She told us Marshall is using Stanford University’s design thinking model. Students identified a need and designed a sustainable solution to address that need.

She said excercises like this really empowers kids.

“So one of the great things about doing something like this is that kids feel like they can make change in the future. And so hopefully one of these ideas turns into a million-dollar idea that will actually help make some sort of change. And so it doesn’t shut them down. It makes them feel stronger.”

Ms. Swenson says this project is not only to empower our young people to make change, but it that it spurs positive, creative energy the kids can take into all kinds of problem solving in life.

Who knows, one of these ideas might go on to change the world.