I have been cleaning at a high school, I get paid to do exercise and listen uninterrupted to pod casts. I do it in part because I know what it feels like to walk into a clean classroom room and feel that “today is a new day” feeling however terrible the day before was, and somedays are terrible. I can not of course be in a classroom without looking around and thinking about teaching/Education process. Mostly it is depressing. Most stuff looked boring and was the same old stuff I was taught 35 years ago and there is a lot of busy work- colouring etc. Of course this isn’t a true reflection of what actually happens in the class, maybe the discussions are interesting.

At the moment I am cleaning some of the technology classrooms; hospitality and soft materials (aka Sewing). There ends up being 4 large plastic bags of rubbish every day – that is 20 a week. I am tempted to hide them then bring them out one morning so that they can see the sheer volume of that. There are pig buckets and a recycling skip just outside the classrooms and a paper bin by the teachers office. In the bins I see glass bottles, food, paper, and that is just the office room bins…. The teachers are modeling a disregard of our environment, perpetuating our disposal culture. They ‘teach’ the kids to bake cookies and the like, with icing, the coffee machine is well used. None of these things are essential. We know sugar is bad, we grow no coffee here.. . The Sewing room uses new fabric and no one appears to pick up the pins they drop.

Cleaning these rooms while listening to podcasts like this one by Sarah Wilson made me think whether schools are teaching kids how to cope with the climate crisis. I think the answer to that is an emphatic NO.

Helena wants to go to high school and that is only a year and a half away so we are now doing Climate Change Lessons before she takes on board the implied “nothing to worry about, business as usual” vibe from school. Perhaps this why we are seeing an decrease in young people’s mental health, all that cognitive dissonance.

Our climate change lessons will cover;

• Resource scarcity
• creative use of what you have, making do
• the Rs.. refuse, reduce, reuse, repair, repurpose
• Fruit and vege that are ugly, marred can still be used
• how to cook vegetarian and meat reduced recipes
• preserving – bottling, pickling etc.
• planning for future needs
• creativity
• flexibility
• making community connections with people unlike yourself (age, background, interests, skills)
• lots of gardening
• lots of reading
• how to lead and be entertained and satisfied with a low impact life