here - The Cloud Institute

Learning in Community:
Schools and Communities
Learning Together
Vol. 2
Summer 2010
Our Partner Sites
Burlington, Vermont and Shelburne Farms
Byram Hills School District
E3 Washington
Hewlett-Woodmere Public Schools
New Jersey Learns for a Sustainable Future
New York Empowerment Zone
St. Louis Learns and Leads
Tucson Unified School District
Winston Salem School District
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Overview
We believe that in order to ensure truly sustainable communities, schools and communities must learn together to
sustain innovation and best practices that can make a significant contribution locally and regionally. There is great
value in joining forces. We believe that collectively we can make a significant contribution to sustainability by
increasing the capacity of our schools and communities to work together in elegant, seamless, and sustained collaboration. We hope that through our work we can manifest more system change for a sustainable future by creating
stronger collaborative learning relationships between schools and communities. We seek to engage schools and
communities to envision their desired futures and raise the current realities to meet these visions.
Stories
Senior Thesis Project at the Bronx Guild - Noel Parish
St. Augustine’s Chicken Club and Sustainability Program - Roger Repohl
States, Stories and Sustainability - Mindy Bhuyan and Carol Fitzsimmons
.
.
Green
. Dean - Howard Waldman
Sustainability, Immigration, and Identity - Robin Ostenfeld
The Power of a Great Idea: The Wind Turbine - Matt Diller
Sol Education Partnership Commuity Gathering 2009 - Annalise Wagner
Editor
Leah Mayor
Design
Nicole Teel
The Society for Organizational Learning Education Partnership is grateful to the Nathan Cummings
Foundation for their generous support.
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Senior Thesis Projects at the Bronx Guild
By Noel Parish
The Bronx Guild High School is unique in that it
focuses on individualized learning plans for its
students, based on their personal interests, skills, and
overall passions. They are a Big Picture School,
where learning follows three foundations: "first, that
learning must be based on the interests and goals of
each student; second, that a student’s curriculum
must be relevant to people and places that exist in the
real world; and finally, that a student’s abilities must
be authentically measured by the quality of her or his
work." The Bronx Guild incorporates real world
projects, internships, and fieldwork, as well as asks
students to make public presentations of their work.
The main focuses are on character and community,
following the mindset of “we are crew not
passengers.” Students leave with a mapped out
"mission" they've created for themselves, specifically
a two-year plan for the immediate future.
What if your homework was to change the world? I am
going to tell you a story about a community of learners
engaged in meaningful work and their quest to foster high
school graduates who are agents of change.
I am a senior crew leader at the Big Picture School Bronx
Guild in New York City. My colleagues and I have been
piloting different ways of incorporating sustainability
education into the Big Picture model for almost two years
now. I am currently helping to infuse what we learned from
the pilot work into the Senior Thesis Project that every
student must complete in order to graduate.
Our school received a grant to work with the Cloud
Institute and the Cloud Institute gave me a scholarship to
go to the SoL Education Partnership Community
Gathering. The organizational principles of my school were
taken straight out of The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge
who founded the partnership with Jaimie Cloud, so of
course I wanted to meet Peter and learn from him. I was
always interested in social innovation and sustainability
education, but I never knew that there were other people
who cared.
I am most excited about the potential to learn how to utilize
schools to better their surrounding communities.
Specifically, the potential for Big Picture schools to leverage
internships and real world projects to teach students how to
help create sustainable communities. I mean, how cool
would it be if your homework was to change the world?
The first thing we did was to scaffold the Senior Thesis
Project using four key components. All projects must
include community involvement, action research,
multimedia documentation, and leave a legacy. We
structured this over four quarters: planning and background
research, action research, implementation, and reflection
and suggestions for further work. We then scaffolded
student research to include all different types of media,
mentors, places, and community organizations (real world
research) to complement the “traditional” research that
would be expected of an academic project. As a result,
students have created amazing proposals, everything from
building energy efficient model homes, to investigating how
boxing gyms affect gang violence, to starting a non profit
community awareness organization, to publishing a cost
effective, ecofriendly yearbook, and even trying to affect
obesity on campus by redesigning the gym to make it more
accessible and inviting to female students.
We are currently reviewing and finalizing all the Senior
Thesis Project proposals. We will then switch our focus to
supporting students’ background research on whatever
issues they’ve identified as relevant to their projects. After
we will then move them into the action research portion.
We had been moving in this direction with kids for years,
but the turning point was that since the first day of school
this year, everyone was brought into it including teachers,
students, and administration. We all believe that the
students are capable of creating what they propose. I think
3
it was because we spent so much time envisioning what the
projects could be and sharing our visions as a community of
learners.
now pursuing a graduate degree in educational leadership
and social innovation.
My four teaching colleagues and our 65 students have all
been affected by this work. Also, this work will set the bar
for all Senior Thesis Projects thereafter. Senior Thesis
Projects were always flat in the years before this; they didn’t
really connect to the community, buyin was low, and they
usually died off before they were finished. This work has
changed all that.
When considering the key reasons why, my instincts
gravitate toward answering: student passion, and the four
key components we chose (community involvement, action
research, multimedia documentation, and legacy), and the
scaffolding of the project process, and pulling the school’s
community and all our networks for resources. This has
created a confident vibe across the senior class that they are
capable of creating great things for their communities.
Some of the key lessons to be learned from this project are
to spend a lot of time brainstorming, sharing ideas, pull and
rely on the resources of your entire school community and
the surrounding community, scaffold project work into
manageable parts that can still be individualized and then
support kids with each part. If you don’t know how to
accomplish a particular thing, find an expert who does and
ask for help. If I could change something I would have
started the brainstorming and visioning through an action
research lens. Instead we started with the kids and let them
go anywhere they wanted. This made some projects more
“mecentered” than community centered, which is fine I
suppose. But As a result, we had to sort of backtrack and
loop around during the planning stage to tie the action
research and community components into the proposal. It
was a lot of mental gymnastics that could have been avoided
with an action research set up.
The impact of this program has included three things: I
needed a final “click” to really being able to understand and
apply systems thinking, which I got that from SoL
Education Partnership Community Gathering. I needed to
know that there are other people who feel like I do and who
want to work towards change. Also, I needed to know that
these people actually believed that I could contribute.
