Paperless for Earth Day

Now that Google handles 90% of my paper load for me, it wasn't a stretch for me to sign up for this. It certainly would have been in previous years, but since September I've probably used the copy room a dozen times or so...in other words, practically never. It's true that my students are required to bring a spiral notebook to class every day to write in, since I can't give them each one of these. But I think I can argue that at least this isn't paper "waste," at least in comparison to the blizzard of vocab worksheets, quizzes, and other dead-tree pedagogy I condemned to the oblivion of teenagers' backpacks in the past.

There's a good recycling program at my school, established and run mostly by students—including the custodial, deal-with-the-trash part. It started small and it's gotten bigger over the past couple years. We can be proud of that, and we should encourage it. But there are clearly many more ways that my big old school could get "greener." Here are a few examples:

• We waste paper in massive quantities.
• Heat escapes from exterior doors and windows left open.
• Water leaks from poor plumbing, at least in the faculty bathroom I use—and it's been leaking for a long time now.
• What food do students have access to? (My impression is that it's mostly the typical junk but I haven't checked.)
• E-waste? (I don't have any direct knowledge about this either.)
• Other stuff I'm not remotely aware of...

Actually, I look at this as a great opportunity for our students. Why not initiate some program(s) for them to get involved directly in reducing Alameda High's carbon footprint? Think about the possibilities for experiential learning that would be perfectly relevant for the world they'll soon inherit. It should be students finding out where the problems are and taking measurements, finding out what it takes to fix them, and fixing them. What they'd gain from such work would take them far further than almost anything we're offering them now, in my opinion. And we'd end up with a healthier school to boot.

The motivation for projects like these is latent in our students. If we grown-ups can be creative enough to tap into it, everybody wins. I'd like to be present when some kids slap a ladder up against the gymnasium wall to climb up and install solar panels on the roof. If that makes me crazy, I'm crazy.