First held in 1979, Envirothon is one of the world's most influential high-school STEM competitions that focuses on environmental science. Before advancing to the international round, participants had to pass two rounds of selection, one within our school, and the other within China. Two teams representing SHSID (each school can only send a maximum of two teams to the national round) were selected at the national level to earn two spots to represent China in the international round (only three spots are available nationwide). While the international round was even more challenging, the two SHSID teams proved to be victorious against the championship teams from states in the United States and top competitors from provinces in Canada.

After winning the national championship, participants from SHSID immediately entered the preparation phase for the international round. The preparation process for the international round was even more arduous than the national round, with five testing stations (Aquatic Ecology, Forestry, Soils and Land Use, Wildlife, and CEI - Current Environmental Issue speech) and an oral presentation based on the CEI awaiting the competitors. In addition to their busy academic schedules, each team member was tasked with studying hundreds of pages of material on their major subjects, conducting detailed research on the CEI, understanding relevant policies and regulations, and mastering the use of multiple measurement tools. Over the months that followed the national round, participants began to review earnestly, and both teams held weekly meetings online and offline to share their preparation progress and review notes. As the beginning of the competition approached, each contestant tried their best to squeeze out all the time they could spare for a final sprint.

Due to the pandemic, the international round took the form of an online competition, and the time-zone difference became one of the significant challenges for competitors from SHSID. The competition was held in the daytime in the US, which corresponded to midnight here in Shanghai. Yet, the two teams still managed to complete the five (5) hourlong online exams overnight and prepare a 20-minute presentation on a current environmental issue despite their physical and mental exhaustion.

In the end, the students' efforts were not in vain, as two teams from SHSID won 11th and 15th place worldwide in the overall score out of nearly 50 teams. At the same time, the students also achieved remarkable performances in various individual testing stations, with several subjects ranking in the top ten. A team even scored a second-place finish on the CEI test, which is a ground-breaking record for Chinese teams!

Congratulations to all SHSID Envirothon participants. We hope more students can engage in environmental-science research with pure and powerful passion for the protection of our beautiful Earth.

(Written by Lucy Pictures by all the participants and supervisors Supervised by Qiongyu Zeng, Mengdi Cui Reviewed by Qian Zuo)