This project tells us that students, if trusted to do so and
given the necessary supports and proper tools, will dream
big and come up with ingenious ways of bettering the
communities they are a part of, moving them towards a
sustainable future. I’m still struck by the fact that the kids
believe in themselves and their ability to do things in the
world. What could be better for the future than that? I am
so grateful to have had the opportunity to do this work and
to continue to do it. I was deeply inspired by the SoL
Education conference this summer, so much so that I am
4
Authentic Youth Engagement: Chickens in the South Bronx
St. Augustine School (www.staugustinebx.com) is an Archdiocesan Catholic school rooted in a rich one hundred and fifty year old
tradition committed to the education of young men and women. Located in the Morrisannia section of the Bronx, St. Augustine
provides a unique combination of morals, academics, the arts, and real world skills. The school presents an unparalleled continuum
of learning, the opportunity to participate and play in a variety of interscholastic sports, and a nurturing community for children
age three through grade eight.
St. Augustine School is located in the poorest Congressional district in the United States; 98% percent of students are eligible for
Federal Free Lunch. All students receive financial aid and scholarships. The student body is 51% Hispanic and 49% African
American. Practical, creative, intelligent education is the only way to break the cycle of poverty that exists in the community. Every
family at St. Augustine School pays tuition. At the end of the 2008 school year, 97% of our families had paid their tuition in full.
The emerging Sustainability Program at St. Augustine is one that reflects genuine and creative ways to engage students in learning
and thinking about sustainability in the South Bronx and beyond. One aspect of their programming has been to create a Chicken
Club. Through the Chicken Club, students take care of the animals, integrate scientific inquiry into their immediate surroundings,
and provide food for their families and communities. The following article provides a sense of how the school has integrated
chickens into their sustainability curriculum.
St. Augustine’s Chicken Club and Sustainability Program
By Roger Repohl
(Adapted from an article published November 27, 2008 in the Easy Reader, a Hermosa Beach, California weekly)
Every school day at 7 a.m. sharp, twelve year old Mame arrives
at the Peace Garden adjoining St. Augustine Catholic School
in the South Bronx. The chickens are waiting. The rustle of her
footsteps through the fallen leaves brings fifteen big, colorful
birds out of their coop and into the pen. They come around her,
eyeing her intently, clucking curiously. Mame (pronounced
"Mommy") checks their water and food, then looks inside the
henhouse. Today she finds a clutch of sixteen large brown eggs,
neatly laid in a nest of straw on the floor. She gathers them up.
"I love to take care of the chickens!" Mame smiles. "They look
so beautiful, and they know me!" Mame, whose family
immigrated from Senegal two years ago, is a member of the
school's Chicken Club, twenty-eight students whose year-long
project is to learn about ecosystems and human nutrition while
practicing hands on animal husbandry. They perform the daily
tasks of keeping the water fresh, the food abundant, the pen
cleaned and layered with sweet smelling straw: farmers' work.
They monitor the health of the chickens, their egg production,
and the cost of feed. In the spring, they will present their
findings at the New York Catholic Schools Science Fair.
They're confident they'll win. "Whenever I go to a principals'
meeting," says Cathryn Trapp, St. Augustine's principal, "their
first question always is, ‘Well, how are the chickens?' They're
jealous."
The school's experiment in urban agriculture is sponsored by
Heifer International, the same folks who turn your donations
into beehives in Bolivia and goats in Ghana, and Just Food, a
nonprofit group committed to localizing the food supply by
organizing neighborhood run farmers' markets and showing
community gardeners how to increase their productivity and
diversify their output. Their mutual goal, in the word of the day,
is "sustainability."
"Chickens are a must for farming ecologically," remarks Owen
Taylor, who heads up the chicken project for Just Food. "They
eat everything. They'll pick off the insect pests in your garden
and consume all your kitchen scraps — meat and eggshells
included. They also aerate the soil by their scratching. In return,
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you not only get absolutely fresh eggs, but the best
high-nitrogen fertilizer around. It's great nutrition for you
and less chemicals for your garden. And they're not that much
work. Plus, they'll bring people to your garden just for the
interest."
Sixth grader Ken, age 12, is a member of the Chicken Club.
"He's a handful — attention deficit," Trapp admits. "He's on
meds, he's in special ed, he can be difficult in the classroom,
but he's a different person when he gets out there. I call it
'chicken therapy for the soul.'"
Michael Brady, the Development Director at St. Augustine's,
was intrigued by the idea. “I thought,” he says, “that this would
be a way to create a mini-ecosystem in the South Bronx, teach
students the global importance of their actions on the
environment and give them a sense of ownership in
sustainability." So, last summer he secured a grant from
Heifer and Just Food for a coop and pen, fifteen chickens, and
dry feed enough for a year. In accord with Heifer's philosophy
of "passing on the gift," the school's chicken club will share
their expertise with other interested gardeners and lend a
hand in new coop construction. Just Food currently sponsors
six sites in the city, and Taylor anticipates three more next year.
The St. Augustine group built their structures over three days
in August. It was a cooperative project. Taylor drew up the
plans and ordered the materials — basically wood, nails, and
of course, chicken wire — from Home Depot. Students
(Mame among them), teenage alumni, and community
gardeners performed the labor. "Working with St. Augustine's
was really satisfying, with all the young people involved,"
Taylor notes. "That's where it's at in terms of community
involvement." (St. Augustines has recently hosted two
greening conferences at the school, and plans to do more over
the summer.)
"I like animals," Ken says. "I can tell all the chickens apart —
they're just like people. I have a favorite one, too — I named
her Cassandra. She always comes when I call to her."
The chickens arrived in October from Awesome Farm, a
thirty acre organic livestock operation in Tivoli, N.Y., about a
hundred miles north of the city. "The kind we brought them,"
says KayCee Wimbish, a crazy-for-chickens young woman
who runs the farm with her partner Owen O'Connor, "are
called Black Sex-linked chickens, which I know is a weird
name — it means you can tell male from female chicks by
their color as soon as they hatch. They're a cross between the
Rhode Island Red and the Barred Rock varieties. They're bred
for their heartiness and their productivity, and because they
mature early."
"It's amazing," remarks Brady. "Kids who are hyperactive, who
have no patience in the classroom, are patient with the
chickens. They love it when the chickens pile out the
henhouse door to greet them."
There is another side. The productive life of a laying hen is
about two years, which means that before they graduate,
Mame and Ken will have to face the hardest fact of farming:
what to do with the old birds. There’s been some discussion in
the school about slaughtering them for soup and stew. “Kids
need to experience that too,” says Brady. “They need to know
how food really gets to their table.” The prevailing opinion,
however, seems to be to return the hens to Awesome Farm,
which maintains a kind of free range retirement home for
animals that have given the best of their service. However
when they go, it will be hard on the children to see them off.
"They're learning about the cycle of life," says principal Trapp.
"They're learning about caring and taking responsibility. And
they're learning that we're all part of nature — even here in
the South Bronx."
