‘Bag ladies’ of Carroll Vista teach Eldersburg middle-schoolers to weave recycled bags into sleeping mats for those in need

More than 60 Oklahoma Road Middle School students spent the morning Wednesday cutting discarded plastic bags into rings and tying them together to create thread for weaving into sleeping pads for those experiencing homelessness.

It was all part of an activity held as an outreach program for the school to maintain its Maryland Green Schools status. It was made possible by the self-dubbed “bag ladies” of the Carroll Vista retirement community in Taneytown.

Three of the five women who regularly meet at Carroll Vista every Wednesday to create recycled-bag sleeping pads visited the school to teach the craft to students. Bag ladies organizer Sue Morris, 80, said the event was an important way to teach children the value of community service.

“If we have enough people working on this project we can donate it to make a difference in our communities,” said eighth-grader Amelia Bell of Eldersburg.

The Maryland Green Schools Program is administered by the Maryland Association for Environmental & Outdoor Education and is designed to highlight achievements and progress schools are making toward environmental sustainability, aligned with the Maryland Environmental Literacy graduation requirement.

The program provides hands-on educational opportunities for students in pre-K through 12th grades to empower them to make changes that have a positive environmental impact. Schools must complete certain programs and reapply for Green Schools status every four years. More than one-third of all Maryland schools are Green Schools, including 19 Carroll County schools.

Bell is a member of the school’s Green Team, a group of 20 students responsible for handling the school’s recycling, gardening and other sustainability initiatives. Oklahoma Road’s lead Green Schools teacher and media specialist, Carolyn Cherry, who oversees the Green Team, said the student-driven group meets daily.

“Our job is to maintain everything that we can to keep the school ‘green,’ ” Cherry said.

The Green Team was joined by about 45 members of Students Helping Others and Understanding Themselves (also known as SHOUT) to maximize their capacity to make plarn — plastic yarn.

Oklahoma Road students took to plarn-making quickly, with a curiosity for each step of the process and a dedication to achieving results. Bag lady Sharon Schaeffer, 70, of Westminster, instructed students to fold bags in half before cutting off the top and bottom. Then, one loop was pulled through another to join two bags as links on a chain of plarn. Finally, the long threads were spread out by groups of students and rolled up into balls.

Teamwork and mutual respect was evident amid the rhythm, as students helped each other fully understand each step while working together to divide labor and create the biggest balls they could.

“There’s a lot of work and effort that goes into this,” Bell said, “and I think it’s very cool that we had people come in and show us, because it’s making a really big difference in our communities.”

The students produced more than 10 usable balls of plarn, which is about half the amount of material used in a full mat. Each mat takes about seven hours for a bag lady to make, start to finish, with most of the time dedicated to preparing plarn balls. Although most students did not have the opportunity to try their hand at weaving the mats on Wednesday, Schaefer said those that did took to the task like naturals.

A retired art teacher, Schaeffer addressed the students as a seasoned professional. The bag lady retired from her job as an art teacher at Winters Mill High School in 2017 after being at the school since its opening. She taught at Westminster High before that. Although Schaeffer does not reside at Carroll Vista, she said making mats from bags appeals to her because it is as an artistic outlet that also serves the community.

“There’s a need and we’re trying to fill it in,” Schaeffer said. “We’re also trying to make it pretty.”

The school is likely to hold another mat-making work session and as the school’s librarian, Cherry plans to read “A Long Walk to Water,” by Linda Sue Park, during the project’s next installment. The short novel tackles themes of homelessness, which she said will help students contextualize the meaning of their contribution.

“I don’t think the kids really understand exactly what the outcome will be, that it will be sleeping mats for homeless people. I don’t think that’s sunk in yet, so that’s something that will come through reading ‘A Long Walk to Water,’” she said.

Sleeping mats are sent to the Westminster men’s shelter and given to Taneytown police and fire departments so officers can distribute them to anyone in need they may encounter. Morris said the group is always looking for good-quality plastic bags that do not make crunching noises when ruffled. Bags can be donated to the Carroll Vista clubhouse, and Morris added that most religious and community leaders will be happy to hold bags until the bag ladies can picked them up or have them dropped off.

“There should definitely be more people to help out with this type of thing,” said Oklahoma Road sixth grader Reighton Daniels of Eldersburg, a member of SHOUT. “It made me feel really good to contribute to something.”