Educating Tomorrow

Last night a few of us braved the cold, rain, noise and crowds to meet up at the Village Pour House for our School Recycling Action Committee Meeting.

We had a huge table in the back, but it was super noisy and almost impossible to hear people. Seven people were in attendance: Coquille, Chong, Dave, Micki, Sarah, John, and Marie. We tried our best to discuss the issues at our schools and the individual interests. Coquille shared NYC RRR curriculum kit from the Department of Sanitation (order one for yourself), her Golden Apple Award binder, and copies of the Post article and the NYC DOE regulations on recycling, which states that all schools are required by law to recycle and must set up a recycling program by assigning recycling coordinators at every level: All DOE offices and schools. We know these regulations are not be followed or enforced! You can see the copies at Educating Tomorrow look under groups and then NYC School Recycling blog. We we will be this Group to post ideas about actions we can all be taking in our schools and on our computers to push our schools and the HUGE DOE to do it's job and start recycling programs.

Chong shared his work with Soul Survivors Inc. on composting programs in the city and the possibility of working with schools to institute compost training and worm bins. He is also working on the creative end on comic strips and educational materials for kids on composting. Micki expressed her interest in working with him specifically on training kids at her school since she is starting a unit of study on waste, garbage and recycling. Compost would be an excellent addition to unit and could be a very cool way to learn math and science!

Dave shared his interest in starting a recycling program for environmental and educational reasons, and Micki and Dave decided to work together to start a recycling program at their school as part of their exploration day curriculum in the 6th and 7th grade. Micki discussed the issues she experienced starting a recycling program at her old school. She also discussed an article from City Limits the great resource, documentary, Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage.

Sarah and John shared about their school's lack of recycling program. John shared a few ideas of better venues for our meetings. I guess I should have written down the names, but he will be emailing them to me.

As we get ready for our next meeting, Chong had the great idea of focusing on creating a Media Kit on this issue. He'd like to form a Think Tank to tackle the creation of a kit that will bring more attention to this issue. At our next meeting, we will focus on what will go in our kit and how we can share in its creation.

In the meantime, SPREAD THE WORD! Sign up with this Group and share it with your friend. Power in numbers! Our next meeting will be in December. If you have suggestions about a good venue, let us know!

Coquille and I are planning to attend the Radical Teachers meeting at Bluestocking at 2:30pm this Sunday. If you are interested, try to come to the meeting and/or email me when a convenient day/time for you to meet up is and do you have any ideas on a place that would be large enough, less crowded, quiet and GREEN? Maybe Bluestocking is a good choice. I'll try to talk to them about their space and time options.

Talk to you soon,

Micki

P.S. To stay connected to this issue join our GROUP: Educating Tomorrow. Click Groups, then NYC Schools Recycling to communicate about ideas, questions, and meetings... but also, we'll use RecycleThis.org and NYCoRE to send out announcements and meetings too... so you will be covered if you are on either list.