The hens at the St. Augustine Peace Garden are mateless —
New York City codes forbid roosters because of their noisy
crowing (car alarms, however, are permitted) — but this does
not matter, to the humans at least; unmated hens will still
produce an egg every 36 hours or so.
The fowl are well fed. In addition to poultry pellets (which
Brady buys along with bales of straw from the only remaining
feed store in New York City, just a few blocks away), they are
given the leftovers from the school cafeteria, which in the past
were just bagged up as garbage. That's urban ecology. But
there's human ecology too.
"Sustainability is our urban future,” says Brady. “We must
focus on this and prepare youngsters for it. Without this
necessary skill set, ‘greening’ will remain just a concept, not a
reality.”
Contacts: Mike Brady: michael@bradyandcompany.com;
Roger Repohl: repohl@att.net.
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Sustainability,
y Immigr
Immigration, and Identity
y
This past spring semester, the head of our school introduced
the idea of doing an interdisciplinary unit to a team of
teachers: an English teacher, a History teacher, a Science
teacher, and a Math teacher. He said, “We want you to do an
interdisciplinary unit, so whatever you choose is fine. Just
make sure it’s connected to the discipline.” So, we sat down
as a team and came up with the idea of doing a unit on
Immigration and Identity for the sixth grade. Last year we
had gone to Ellis Island on a field trip through our history
department and I saw an opportunity to include it
elsewhere.
Last year I was hired to work as the sixth grade
Environmental Science teacher at Ethical Culture Fieldston
School in Riverdale, NY --a very old progressive school.
Fieldston, wanted to utilize their Green Building as a
teaching space. When I considered working at Fieldston,
the fact that it’s a green school definitely interested me. I’m
interested in how to build a green community, engage
students about environmental issues, and learning and
practicing ways that are low impact. I really liked this idea
of an interdisciplinary unit because I want to connect the
science that I teach in any classroom to their daily lives as
much as possible. I thought it was a nice challenge to be able
to say “Ok. Immigration. How are we going to find science
in that?”
I had to figure out how to relate the immigration unit to
sustainability. So I began thinking about how I could
connect it to our usual spring topic, which is water
conservation. Then I realized that it isn’t that far-fetched
because when immigrants flooded the cities, that is exactly
what they had to think about -- the new population and
how their resources could be expanded to meet them. So
that really made me realize that I don’t need to reinvent the
wheel and develop all new materials, I just have to approach
it from a similar standpoint. I was already teaching about
the New York City water system, but this was now kind of
An Interview
with Robin Ostenfeld
the
"why" behind the New York City
water system and its connection with population growth. So
that was really how we got set up. I realized I was going to
teach about water conservation, the history of the New York
City water system and how that relates to immigration.
Water resources are one of the biggest problems we have in
New York City. Due to all of the impervious surfaces and
the current water filtration system, it is a combined system.
That is when the waste from our toilets and the gray water
that goes down our sewers gets combined; and every single
time it gets combined, it causes a system overflow. So it’s
completely related to sustainability. Every single time it
overflows it dumps raw sewage into the rivers and because
the school has a green roof, it prevents a whole lot of storm
water--that’s water that comes down in the form of rain
water and then runs off over-often times impervious
surfaces like driveways or parking lots and ends up in the
sewage. We’re preventing that gray water from entering and
then reducing the amount, or the chance of overflow,
therefore reducing our impact. And the kids can really see
that. Some of them are already thinking in very
sophisticated ways. The students understand it at different
levels and it improves their understanding of how the
function of the Green Roof is tied to their curriculum.
We had the immigration stories that they wrote in English
class and the charts and graphs that showed the rise in
population over time. And then we did a timeline that
showed all the events leading up to the development of the
New York City water system. They were able to see that it is
a system that is continually altered to offset the expected
population increase in the future. I think that the kids
definitely feel more connected to their natural environment.
In the Fall we study land, land resources and land
conservation. The students are only eleven and twelve years
old so the change that they’ve seen in the landscape is only
so long. But when they start to look at maps and see how
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much land has been developed over time, they really start to
understand that the city is growing by leaps and bounds. So
many kids take for granted that every single time they turn on
the faucet, water will come out. They think that they can take
the longest showers in the world. I think through this project
and through the course of the year they’re able to understand
that the things that land and water are dependent on are our
success as a species and the success of all species.
The success that I find in the curriculum is that the lessons are
always so project based. The kids have a lot of fun with it, and I
enjoy it more because I don’t have to be spoon-feeding the
knowledge to them. They can physically go out and do research,
find knowledge, and ask questions. And even if I know the
discoveries or anticipate the discoveries that they’re going to
make, they do it themselves. So that’s always more fun and it’s
actually less energy for me as a teacher. I always say the success
of these kinds of programs relies on the commitment to being
project-based and process-driven.
I want to utilize the amazing resource of the Green Roof that I
have at Fieldston. I want everyone at the school to be using it as
much as possible because the more people feel connected to it,
the more they’re going to grow up and advocate for things like
green roofs on the buildings that they work or live in for the
future of New York City. They’re just gaining that relationship
over time I think, a transformative potential.
What I like to do is look for ways that kids can measure their
impact and reliance on natural resources. We do a water
consumption project, where they measure how much water
they consume over the course of a week. I find that that really
connects them to realizing how much they rely on natural
resources; they actually get to measure it. I think that projects
like the water consumption project allow them to take
responsibility for their actions and realize that they’re
connected to sustainability decisions. We live in a democratic
society and depending on the population’s interests, they’re
going to be more concerned with the environment or less
concerned, and I think that’s empowering for my kids. The
project also gives sustainability more of a historical context. So
they are able to understand how we used to be so connected to
our natural resources when we were farming and living off the
land. Now, living in such an urban setting, we’ve gotten away
from that. Recently there’s this surge back into that with
farmer’s markets and with people advocating for the
consumption of tap water. I think we’re getting back to those
original ideas of sustainability that we used to have before
modernization.
Mapping is one of the skills I have taught in the fall so I’m
thinking about mapping how far our food travels to get to New
York City. I would like to measure the carbon output and then
compare it to the output of getting that food during a different
time period.
It would compare how much further food travels now than it
did fifty or one hundred years ago. Just to put that in
perspective, I think that might be kind of interesting, too.
I also teach the kids about watersheds, and that most of our
water either goes out to the Hudson or it goes to Van Cortland
Park from the high point where our school is. We also learn
about point and non-point pollution. There’s a golf course
down there, there’s runoff from the highway and Broadway, and
there’s a lot of different factors coming into play with the water
quality down there. I just actually came back from a planning
meeting with the other science teacher and we’re thinking
about taking the kids down there because it is so connected to
their community. Macro-invertebrate water testing, where you
take some mud from the bottom of the swamp and then you
look for macroinvertebrates--like little insect larva--which
have different tolerance levels based on the water quality
parameters. From those we find out information about the
water quality, and we can actually figure out the different
stresses on that particular part of the swamp. We were thinking
that the next step would be planting to prevent some runoff
into that body of water, maybe talking to the golf course,
interrogating them and asking them, “Are you over fertilizing?”
