Reclaim Mother’s Day
| Code Pink would like you to reclaim Mother’s day with ways to donate to suffering mothers and their children in Iraq. | ||
|
| Code Pink would like you to reclaim Mother’s day with ways to donate to suffering mothers and their children in Iraq. | ||
|
A recent report by NPR news tells of a teacher at Lewis County High School in Weston, West Virginia who is determined to teach Environmental Science and keep politics out of her classroom at the same time. Tiffany Litton holds an undergraduate degree in Environmental Science. She decided to forgo pursuing a career in law to become a high school teacher. Why? Her goal is simple. She wants her students to be better stewards of the environment and felt she could have a bigger impact as a teacher than a lawyer. “My science class is not the place to promote any agenda, its the place to promote facts…” states Miss Litton to NPR news when being interviewed for this story. She has won the trust of her students by respecting their views and not preaching to them. Encouraging even those students who hold a different view than her own, she has been known to award A’s to those who can bring a well researched counter argument to the table.
The students are listening and learning. One father (who happens to be a coal mining equipment distributor) candidly remarked that he does not want his daughter influenced and becoming one of those “tree huggers”. His daughter, a student of Miss Litton’s, respectfully comments that in her opinion her father’s generation does not understand the damage that has been done to the environment.
Remember the Great Copy Machine Epidemic: “unidentified contagious disease striking school photocopiers, causing them to chew up trees and contributing to climate change”? On April 17, over 23,000 students in 30 schools turned off their school photocopiers and attempted to diagnose the disease. The results are in, and your votes are needed. Please visit the Great Copy Machine Epidemic website to vote for […]
How do you get your kids to care more about and take action on improving the environment, when the world they’re focused on is on their iPod, their Wii, their phone, and online? If you’re SustainLane, you meet them where they are, and create a web based animation series and also show it on TV, on Earth Day Television.
Gorilla in the Greenhouse, an episodic show premiering today, doesn’t preach at kids, but instead engages them on their terms and empowers them to take action. 
Animated by the people behind such web classics as The Meatrix, it features four smart kids and a wise green gorilla, facing the big green challenges of our day, with inventiveness, action, and most importantly, a rockin’ song.
Not many people could pull off making a catchy tune about a garbage island in the Pacific Ocean, but in the first episode, “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” they show otherwise. With people such as Ralph Guggenheim, one of Pixar’s founders producing, this moves beyond merely being entertainment to being a bridge to further conversation with your children about things happening in the real world, and what can be done about them.
The other day, my daughter asked me what time it was. I gazed up at the sun and told her it was 3:30 pm. She checked her watch, and then in astonishment asked me how I knew the time. She had no idea that you could tell time from the sun, even after we had just visited the Sundial Bridge and read the time from its cast shadows. I was reminded of a project I used to do as part of a unit on solar energy when I was teaching K-8: Human sundials.
To help children learn how the sun moves across the sky and how shadows are formed, the human sundial project takes a whole day. First thing in the morning when the sun is up, go outside with your child and trace their shadow with some chalk. Mark an X where your child is standing so they can return to the same spot. Switch roles and have your child trace your shadow in a different spot. Then, return every hour and repeat tracing your shadows and recording the time on each shadow. By the end of the day, your child will see how their shadow moves in accordance with the sun’s path, as well as changes shape.
When I first started looking for eco toys, I found that the Europeans were much more aware in their selection of materials and design than American companies. European toys are often made of wood and are designed with an understanding that children need to play creatively in order to learn. According to Russian pyschologist Lev Vygotsky, play is the leading activity for preschoolers and kindergarteners. Play promotes cognitive, emotional and social development, but not all kind of play is equal in leading to higher mental functions. Modern children’s toys actually can hinder this development with their lack of imagination and inspiration; however, European toys offer parents an alternative choice for promoting play.
Comptoir d’Enfance is a new online store started by a French mother who recently moved to North America. This store features French wooden toys, accessories, and babywear. One featured toy company is Kapla. Kapla creates safe, ecological, innovative alternative toys. The wooden planks inspire hours of imagination and learning, accompanied by the pleasure of accomplishment, discovery and creation.
On April 25, 2008, designated the first World Malaria Day, 3,000 children or more in sub-Saharan Africa, majority of them under the age of five years, will die from malaria, one of the deadliest preventable diseases on the planet, global health data indicate.
Malaria, the dreaded and life-threatening disease continues to kill between 1 million and 3 million people each year, many of them pregnant women in Africa.
A two-month long 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) expedition on the Zambezi, one of Africa’s longest rivers, that begun on 29 March 2008 led by two adventurers, Helge Bendl, a journalist, and Andy Leemann, a boating enthusiast, partnering with the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, covering six nations in southern Africa aims to put a spotlight on the plight of malaria-stricken communities on the continent which contributes 90 percent of the global annual death toll.
Is our educational system really working to promote positive progress?
The problems we are faced with today are the results of unethical leadership. Our business and political leaders have had the best education, yet many would sacrifice human wellbeing end the environment for the love of money.
Growing up in Soweto, near Johannesburg, South Africa has taught me to value “ubuntu,” or “I am because we are.”
Cida University is the first virtually free university in South Africa. Located in downtown Johannesburg, it serves young people from previously disadvantage backgrounds, but who are academically deserving. It offers a Bachelor of Business Administration and students can learn skills like bio-intensive farming.
This university has a special program, called the Nelson Mandela extranet. In this program, Students go back to their communities and teach them about HIV/AIDS , bio-intensive farming, and money management. Remembering your ancestors and going back to the community to raise the consciousness level of the society is a fundamental principle of ethical leadership.
One recent study published in the April issue of Pediatrics suggests that answer is yes, by an amazing fifty percent less incidence of obesity. The study, called the School Nutrition Policy Initiative, was conducted at ten schools in the Philadelphia area. Five of the schools eliminated all candy from the premises, and replaced soda with water, 100 percent juice, and milk for beverages. The schools also improved the quality of food and offered nutritious snacks. Additionally, students received about fifty hours of nutrition education over the course of the year and were given some incentives toward increasing physical activity.
The results of these small changes were an impressive fifty percent reduction in obesity rates among children in grades K-8 for the experimental group. This result was particularly important since the schools selected have a mostly urban population, where the obesity rate can be nearly 42 percent. Many of these children have little access to physical activity in their home environments due to safety concerns and less access to nutritious foods.
Architecture Week was first established one year ago as part of the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the American Institute of Architects. This year, for the second Architecture Week, there are three big programs the organization is promoting. But sustainability gets only a passing mention in one of them, and seems not to be part of the focus anywhere in the program.
While the AIA has another program it also began last year titled “Walk the Walk” that offers a good number of resources on sustainability both for architectural clients and the general public, as well as for architects and other building professionals, the topic is not highlighted in the Architecture Week program in any significant way.
Subscribe to our RSS feed or newsletter
