Last semester The Theodores went to Post Falls High School to challenge several classes to do a few Teddy Clean-Ups. They did not disappoint! Kevin Mahoney, the biology teacher helped to light the fire for his classes. The students of Post Falls went out and cleaned up more than 2,000 pounds of trash on THEIR OWN FREE TIME. They also decorated their classroom in various Teddy themes. It was amazing and inspiring to see how well youth understand the message and are willing to act. It amazed me. Kevin went on to create whole lesson plan that other teachers can use. Hopefully his ideas will get The Theodores message into more classrooms around the world. I will soon have a spot on my website where teachers can place and use educational content. To truly change the world you have to work with the youth.

Lastly, I am working with Aha! Creative in CDA to make several big teddy flags. I told the students at Post Falls High School that they can pick a school to challenge in a Teddy Clean-Up. The idea is they will ship a large teddy flag to a school of their choice and lay down a Teddy Challenge. Hopefully this project will serve to keep the momentum and Teddy Clean-ups rolling.

Below is a student essay that was submitted to Mr. Mahoney. The students work at Post Falls High School is really inspiring! Keep up the good work kids!

The Teddy Project
By: Jadynn Overman
Theodore Roosevelt was the the 26th president of the United States and was properly nicknamed the “conservationist president”. He was an avid hunter, adventurer and outdoorsman who traveled throughout North America and the world to hunt for beautiful big game. Because of his love of hunting, he frequently wrote about his concerns over the diminishing habitats of these animals, places of natural beauty, and natural resources. President Roosevelt worked on conserving these wild places by creating national parks to conserve nature’s beauty.
That is what our Teddy project did - conserved nature’s beauty. We need to preserve the natural beauty of our world and this is one way that everyone can help. Just imagine how beautiful our world could be if we all work to conserve it. We as people of this Earth need to conserve and preserve what we have because, to be quite frank, we don’t have another place as perfect as our own Earth.
How can you help? It’s simple. All you need to do is help out the environment in anyway you can. It could be as simple as just picking up garbage in your neighborhood while you’re on a walk or turning off your lights when you leave a room.
When my honors physical science teacher introduced us to this fun extra project, he presented it as a challenge - can we pick up 500 pounds of trash from Post Falls? He pitted us in a head-to-head competition with the other physical science class to find out which class could bring in the most garbage from our local community and beyond. We were challenged to pick up any sort of garbage and other disregarded objects misplaced by thoughtless humans. All that the students had to do was go to the park, or walk around their own neighborhoods and pick up any trash that they found on the ground. Everyone pitched in, and we beat our overall original goal of 500 lbs by collecting a total of 1800 pounds!!! The overall experience was amazing, fun and an easy way to help clean up our community.