When the hurly-burly’s done

Henny Penny was wrong: The sky is not falling; like the Wicked Witch of the West, it’s melting. And only the scientifically illiterate deny that we’re causing this problem, and exacerbating it with simple waste.

Clay Burell’s written a provocative entry in response to the LA Times’s coverage of the Green University Pledge. Basically, a ton of colleges and universities have committed to taking real steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on their campuses. Clay wonders when K-12 schools are going to join them.

When I look around my school, I see endless opportunities for conservation (please note that none of the following is meant to disparage the hard-working custodial staff, who work tirelessly to fix and clean what they can and are generally awesome people). First, the building is a fuel waster. It was built back in the 70s with windows that can’t open, so all climate control comes via a collossal HVAC system that a) does a poor job of regulating temperature consistently, b) spreads germs like crazy (it’s like working on a 747), and c) consumes huge amounts of energy. With some exterior doors always propped, heated and cooled air leaks out of this place at an alarming rate. It’s gotten to the point where I need to bring my classes outside on some afternoons because the classroom has become too hot and humid to make any work possible. A couple of the Environmental Action Team members looked into a biodiesel retrofitting for the HVAC system, but unfortunately nothing came of it.

There’s also a lot of physical waste and garbage in a school. I tell my students that when archaeologists excavate our civilization a few thousand years from now, they’ll call us the Poland Spring People. I still don’t understand the popularity of bottled water in a society in which a) tap water is safe and delicious and b) there are plenty of working water fountains. I’m a thirsty guy, and I try to keep myself hydrated at all times. A couple of years ago, I dropped $10 on a 32 oz Nalgene bottle that I can fill from my tap at home or the water fountain at school. I’ve had that same bottle ever since. When it gets funky, I wash it. I refill it a couple of times a day. I keep it clipped to my school bag for portability’s sake. It’s great. The GHS Environmental Action Team, back when they existed, tried to sell the bottles as a way to cut down on the number of Poland Spring bottles sold in the cafeteria, to little avail. If the club is revived in the fall (it’s been dormant, but there are rumblings) we’ve got plenty of bottles in storage that can be sold for cheap. Of course, the food service will make a lot less money (what’s the markup on water, like 100%?), so that’ll be a problem. We better make sure we pass the state exams next time so we get fully funded.

My goal this summer is to reconfigure my classes so they’re as paperless as possible. Any tips anyone can give me along those lines will be huge. I learned yesterday that students should have digital lockers when they arrive in the fall, which will be a huge help in this regard. Although I need as many copy paper boxes as I can for my move at the end of June, I’d love to be able to say that through my own actions, I greatly reduced the paper consumption of the school.

Our conspicuous consumption has moved beyond offensive and toward the realm of dangerous. When students (and teachers) who live within a half a mile of the school drive even when it’s 75 and sunny, that’s dangerous. When the plastic water bottles are ankle-deep on the cafeteria floor at the end of the day, that’s dangerous. When our behemoth HVAC system rumbles to life for yet another futile day of trying to keep the school well-ventilated, that’s dangerous.

I challenge anyone at GHS who is reading this to help make our school less environmentally scary next year. Let’s start by making less of a mess in the Student Center, in the classrooms, in the halls, and outside. Throwing a bunch of trash on the ground for a custodian to pick up means that that custodian’s going to be able to spend that much less time fixing the AC and stopping inefficient air leaks. Stop buying water bottles every time you need a drink. If you must have the bottle (and I admit, they’re aesthetically quite pleasing), buy one on Monday and use it for the week before you recycle it. Carpool (egads!). Show some pride and some humility; stop assuming someone’s going to clean up the building, or the planet, after you.

Please?

So the Odyssey Movie Project is over, as is the school year. That’s not entirely true. We’ve entered our four-day exam period, but I don’t count that as part of the year. I still can’t figure out what kind of educational value final exams have–it’s not like the feedback on them, such as it is, is going to be used for much, as the course is over. That might be something for another post.

Right now, I want to celebrate.

Back in early May, 81 students learned that they’d be responsible for creating an original film based on The Odyssey. They were given skeletal instructions and turned loose to get the thing made in about a month and a half. They decided on a basic plot line and spent a couple of weeks writing a script (big shout to Star and Brad at Plotbot for their help) and storyboarding the whole thing.

