Green Success!

Today was huge for me!

I teach at a wonderful vibrant and growing Yeshiva. It is very educationally progressive with warm and wonderful teachers who are always working to exhaustion (writing about my current state now) to be the best we can be.

But...

whether because of the culture where we live or because of something in the Jewish community or because of logistics with a fairly new school in a fairly new building... we're just not that environmentally responsible.

It's been hard for me to deal with that for years. When I first came to the school it was one of the biggest shocks to me to see the differences in environmental sensitivity between here and Portland.

I complained. I yelled. I approached the administration whose hands were too full. I actually laid awake at night worrying.

And I felt helpless.

But things are turning.

My main focus throughout the years has been to try to get the administration to make changes. And they understand my concerns, but I've discovered it takes motivation, power, time and know-how to make things happen at this level, and most of the people I encounter have only 1-2 of those 4 things. 

Our principal was approached by a person from Canfei Nesharim, an organization that uses a Torah-based approach to spreading the green message. I already work with this person through that organization for my shul, so it was easy to just continue our dialogue. More importantly, when she approached the school, the principal then asked me to start a committee.

I thought about a committee quite a bit and just didn't know how anyone would find the time or where we would start. So I tried a different approach... I'm starting a Yahoo discussion group just for the faculty and staff of the school.

Here's how I introduced it...

I got up in front of the entire 1-5 grade faculty (pretty scary, and they're not even the ENTIRE pre-K through 8 school which would be close to 100 people)! I brought from the staff room several packages of the styrofoam cups we use for coffee etc. and showed them how many cups get used in a single day IF each person on the payroll uses one cup per day. (Keep in mind that some use more than one.) I then showed how many cups a single person uses in one year (about 175) if they use one cup per school day... this doesn't count inservices, extra cups etc. I went through the statistics... that at this rate we buy one new case every 10 school days, how much that costs per case and that, in the end, at this rate, we spend almost $800 on cups alone. I pointed out we could buy a LOT of chocolate for that.

(We had just had a long meeting about routines in the classroom including healthy snacks and someone said, "How about healthy snacks?" which cracked up everyone.)

I then told them about Canfei Nesharim and about the group. I gave some examples of how we could use it from passing on classroom items we didn't need, to giving suggestions to one another. I gave the example that I was hoping to ask the parents in my room on Back To School Night to consider purchasing stainless steel water bottles for their children instead of relying on disposable plastic. A number of eyebrows went up when I said that as though my audience liked the idea.

Hands started shooting up with other questions about recycling in the school or with suggestions and I was able to gleefully tell them that all of this could be dealt with the new group and that their was no commitment necessary other than the time it takes to read or write an email, and attitude. 

I had been afraid that people would roll their eyes about me getting up there, but the energy in the room was extremely positive. It felt like people cared about being environmental but just needed a structure to work together more. They laughed, were animated and seemed genuinely willing to give this a try.

I feel great that I'm not asking someone to join a planning committee, but simply to open up a dialogue within a community. Best of all, whatever we learn together, we can pass on to our students. Every person who takes this seriously can affect every child that s/he comes in contact with throughout the school day, and they can take it home to their parents.

Hooray!