We’re focusing on different ways to try to help the community
and help them understand how they’re impacting the
environment. The kids are learning how so many pollutants get
dragged into the waterways and how much trash ends up in the
Hudson because of people being irresponsible about their litter.
So I think that they have grown to become greater advocates.
We did a Hudson River cleanup this year as a whole grade and
categorized all the different waste that we found. We are
becoming more of a cohesive green community and are really
taking our green school identity seriously. And as people start
to discover the green roof, I think we as a school are going to
become more aligned with that green mission.
Above all, I’m most passionate about instilling in the kids a love
and appreciation for the outdoors and nature. Because we have
a green roof, I like to take kids out there where they can kind of
accomplish this goal. But they also develop an understanding
about how their human actions are deeply connected to the
health and the sustainability of our planet.
I would say the central theme of the interdisciplinary unit is our
relationship with our resources, not just immigration. I think
that the history component should have something to say about
that, basically talk about how our relationship to resources has
changed over time. As for English, there’s so much literature
out there that has do with people’s relationship with their
resources, and there's also writing about nature. And in math,
we’re constantly measuring, graphing and charting how our
resources are used, as well as our waste managemen. There are
so many different options. I guess my dream would be that we
undertake a more interdisciplinary theme that was even more
deliberately about sustainability. I’m constantly trying to bring
sustainability into the forefront of my teaching.
8
States, Stories and Sustainability By Mindy Bhuyan and Carol Fitzsimmons
The College School really brings the idea of hands-on learning to a higher level. Based on the belief that students
should be sincerely engaged with their curriculum, TCS emphasizes the importance of adventure education ((field trips)
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and yet is has been somewhat intangible. One of the
things that attracted us to The Cloud Institute was the
opportunity to make our commitment to sustainability
and Sustainability Education more concrete and
purposeful. We were fortunate to attend a weeklong
seminar at The Cloud Institute with a team from The
College School.
The thing that hooked us and inspired us the most was the
idea that the kids can be inspired and empowered to take
ownership of the world and of the future. We love the
term “inventing the future.” It is too easy to get into the
mindset of “this is what I have been born into,” but this
present we are living was somebody else’s future. Like it or
not, we are all inventing opportunities and influencing the
future and young people are a part of that.
It is also exciting to us that the unsustainable and
sustainable mental models that we learned about in EfS,
and that we explore with our students, spill over into so
many other areas. For example, while getting along with a
friend, doing homework or taking care of a creek, we are
bringing a particular mindset, or mental model with us. It
is helpful to be aware of that for adults and for children.
In adapting the States theme to be more focused on EfS,
the first thing for us was to consider the compelling
reason we were engaged in this theme. We asked
ourselves, “Why are we asking our students to study the
states?” If the students are truly inventing the future, it is
important that they know who they are and where they
have come from, as well as what the land and the rest of
the country are like. Once we started to ask, “What do we
want the future to be like?” we became more keyed into
why we were studying the states.
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more compelling.
The next thing we did at The Cloud Institute was to
consider our essential questions. Our essential questions
for the States theme evolved to include, “How is the
United States made up of human and natural systems?”
“How do multiple perspectives deepen our understanding
of the United States?” and “How can we inspire others to
better care for our natural and human systems?” We were
inspired by the examples of the Inventing the Future
scrapbooks at Cloud Institute. Once we included the idea
of the Commons, everything changed. Our theme focuses
on mutual responsibility and interdependence. We asked
teams of students to study a region together instead of
each student taking one state. They began to look at
commonalities of a region and to work as a team.
This year, when we were at the Daniel Boone Home, the
students learned a lot about slavery. We had Stephanie
Dooley, our African American Diversity Coordinator
with us. She said, “I have never heard this story the way
these kids are getting to hear it.” We made assumptions
that kids knew about slavery, but they didn’t. They heard
the stories from different perspectives and that is
important. There were lots of different kinds of
master-slave relationships. The students also used old
authentic tools to hoe and work in the fields. This too,
they will remember because it was a real experience within
a context.
We have received a lot of support for the evolution of our
theme from The Daniel Boone Home where we go for
field trips, from Lindenwood College that oversees the
Daniel Boone Home, from Louise Cadwell, our
9
Curriculum Coordinator, and from The Cloud Institute.
We also received support from our school community and
from the parents. There have been some bumps in the
road. For example, Commons is a new term and we
learned that the kids need a lot of understanding about it
before we give them homework assignments. This is to be
expected.
Why do we want our students to learn these things? If
you go deep into anything with big, essential questions, it
is worthwhile. We know that this theme will constantly
evolve. There are many people out there who want to help
us. We seem to be networking about this all the time. One
of us will run into someone at a party who turns out to be
a great connection. When we are excited, the people we
talk to and seek out get excited.
In the future, we would like our students to go talk to the
current third grade about the idea of the Commons,
because the third grade does a theme on Communities. It
would be helpful for the third grade to make the
connections to the Commons in communities and to
bring that knowledge and schema with them to fourth
grade. We would also like our students to make a book for
the community about the Commons or to do a project
that would contribute to the healthy future that they
imagine.
Our hope is that we have planted a seed with our
students. We have added to their schema about being
responsible, and having choices. We believe that they
know that everything they do affects everything else. They
have learned about their power to invent the future, and
they have focused on and expressed what they learned and
what matters to them in an excellent piece of work that
we call the States Scrapbook.
What gives us a sense of hope is that we are activating
habits of mind that will contribute to a sustainable future.
We know that when these kids tell us about what they
want for the future. They do want to be healthy and they
do want a future. These essential questions, like “How is
the United States made up of human and natural
systems?” “How do multiple perspectives deepen our
understanding of the United States?” and “How can we
inspire others to better care for our natural and human
systems?” are important for us as well. That’s what makes
these questions essential: They work for kids and adults at
the same time.
10
Green Dean
An Interview with Howard Waldman
Howard Waldman is a science teacher and Green Dean at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York. Historically,
Fieldston Schools (of which there are four) strive to give children a morally centered, hands-on education, in order to provide
students the most deeply rooted and fulfilling learning experiences possible. The mission of the Ethical Culture Fieldstion
School is given by its founder, Felix Adler. That is, "The ideal of the school is to develop individuals who will be competent to
change their environment to greater conformity with moral ideals." Waldman's role as the Green Dean is to lead the school in
their efforts to become a "greener," more sustainable community.
