Credit: Zachary Vonnegut

Join WSPN’s Annika Martins and Tasha Janoff as they interview Green Team co-director Ciaran Murphy.

In the sixth edition of WSPN goes clubbing, WSPN’s Annika Martins and Tasha Janoff interview Green Team club leader Ciaran Murphy.

What is the Green Team?

“The Green Team at Wayland High School is basically the environmentalist club at the school. We do a lot of different things, but what we do [is] serve as the garden club [and] climate activism. Right now, obviously, we have the composting program. We have a couple of different gardening things planned for the spring. We run the garden out in the courtyard. Pretty often, we also have some petitions. For instance, we had a petition about climate literacy earlier this fall that we plan to bring to the school committee at an upcoming meeting.”

How did this club begin?

“I don’t know. I joined [Green Team] in the middle of my sophomore year at the beginning of the composting program, but I’m pretty sure it’s been a long-standing club. I think you could probably reach out to Ms. Snow for more details than that because she has been the advisor for a long time, but this year she’s taking a leave of absence, so we have Mr. Vonnegut this year.”

Why should someone join the club?

“If you’re interested in composting, if you’re interested in climate activism [or] if you’re interested in gardening—we have a lot of things for everyone. So even though we meet every week, we try to kind of decide what we’re doing [each meeting]. It’s kind of low commitment. If you check the agenda and see [the activities above are] something [you’re] interested in, you can come. You can do a lot of good in the school and in the surrounding community.”

What are meetings like and how often are they?

“We have meetings every Friday morning from 8-8:30 a.m. [and they’re] really laid back. We try to occasionally have some sort of snacks or baked goods, but usually we hang out and we talk about what we need [to do]. For instance, right now we’re making a video about composting, so we’ve been doing a lot of video editing. There’s been other times where we’ve talked about lunch leading, and we’ve talked about the Mass Youth Climate Coalition, so we’ve had members go to that. The coalition’s kind of like an annual conference and kind of tells us what they discovered there. We have guests come in to propose projects that give us more insight, and we work with the Wayland sustainability manager, Abigail Shoot. We do a lot of different things and we try to make sure that before the meeting on Friday, everyone knows what we’re doing so if they’re interested [in the club], they can make sure to come.”

What is one goal that you have for the club this year?

“I would really love it if we could work with the Weston Green Team more closely this spring because we just discovered that one of my friends from a separate extracurricular is their co-president as well. We did actually have a Zoom meeting on Tuesday to talk about what we might be able to do together and how we might be able to help each other, and they suggested this program that helps to plant trees for a low price across your town. We’re really hoping that we can do that. We also have a couple other plans like making a pollinator [in the WHS] garden, so if we can do all of that, I think it’d be a really successful spring.”