This is a guest post by Devin McFarland, student at Placer High School in the Sierras. 

Our school, Placer, took 8 teachers on a 4 week journey through the Biggest Loser: Energy competition, and being the awesome teachers they are, none of them hesitated to help us in this competition, and they are in full support of our mission to use less energy! One of the ways we helped bring awareness to what we were doing as a club for this ‘mission’ was we decided to put on a school-wide blackout day on the last day of the competition. To help promote our event, we had it announced throughout the school, but everyone in our club also dressed entirely in black to help be a reminder to the school of our event. to top it all off, we had a delightful potluck during lunch that was open to anyone!

The Biggest Loser Energy: competition has been a great way to bring awareness to the big, overall difference that can be made from remembering to change some small things: flipping off the lights, unplugging useless electronics, etc. These small changes are starting to be made more and more around our campus which is really adding up, in a good way! We are happy to see that this competition has given a new perspective to many of our staff and students, and we will continuously be moving forward and seeing how much we change as a whole. To help further promote the change, we are planning on a a few more blackout days dispersed throughout the rest of the school year, as well as putting on a day-long green-awareness festival, Placer Palooza in May. This will be our third year doing Palooza, and we are planning on making it the greatest yet!