The Ethical Culture Fieldston School, in fits and starts, is
moving toward becoming a green institution. Fieldston has
always concerned itself with environmental issues, particularly
in its ethics classes. The kids take ethics classes from
kindergarten to twelfth grade. I’ve always thought of
environmentalism as a cornerstone of ethics, particularly in
the modern world. When the school decided to build a
separate middle school building and a new PE facility, it
included many voices and affinity groups. The consensus was
to make the new buildings as green as possible. This led to the
installation of a green roof on the middle school building and
the development of a really cool curriculum that went along
with it. It also led to the middle school building becoming a
silver LEED certified building. But for me, this greening
process is really the tip of the iceberg. It has pointed out how
much more we have to do to make the school a really
sustainable institution.
To be honest, this initiative really predates me. I’ve been a
Biology teacher at the school for eleven years. In addition to
teaching biology and middle school science in the past, I also
specialize in these wonderful junior/senior elective classes. I
get to teach ecology, animal behavior, and evolution. I
immediately started working with another biology teacher,
Peter Ma, who is now retired from the school. He taught at
Fieldston for many years and I started working with him to
study birds on campus. He has over 20 years worth of data on
migrating birds, neo-tropical migrating birds coming through
the campus. So there were people who were paying attention
to nature and all sorts of environmental aspects of the campus
way before there was any decision to build a building. Peter is
the past president of the New York City Audubon Society, a
superb birder, an environmentalist, and he quickly became my
mentor. So we did sit in on meetings on how to LEED certify
the middle school building, after it was decided that this
building was going to be built. I really followed Peter’s lead
on this, and he was officially the first Green Dean of Ethical
Culture Fieldston School. And after he stopped teaching, a
few years ago, he remained the Green Dean for another year.
After he decided to retire, I was asked to become the Green
Dean. That was two springs ago. I’m still a teacher at the
school, really a ¾ time teacher and ¼ time Green Dean, which
you could imagine means that there’s not a lot of time to get
everything done that needs to get done.
The role of the “Green Dean” is a bit nebulous. It’s still a new
role. But what I am trying to do is chair sustainability
initiatives at the school. I’m trying to help make connections
between all of the different initiatives in all of our grades and
campuses. Already there are connections between them but
there are a lot of separate initiatives as well. So, one thing I’m
trying to do is just find out what everybody is doing in all the
different grades. I come in as a spot educator, a tour giver, and
so on in lots of different grades. I tell kids about trees on
campus, bring them to the green roof, identify bugs for the
kindergardeners, and so on and so on. But in addition to that,
I’m trying to focus on a few big initiatives, which, if we
accomplish them, will make the school as a whole much
greener.
I’ve always been an environmentalist and always been
interested in living things. I’ve studied ecology as a science
discipline, but it has also become very much a philosophical
part of my life. I have to admit that I’m most excited about
11
the green roof, in part because it has been such a huge
success. It’s working. It’s doing a lot of neat ecological
ffunctioning right now. If you go to the Sustainable
Fieldston link on the Fieldston website, it takes you right
F
tto it. I’m doing it as I’m speaking to you, and finding out
th
that there’s 1400 gallons of water stored in the soil right
n
now from this current rain. I can click on the temperature
profile and show you how the temperature of the nearby
black roof on another building at Fieldston is fluctuating
wildly, while the temperature of the surface of the green
roof is not fluctuating at all. And it’s maintaining a much
cooler temperature during the hottest parts of the day, as
well as a much warmer temperature in the wintertime
than the actual ambient air. I can tell you all of that from
the website.
The sixth grade kids speak about the Green roof much
better than I do. We brought a bunch of these kids up on
the roof for an open house when educators came from
other schools in the city. I remember bringing a parent up
from a different school that was very interested in the
green roof. I didn’t know that there was going to be a class
on the roof, but there they were. I didn’t even have to say
a thing. These kids know their plant identification; they
know the ecological functions of green roofs and why
they’re important for big cities like New York. They’re
advocates for the building of green roofs. In some cases,
they’ve actually started their own projects to get green
roofs at other schools. It’s just been wonderful.
Another ninth grade biology teacher and I developed
ninth grade curriculum, which has worked well. It’s more
limited in scope than the sixth grade project, but the kids
go up to the roof and learn about plant competition as an
approach to learning about ecological interactions in
general. We talk a lot about experimental design, and
they try to answer some questions without us
spoon-feeding the answers to them. Questions like, "Are
certain species doing better than others on the green
roof?" "Are the native plant communities, which Dr.
Palmer designed, doing as well as the seeded plants
communities?" That’s the part that has excited me the
most. Also, I’m going to be teaching a course on science
research, so I’m very excited to connect those kids with
Dr. Stuart Gaffin, who has done all the instrumentation
on the roof, look at long range patterns of temperature
and precipitation, and see how we can learn to analyze big
world data.
We are transitioning to green and we are trying to make
the middle school buildings and the new gym greener.
It’s not LEED certified, but it has certified forest
stewardship council wood on the floor and many other
good things.
What I really love is curriculum
development, so that’s what I want to work on. I zoomed
in on meeting with groups of teachers at both Fieldston
and at different schools, in order to find out what they
were doing and offer my services. My goal in developing
specific curriculum for ninth grade was to be able to not
just talk about it, but to say what we’ve done and how
we’ve gone about doing it. This way I will hopefully be
able to provide real world examples of how it can be done.
We have really tried to get the word out there and make
contact with other schools. That’s also been a big part of
what I have tried to do, to really make other schools feel
welcome here in order to see what we’re doing, and for us
to feel like we’re evangelists for green roofs, among other
things. We really want people to see how much cool
curriculum work they can do, how important place-based
education is, and how it’s not a reach for a lot of these
schools to do this work.
What happened for me was that I became sort of, not
overwhelmed by, but flooded by tons of ideas on how to
make the institution itself greener. And so that’s really
what I have come to focus on quite a bit. I've realized that
there are so many different constituents and so many
different ideals out there. In another area, lunchroom
food services, a company called Flick is very willing to
work with us to make the school more sustainable. That
includes, for example, just getting sustainably produced
coffee. We only use Fair Trade Coffee, and about eighty
or ninety percent of it is organic, shade-grown coffee, so
we’re trying to get that to one hundred percent. I noticed
that there were paper cups near the water and juice
dispensers in the lunchroom, as well as plastic tumblers
that get washed. So Flick and I eliminated the paper
cups. We’ve also just purchased mugs for every teacher at
the school so that hopefully in the fall they will stop using
paper cups when they get their coffee. We then, at the
urging of students at the school, approached Flick with
the idea of going tray-less. I don’t know if you’re familiar
with the tray-less movement, particularly at colleges, but
when students don’t use trays to get their food, they tend
to not only reduce their food waste, but the trays
themselves aren’t being washed which saves a lot of water.