Then all hell broke loose. There were casting, musical, location, wardrobe, and directorial decisions to be made. There were egos to soothe, shy people to draw out, budgetary concerns to overcome, and camera equipment to reserve. Students asked parents for permission to have an entire English class over to shoot at their houses. Ed’s class dumped my two classes, complete with an honest-to-goodness “It’s not you, it’s us” speech.

Editing hiccups happened. Fights occurred. There were a lot of suspicious looks from teachers in my corner of the building when they walked by. Snacks were eaten.

For a while, I didn’t think either of my classes would finish their appointed movie sections. It wasn’t until I saw all three movies this morning that I believed.

Let me assure you: there is nothing more thrilling than when your doubts are allayed. When the last strains of “Don’t Stop Believing” echoed in the auditorium at the end of the last movie, I finally realized what had happened: They did it.

81 sophomores.

3 fencing foils.

3 dance parties.

Innumerable (hopefully non-adult) shots.

1 dog.

Even the Download Beeping Song sounded good.

Was it a perfect project? Absolutely not. The feedback we’ve gotten has called for more structure, more definite due dates, more guidance. Totally fair. We sort of made this project up as we went along, no doubt. If I were to do this again with another class, say, maybe next year’s sophomores, I’d include strict dates for certain benchmarks to be met (first draft of script, final script, storyboard, shoot schedule, minutes of raw footage, etc). I’d also be much better at ensuring that students were reflecting every day on what had been accomplished, maybe through their blogs. I don’t know.

For now, though, I’m happy that it’s all done. The rest of the end-of-year wind-down seems anticlimactic.

Thanks, everyone. It’s been real.

Download Don’t Stop Believing.

Rosters and ground rules. (more…)

My comment at Weblogg-ed. (I just found out that this is the middle school that my mom and aunt attended. Go figure.)

Tom, I think you’re absolutely right about this only being news because it’s happened to privileged white kids. But I’m not sure where to go with that idea.
I guess one way is to take the approach I would’ve taken had I read this ten years ago, when I was an undergrad completely taken with the idea of a Rage Against the Machine-style Socialist utopian rebellion (complete with awesome riffage): let’s bury this story, ignore it, until we can convince the nation’s major media outlets to cover the same injustices as they happen to poor students of color.
But another thing to do with this is to use it as another example of how our schools and school policies are not in line with the reality our kids live with. I, according to the rules of the school where I work, do not allow my students to have their cell phones out on their desks during class. When a phone rings in my class, I ask the student to turn the phone off; if he or she refuses, I confiscate it until the end of the period.
If our school had better cell service (if you use Verizon and stand near some windows, you can receive calls–otherwise it’s pretty bad), though, I wonder if my thinking would change. Despite our school’s block of all social-networking sites (and, recently, most blogs, including ed-tech ones like Dy/Dan and a few others, I applauded my students when they made a Facebook group in order to better organize a class project.
We have to find ways to let our students use the technologies that enhance their lives, whether through enjoyment/leisure (social networking, videogames, etc), personal expression (digital camcorders, blogs, etc), or research (the internets), to drive the change we want to see in our classrooms.
Otherwise we’re still just dictating what students need to learn to deal with the world as it existed when we were their age. For me, that was ten years ago, and it’s incredible how much it’s changed since then. I eat lunch with a cadre of teachers in their mid-20s, and even the 24-year-olds can’t believe what our students know how to do online, with their phones, etc. The sooner we stop confiscating potentially useful tech items, the sooner we stop looking like idiots to most of these kids.

June first.

Let’s all say that together, shall we?

“June first.”

It rolls off the tongue. It shapes air pleasantly. It means that we’re in the home stretch, we who teach around these parts. Seven more class days before finals. With the block schedule that we have, it’s only five more days, at most, of each class.

Teachers are running around like crustaceans after the rock under which they’ve happily hid has been lifted by a curious little kid, who’s come walking down the beach and stumbled upon a tidal pool. The kid bends down, picks up the rock, and marvels at the activity he’s set in motion. The crustaceans, meanwhile, marvel at nothing. They flee.

At work, we crustaceans lament that we haven’t done enough this year, that we’re running out of time. At work, we crustaceans stop just short of wishing for more time to spend with our students. At work, we crustaceans are pretty sure that without us, the little ones will never learn anything and will be doomed to lives darkened by ignorance.

At work, we crustaceans delude ourselves.