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Second time around for trash

BY ANNE STRAUB
Brevard Technical Journal

A look through the trash generated at MC Assembly a few years ago would have revealed plenty of what’s known in the industry as IC tubes. The plastic tubes hold components used in MC Assembly’s business of making circuit boards: The Palm Bay company puts the IC tubes holding the electrical components into a machine that automatically loads the parts onto the circuit boards. Once the task is done, the long plastic tube’s useful life is over, and it would seem destined for the landfill.
But that was before Dr. Walter Drew stopped by one day.
Drew asked what kind of waste the company produced and took a few items to share with teachers and students, recalled Charlie Wienckoski, chief of security at the manufacturer. “The next thing I know, they’re using them as marble runs,” Wienckoski said.
The IC tubes find their second chance at life at the Reusable Resources Adventure Center, located in a portable classroom near the West Melbourne School for Science. They’re joined by shelves full of other would-be trash, including wallpaper sample books, fabric scraps, light bulbs, wire, foam trays, countless shapes of packaging, even miniature plastic martini glasses from Mango Bottling in Cocoa.
“It’s hard for me to believe this is all throw-away stuff. All of it,” said Drew, looking around the center, packed with donations from local companies. Donors include firms like Rockwell Collins and Dictaphone Corp., as well as sewing groups who give as well as take items.
The material has become tools for education, limited only by a child’s or teacher’s imagination. The center is open to the community and is frequented by professional teachers, child-care workers, homeschooling groups, scout leaders and others. Some groups pay a small annual fee for access to the center; others pay $2 per bag for materials.
Potato chip cans are taking up a lot of room on one shelf, but Drew hesitates to get rid of them – a preschool teacher is sure to come in looking for supplies for making caterpillars, he said. Art teachers love the acrylic fabric he has, which he says works better for painting murals because it doesn’t tear as easily as paper. “We have thousands of yards of this,” he said.
The fees do little more than pay for the gasoline Drew uses on his pick-up missions throughout the county. The Brevard County School Board provides the space and pays the power bills, and all work at the center is done by volunteers.
Drew started the Brevard center in 1991, but he was far from a novice. The center is part of a program he founded 25 years ago that has grown to include about 150 such centers nationwide. His passion is in watching children experience the joy of discovery, when playing and learning merge and a student grasps a new concept and feels pride in an accomplishment at the same time.
He gives a group of teachers credit for figuring out how to use the tubes to make paths for marbles or tennis balls to roll on. “So much of this is: ‘Look what I found! What can we do with it?’” Drew said.
Just from that activity, students learn about inclines, planes, gravity, friction, motion and teamwork. But they didn’t receive it in a lecture. “For them to discover it, it makes learning fun,” he said.
Drew began his career in education as a fourth-grade teacher in Broward County, after graduating from the University of Florida. He pursued graduate work in science education at the University of Texas and earned a doctorate from the University of Southern Mississippi. Seeds of the resource centers were planted during a couple of his projects: a Harvard University fellowship focusing on language development in disadvantaged children, and science education training in West Africa.
He went to Africa to train K-12 teachers in discovery science, the process of helping children learn through direct experiences with their environment and materials. “I went over as an expert and quickly learned they have a much better grasp of re-use of resources,” Drew said.
Back in Cambridge, Mass., he began to look at the resources of a highly developed country. “We explored the idea of what businesses threw away,” Drew said. The project took on the feel of a treasure hunt. “It was so exciting to uncover things,” he said.
Working with the materials also helped inner-city children with their literacy skills because of the hands-on nature of the activity. “They can talk about what they experienced with greater verve,” he said.
Always focused on hands-on learning, Drew also developed a set of play blocks, called Dr. Drew’s Discovery Blocks. The set differs from other blocks in that all 72 pieces are a uniform size, allowing the creativity to come from the child rather than the toy. The blocks, first made in 1975, recently were awarded Best Classic Toys for 2005 by the Institute for Childhood Resources in San Francisco.
To promote the idea of the resource centers, he and his wife, Kitty, a graduate of Beloit College who has a background in costuming and stage design, founded the Institute for Self Active Education and the Reusable Resource Association.
Looking ahead locally, he’d love to have a second center in the county, plus a van he could stock up and take to the teachers.
The Brevard program has been a big help for after-school child care coordinators in the public schools, said Marilyn Simon, program development coordinator for the county’s school-age child care. Now an administrator, she used to work directly with students. “We used to just put all the materials out there. The kids would just have a blast,” she said. “You never know what children will come up with. You and I would look at things a nd think there’s nothing you could do with that. Trust me, the kids will find something to do with it.”
The Drews live in Melbourne Beach and remain immersed in education. The couple home-schools the youngest of their seven children. In addition to running the center, Drew leads a pack of 14 Webelos.
“He can work so well with people,” said Deb Bush, a Melbourne Beach resident and marketing communications professional who serves on the board of the Reusable Resources Association. “He has a way of helping them develop themselves creatively and rediscover what it’s like to be joyful and playful and to be teaming with other people,” she said.
The resource center is open for shopping from 3 to 6 p.m. on the first, second and third Wednesdays of the month and from 9 a.m. to noon on the fourth Saturday. Call 729-0100 for more information about shopping or to arrange a donation of materials. Companies who aren’t sure whether their potential donations would be useful can call Drew, and he’ll evaluate the materials.