At the end of the year we went tray-less in the
junior/senior lunch period. I must say there were all sorts
of predictions of disaster from teachers. But there were
no disasters. It was clean and safe and fine. So, now I’m
hoping that we’ll push that down to the ninth and tenth
grade lunch, and maybe even the sixth, seventh, and
eighth graders can be trained to do this without disaster
as well.
Then, I facilitated an earth science teacher and the head of
12
the Environmental Club in the High School and helped
him get his composting operation going. Originally, he
did it with Environmental Club students without my
help, but I connected him to the facilities management
guy who was looking at his green composting facility.
That is just taking all sorts of weeds that the facilities guys
pull out and cut anyway and mixing them with leaf-litter
to make incredibly beautiful compost. The teacher, Kenny
Styer, has been doing this, but we want to do it on a much
larger scale. It looks like the facilities person in charge is
completely excited and gung-ho. If that works then we’d
really like to move to start composting scraps, food waste,
and pre-consumer waste from the kitchen. We have great
hopes for doing that.
The major turning point that I’ve seen is the way in which
the sixth graders have begun to view the world. From
talking with Laura and Robin and the kids themselves,
they have become real environmental advocates. I’m
waiting for those kids to become my ninth grade because
we won't have to start from square one. I’m sort of
hoping to have this crop of kids who are automatically
oriented in that way and who will be able to affect great
change in the high school going forward.
As for other turning points, I’m waiting. So in other
words, we’re redoing the garbage/recycling bin system at
the school. And we’ll make great efforts at the beginning
of this coming year to get faculty, staff, and students all
recycling properly in the upper school. If that really
works, I feel we’ll have made a huge change in attitude at
the school and among all the people who use or are a part
of the school community. I think that’s a huge thing. The
other is about energy usage. Once again at the urging of
Kinne Stires the environmental club teacher, we did a
turn off the lights event at the school. It was a little
different from most other school’s turn off the lights
events in which they usually just turn off the lights all day
to see what it would be like. What we tried to do instead
was map out every part of the school. Then we had
advisories go out at a designated time and turn off every
light switch that they could, along with most of the
computers at the school excepting servers. We measured
how much energy we were using under that regime. Then
at a designated time we had all those kids stationed all
over the school turn everything on, everything they
possibly could, even computers that hadn’t been on 20
minutes before. We measured that energy usage, and
calculated the difference in kilowatts, so the life support
and maximum energy usage. We presented that to the
high school and middle school students, and then we
challenged them to reduce their energy usage. In
September, we’ll be measuring again, telling the kids how
much they’re using, and basically giving them a report
card. We’re hoping to get everybody really conscious
about turning off lights and computers. This is more
important in the upper and the lower school than the
middle school where they have motion-sensitive light
switches. But there are still a lot of computers left on all
over the place. And when the green steering committee
met with the facilities people last September, we asked
what the best way to reduce energy usage was. They said
to just turn off the darn lights when you leave the room.
So I’m hoping that there’s a huge impact from the work
we did this past year in turning off the lights and showing
the kids how much energy we can save. We calculated
that we could roughly save about $325,000 a year, which
represents a type of energy not used. I can’t tell you that
we’ve had huge changes in the community yet, but I’m
hoping that in the next year or two that we do begin to see
those.
Some of the lessons we have learned are somewhat cliché.
You’ve heard them before, but I think they are true. Even
though you know how to save the world, you can’t do it by
yourself. You can’t push too hard or you’ll just end up
alienating lots of people and not making much progress.
If you open the door for ideas, you’ll hear many, many
superb ones, but you’ll also hear ones that make no sense
to you, ideas for which you have no time. It’s important
to create a system where people feel empowered to
develop their ideas. I’m the point person, but I don’t have
to control every green initiative that’s going on in the
school. I want to know about every green initiative, but I
see it as my job to let everybody know what everybody
else is doing so that these ideas can feed each other. I just
want to support people.
Another is that, when you say there’s a green center, or a
green initiative, people get excited and come out of the
woodworks. It turns out they’ve always been there and
they’ve always cared. Just saying something like, “you can
talk to me,” really helps. I get stopped in the hallway a lot
and people give me lots of ideas. But then they go off and
do this stuff by themselves.
We have influenced some kids to be strong environmental
advocates. They bring that information to their parents,
and the parents talk about it. The families are interested.
Every specific initiative just makes people more aware,
whether it’s working on the green roof as part of a
curricular effort or not having paper cups or trays
anymore. Several ethics classes work with me on planting
trees and shrubs in an outdoor classroom that we’ve
developed. So not only did they provide a service to the
school in creating this classroom, but they learned a lot
13
about why we were planting the kinds of plants we were.
They also learned why we didn't simply put plants in the
ground that look nice, as well as why weeding is so
important. We removed plants because they were an
invasive, exotic species and so on and so on and so on. So,
there are all these little impacts, from eliminating the
paper cups to turning off the lights. We’re all hoping for
the kids and adults to become more aware of the world
around them, and be aware that we are all animals living
in one environment where ecological interactions control
our lives in so many ways. We want to make it so that
global warming doesn’t remain a distant, strange, abstract
idea. We actually measure growth rates of plants where
there is increasing carbon concentrations in the
atmosphere and have seen that it does have an effect. If
those kids are educating their parents and their parents
become more aware, there can really be a major impact.
These kids can donate to certain organizations, fight to
change company practices, or help propose legislation
when they are senators and congressmen down the line.
Sustainability is easier said than done. That’s the sobering
part. I’m not sure how much we’ve done yet. Nobody is
against sustainability in theory. In a place like Fieldston,
everybody is for it. But then I see all the garbage mixed
in the bins, the paper cups, the food waste. We are asking
everybody to move out of a convenience culture. It’s
really hard. We are helping to make people more aware of
the kinds of things they can do. People will respond if
they can. The more we reinforce positively, the more it
becomes a part of the culture, part of the community
culture at Fieldston. Our hope is for people to become
sustainable by habit. It needs to be taught, so it has to be
part of the curriculum. I guess what I’ve really learned is
that there needs to be a revamping of curricula
everywhere, and that has to become an explicit part of the
way we learn about everything.
Some of the next steps are to develop a core of students
who are really committed. I want kids active during the
day at school, and for them to have more hands-on
projects. For example, I heard the kids at another school
actually helped change the light fixtures so that they have
motion-sensitive and energy-reducing lights.
