NEWBURYPORT — Edward G. Molin Upper Elementary School fifth-grader Sienna Burke was beaming with pride Thursday upon learning her Arbor Day poster was picked to represent the school for the Department of Conservation and Recreation’s annual calendar contest.
“I’m really excited,” she said. “I really didn’t think I’d get voted the best in the school.”
In 2018, 2020 and 2022, Molin fifth-graders have participated in DCR’s annual Arbor Day poster contest, which teaches Massachusetts school kids good tree stewardship.
Students are encouraged to draw a poster, expressing their love of trees. The winning kid from each participating school has their poster entered into another contest, which sees a dozen winners having their artwork displayed in a DCR-published calendar.
Molin students had their artwork grace the calendar in both 2020 as well as 2022.
Sheila Taintor, former member of the city’s Tree Commission, worked with students on the contest while still serving on the board. She continues her involvement to this day.
She said she introduced all eight of this year’s fifth-grade classes to the concept last month, right before winter break.
Upon returning to school, students spent a couple of weeks working on their posters. Each piece of art needed to be centered around a “trees of the world” theme.
When finished, they were submitted anonymously to a panel of educator judges that included fifth-grade teacher Meghan Lemes.
“We were sad the contest kind of fell to the wayside over the past few years, so we made a concerted effort to have Sheila come in and talk with the kids,” Lemes said. “They really got excited about it. Since their names were anonymous, nobody knew whose classes they were from.”
Once initial judging was complete, each class had two finalists. All of their artwork was then judged by the entire school.
A member of Allie Kusser’s class, Burke took first place. Her poster depicts each continent along with its most popular trees.
“There are so many pretty trees in movies and in paintings,” Burke said. “So, I decided to use paints to make each tree look different. I really like the cherry blossom tree (in Asia) and the red maple in North America.”
A pair of Lemes’ students, Brady Rodrigue and Emilia Perrucci respectively ended up finishing second and third overall.
Rodrigue painted a poster focusing on trees from all over the world, including a rainbow eucalyptus, a silver birch, a Baobab, as well as a cherry blossom tree.
“I wanted to use the trees that looked as different from each other as I could,” he said. “The rainbow eucalyptus has a bunch of colors on the bark. So that was fun and I definitely spent a lot of time on my poster.”
Perrucci said she went even more global with her poster.
“I drew the world and then I had more trees on the side,” she said. “I had some flags with some of the trees. Then I had one side of the world in the sun and the other darker.”
On Thursday morning, the students found out they won their local portion of the contest.
Both Rodrigue and Perrucci said they were very surprised they finished in the top three.
Burke said her entire class was very excited for her when the winning announcement was made. She’s also looking forward to seeing how her artwork does on a statewide level.
The winning posters are currently on display in the Molin’s main hallway. But Burke’s will be visiting the DCR for the final round of judging soon.
“DCR has a whole voting process but they will announce the winners by Arbor Day in June,” Taintor said.
The entire fifth-grade, Lemes said worked very hard on the poster project.
“It was a lot of thought put behind this and the kids were really thoughtful with their votes, as well,” she said. “They thought a lot about the criteria and what made the posters stand out. They also want Sienna to win for the school and Newburyport.”