I’d like to see projects like that at Fieldston, where I’m not
just looking for students to do stuff but the kids are
coming to me to do stuff. Developing this core is going
to be interesting. Part of my office is now part of the
Fieldston Environmental Center and I hope to make it a
place where kids can come naturally and hang out.
Where they can work on their environmental projects in
a place where I’ll be able to support them in their
initiatives.
The other big steps include energy reduction. That will
include continuing to lobby with the head of school,
who’s terrific by the way, and the board of the school, to
get money for things like storm window inserts for these
big old-fashioned windows we have, and software that
will automatically turn computers off at four o'clock. At
the kid level, I want to create an environment where those
kids that were always naturally ready to work on the
environment can come together and start making their
ideas happen. Going tray-less was really a student-driven
motion, and now I see that it’s my job to keep it on the
front burner to help them negotiate with the
administration and move it forward. The other part is to
help them see physical ideas that might not be obvious to
them, like insulation among other things. Also, we want
to work on seeing if we can cover the gymnasium with
solar panels with some kind of lend-lease or
lease-purchase agreement that companies are beginning
to do nowadays. So we wouldn’t have to purchase a
hundred solar panels but we would get some of the
benefits of having a company install them.
There are things we can do right now to make the school
far more energy efficient and far less wasteful. As part of
Green School Alliance, we’ve pledged to become Carbon
neutral and reduce our carbon footprint by thirty percent
in five years, which is going be a real challenge. I think we
can do the thirty percent, but to be become truly carbon
neutral will be quite something.
The excitement of the kids gives me a lot of hope in this
kind of project. They like it. They actually prove time and
time again that when they’re excited about something
they work hard on it.
We try to be a very
student-centered institution and give the kids the ball, so
it does give me a lot of hope.
14
I love technology. I push buttons and get things to work.
My biggest contribution to our learning community is to
say, “uncertainty is perfect, uncertainty is exactly what we
want.” I’m a third grade teacher at the College School.
There’s so much I can do with third graders at the College
School because we’re a thematically integrated and
experiential school. For example, going on a campout is an
opportunity not just to go camping but to learn about how
to budget for things you need to buy and the foods you
need to serve. You’re creating a menu, even collecting and
organizing data about your classmates preferences -preferences about what theyy might
g want to eat,, or what
time they want to go too bed. There are all sorts of
opportunities for children
n to survey their classmates,
organize that data, and present
that data with some sort of analysis
or conclusion. Imagine a bar
ar graph
that shows almost everybody
erybody
wants to go to bed at ten o’clock,
o’clock,
and that almost nobody wants to
go to bed at eight o’clock.
ck. It’s
pretty compelling to see this bar
graph and say, “well as you can see
most of us want to go to bed
d at ten,
but perhaps we can accommodate
modate
the people who want to go to bed
at eight, by being quiet after
er nine.
They can take a book to their
eir tents
with a flashlight and enjoyy some
peaceful time.” We coach them
hem to
analyze that data and present
ent it in
a way that it meets the needs
ds of the
people in their immediate
mediate
community.
Being a part of the College
ege School is being part of a
learning community. We’ve often called the school
“everyone’s garden.” We all “plant” something, nurture
something, and take care of it. We also have to take
ownership. My place in the community is as a teacher, and
someone who believes that the school is my garden. I’ve
always felt that ownership of the building and grounds,
where every brick and every piece of mortar should scream
out, “this is who we are!”
Wind Turbines were on the back-burner when we had two
speakers, one from the Cloud Institute, and Josh Hahn, as
presenters. They enthusiastically shared information about
wonderful school projects that had composting toilets and
solar energy and green buildings. During a presentation, a
parent of a former student got up out of her chair and said,
“Can we talk?" The school had asked her to consider some
sort of beautiful sculpture to put in the front of the
building. She was an artist. The school wanted something
that people could see when they drove by. She was
wondering if a wind-turbine could be beautiful.
She was very enthusiastic about making this happen. Before she left the school we looked at where a wind
turbine might go, and I showed her some pictures of
vertical axis turbines that are both beautiful and have
opportunities for research. In case you’re not familiar with
the difference,, a horizontal axis is like a pinwheel and a
barbershop pole or an eggbeater. vertical axis is more like a b
When we were discussing this, I could tell she was in a
little bit oof pain. As she was climbing
into her car, she said, “Matt, I want you
to keep going with this. But, I’m going
through cancer treatment. I’m going to
this thing. This will happen, go
beat th
for it!” I never heard from her again;
she got really sick. Then she passed
away.
People ask me, “What is it about you
makes stuff happen?” I try to find
that ma
At first I thought it was
the words. wor
hope, but
b then I thought one can hope
all they
the want and nothing might
happen. It’s something deeper than
happen
that. I ccame to realize it's blind-faith.
It’s this dumb naivety, almost like I’m
not smart
sma enough to know that I can’t,
so I just keep doing it. I always felt like
there was
w someone behind me who
had my back, and so I just kkept going. I also learned a few
other tricks along the way. For instance I know that you
have to be sort of a bulldog to make your dream come true,
but you also have to be like the golden retriever, because if
you’re an unlikable bulldog people will shut you down. You
have to be a puppy bulldog in the sense that he’s persistent,
but we like that about him. I have learned to say, “What if
we did this?” “Could this be a good idea?” Those are
consensus building questions. I’ve discovered that when I
am at my best, I can allow someone else to take the dream
and let the dream be theirs. That’s when things really start
coming true.
I moved forward from the wind turbine concept after my
meeting knowing that I needed to go to students and get
their help to have the vision become realized. Students
have their own charisma, and when a child can speak
15
eloquently and passionately and be well prepared to answer
questions, tough questions, about a vision, there is nothing more
compelling to an adult than that.
I said, “What if we had a wind-turbine?” “Would it work for our
school?” “Or is it a bad idea?” I asked the kids that although they
might have an idea or prediction of what a wind turbine would
bring to the school, would they be willing to look into the
question even if the answer is that its not for us. And out of the
twenty-five kids, there were six or seven who said, “Yeah, okay."
As we moved forward there were five students who showed up,
and they had to put in all of their efforts after school, or
whenever they could squeeze in some time. They weren’t
excused from class, or any of their school responsibilities. They
had to be engaged in pursuing this question. I really thought it
was important to set these kids up…. for failure. That may
sound funny, but to be a risk taker they had to know that along
with hoping it would turn out the way they desired, it must also
be approached so that they are not very disappointed if it doesn’t
work -- or disappointed if other people shut them down because
they feel it's unrealistic or that they're not considering the
negative possibilities.
Five children presented a power point presentation to our
building & grounds committee. Our business manager said,
“I’ve been to thousands of meetings, and I’ve heard thousands of
power point presentations and that was the most compelling
and moving power point presentation I’ve seen.” I think that it
was the charisma of youth; he just felt that these kids have a
dream, they've been thoughtful, they’ve done their homework,
they were prepared to take tough questions; they understand
that it’s not a done deal. I was sort of sharing my experience
with facilitation of a dream with them -- to help them pick up
some traits of leadership.
because of Gerry Welsh saying “you go girls!” It was happening
because everybody was taking ownership of the dream; but it
was still a small percentage of the whole school, probably a total
of 30 people out of a community of 300 people.
There were a thousands of obstacles in the way of this project. I
told the students that as leaders they didn't have to be experts.
That a lot of times they just have to be visionaries, constantly
saying, “Why not?” “What if?” “What’s next?” Asking those
questions to the right people keeps the project moving. You have
to really be creative about how you get those questions as closely
together as possible, answer them sequentially, and then be able
to ask, “Do you have any other questions? Could we go ahead
and set a deadline for any further questions in order to be able
to answer as many as possible and then move forward?”
It was also helpful to bring in outside advisors. The Cloud
Institute was a catalyst. In hosting the Cloud Institute and
having Josh Hahn as a presenter we were able to bring two
people into the room. Josh and the Cloud Institute began to ask
us some really important questions like, “What sense do you
make of what you’ve heard and what we’ve shared in the last few
days? What might be the low hanging fruit? What might you
do in your life that will make the change towards sustainability
in education that maybe was excited or stimulated or inspired by
these last three days?” We went around the room and the entire
faculty shared what they might do.
You really need to identify the objections quickly because
otherwise people will sit in the back row and just as you’re about
to move forward they’ll throw you out. It’s a dynamic that’s sure
to happen in any environment and you have to be aware that
that will happen and not be defeated by that, and just smile and
say “great question, in fact if you have any more I would love to
answer them for you.” If you can share that with people it really
helps.
I really believe the curriculum at that point was leadership
training. I was presenting the possibility of being agents of
change in their community in the future. We set up meetings
with the school board. Then, set up a meeting with the Mayor
of Webster Grove. Not a meeting to get a permit, but to develop
rapport. The Mayor, Gerry Welsh, was moved. I could swear I
saw a twinkle in Gerry’s eye, one that said she saw the future
leaders of our community in those students. She invited the
building commissioner and the committee for sustainability in
our community of Webster Grove. They were all very
supportive. There was this magic that was powerful beyond the
mechanics of the wind-turbine, and they helped to nurture it. The tenor was, “Let’s keep going with this; it’s going in the right
direction, and everyone seems enthusiastic about this idea.”
Now, the wind turbine is up. Now, the learning target is to
understand the beauty of uncertainty in science. I was watching
this show that said, “When you’re on a journey of discovery,
uncertainty is the name of the game. It’s essential.” Thomas
Edison said, “I learned a thousand ways not to make a light
bulb.” Now we’re in this wonderful phase of bringing people
into the uncertainty of trying something. For example, we’re
still not collecting data because we’re having troubles with the
software. And we are working out the kinks, so a year from now,
when it’s working perfectly, and we’re collecting data and
sharing that data… then we’re settlers. Then, there will be a
whole new role for us to play.
So there was always a feedback loop for keeping the adults
involved, yet the students really felt that this was their project,
that it was happening because of them. And it was. But, you
could say the exact same thing about me. It was happening
because of me, it was happening because of the students, it was
happening because of Sheila and Louise sitting quietly in the
back room saying “we like what we see.” It was happening
I can give one piece of advice: anticipate problems. Then,
channel those problems into opportunities so that you can say,
"This is what our role is as a learning community. We are
uniquely qualified as teachers to embrace these uncertainties
and turn them into questions, problems to solve, and to help
others find comfort in what we discover. That’s truly the beauty
of it. I can see in the future our role will evolve. Right now, it’s
helping people embrace uncertainty.
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Acting Now
By Annalise Wagner
This speech was written by three eighth grade students from the College School in St. Louis, Missouri. It was delivered to
the 100 participants that joined us at the 2009 SoL Education Partnership Community Gathering. The three students,
Haley Botteron, Sarah Botteron, and Annalise Wagner remind us of the power of students to act on their immediate
environments, to be change agents, and to inspire whole communities.
Our school is like NO other. At a very young age we start
learning in the outdoors. As we learn in the wilderness we
gain respect for the outdoors and our environment. Some
time ago, Jan Phillips, the head of school, had a vision. She
believed that students should learn by doing and through
reflection on past experience. Our school aspired to become
greener and more sustainable. Slowly, our accomplishments
grew from solar panels, to a green parking lot and roof, and
finally to the creation of our wind turbine. Our school hopes
to lead the way in sustainable schools and hopes others will
follow in the path we are creating.
During a routine sixth grade math class, our teacher
announced a surprise guest speaker. In walked Matt Diller,
a third grade teacher. He gave a speech to our class that
lasted about 10 minutes, but his words made the impact of
a lifetime.
“I have a vision…” he began. Matt then went on to describe
an opportunity to install a mechanism at The College
School to harness wind power to be used as electricity. He
explained that in order to be involved in this initiative, many
hours of our own free time would be needed. Nothing was
promised, he told us, we may not be able to receive necessary
support or gather sufficient funding. However, if this
time-consuming project had a positive turn out, we would
not only have a wind turbine but also the pride of
accomplishing something incredible.
At first, over half of our class of 28 students sprung from
their chairs out of excitement, until they found out how
much hard work was required. In a matter of weeks, the
three of us, Annalise, Haley, and Sarah, and two other
students were the only ones willing to stay committed
despite much hard work.
After we found out who would be helping us, we began
researching, gathering information, and looking at the pros
and cons of wind turbines. We considered what would be
the most realistic option for our school. We decided that a
vertical axis turbine would be the most useful in the urban
environment of our campus. We met with the building and
grounds committee and then the board of directors. Finally,
we presented to the mayor and after several meetings with
her and her committees, our wind turbine was approved and
we set a date for the installation.
Our wind turbine was made by Mariah Power. We chose it
for its pretty looks and its vertical axis that would best suit
the urban environment that out school is in. The installation
was finally completed on October 25, 2008. It now stands
30 feet tall next to our greenhouse, and creates enough
electricity to power a whole classroom.
How many kids have heard people say to them “you are the
future?” I disagree with statements like this. We are not the
future. The world can’t wait for our generation to grow up to
make the changes it needs. It’s our time to act now, not in
the future. It’s time to create a vision for what we want our
future to look like. And that doesn’t start when we grow up,
it starts now.
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