Earth Day and the Singing Trees

I believe in the power of creativity to beat the odds we are up against. Earth Day is a reminder that we each can help to protect and steward the beautiful planet we are privileged to live on. I’m excited that the unveiling of the Aspen Hero Singing Tree mural in Denver on Sunday, April 25, coincides with the week of Earth Day. I’ll be attending this celebration, thanks to Maria Feekes, who organized over 800 people from homeless shelters, villages in Peru and Denver high school students to create this symbol of unity. The Singing Tree Project was inspired by then 8 year old Meredith Miller in 1999, who said “What if the whole world made a painting together?” The Aspen Tree is the 12th in a series murals of a tree on the earth in space. Over 9000 people from at least 16 countries have participated so far. The Singing Tree project incorporates three of Nature’s principles – it can be reproduced; it has a clear goal with local conditions dictating the form, like water getting to the ocean; and it honors the importance of interdependence, focusing on the role that trees play in human life. Through coming together to create something new and beautiful, where the whole world is invited, we combat the negative forces of division and destruction that plague our world. This unity through creativity will beat the difficult odds we are up against at this time. See Facebook’s “Singing Tree Project” and The Singing Tree Project

Odds of today

Today I talked with a grandmother who is raising her six-foot eighth grade grandson who got kicked out of mainstream public school. I gave her good news about the focus, positive action and risk-taking that the boy was achieving in our mural for the Juvenile Probation Department, after he started out foul-mouthed and resistant. She was the second grandmother I talked with this week who is raising a grandson on her own this week That can’t be easy. “God loves you for being there,” I said to the grandma.

In thinking of about the adults who don’t abandon children, no matter where they are – I say again, thank you, thank you, for the sake of the innocent children, for the sake of the Village, for the sake of all of us.

That struggle dimmed, however, when I got a call from my beloved friend, Ayesha, the hospice nurse who took care of my mother the last months of her life. Ayesha suffered from a stroke three months ago, her left arm and leg becoming paralyzed, and then she had two heart attacks a month later. Her call came to let me know that the doctor had found lymphoma. What to do or say in the face of such odds? All I could do was to get a clear picture of Ayesha in her apartment and then I sent golden light, tinged with pink that surrounded her and absorbed the pain and fear. We remembered old times painting murals together in McKees Rocks and sitting on the patio in Mt. Lebanon, sipping tea. Focusing on love and fellowship aleviated the odds for just a moment. Perhaps that’s all we can do.

What Odds Are You Up Against?

Greetings, dear reader, and welcome to a site focused on how we can provide the best life possible to all the children of the world. I invite you to share stories of your challenges and your resources. The magnificent and overwhelming problems we’re facing can be solved by our collective wisdom. I’ll share my ideas about and experiences with beating various odds and I’d like to hear yours.

There are no maps for navigating in this time.  For those of us who are focused on the well being of the younger generations, the odds can seem insurmountable.  The adults of the world have not committed  to use our resources to ensure that all children are well-fed, have medical care and are supported to use their gifts to be functional life long learners in a global society. At the same time, we are inundated with information about how fragile life is on the planet – a species going extinct every twenty minutes, spreading dead zones in the ocean, eco-systems that took millions of years to create being destroyed with one slash and burn season.  Some say we have four years until we reach a tipping point where human behavior will result in the earth no longer sustaining human life for the next 1000 years.  Others say we have a decade, while the governments of the world aim for 2050.Of course, if we’d lived during the Black Plague or the flu epidemic of 1917, we would have been up against terrible odds, too. Humanity has always gone through trying times and the future always has unforeseen variables.  One thing we know for sure, however, is that the children we are teaching are walking into a world of unparalleled complexity. Never before have there been so many people on the planet.  Never before have we had so much information about the people who are here.  Never before have we understood the vast consequences of our actions to the planet that sustains us. Yes, we have a lot of odds to beat.

I’m going to start with one idea that makes a lot of sense to tackle the odds – harnessing the energy of children –  project-based learning. I’ve outlined why I think this approach is so useful. These ideas are elaborated upon in Step 5 of “Beating the Odds Now”:

I’m a teacher who would like to lighten the current negativity around education. With budget cuts, overwhelming demands and talk of the United States loosing its intellectual edge, there is a simple step we can take to beat the odds we are facing. That step is to meet academic standards by using project-based learning, where students make real products that come out of real interests that address real problems for a real audience.

For most of human history, children did meaningful work along side of their parents. They had a clear picture of the need for their daily activities. No hunting meant no meat. No planting meant no crops. The industrial revolution changed that. Young people lost the opportunity to do purposeful work with adults. Now our inquisitive younger generation often can’t see the logic of what is asked of them during the school day. We can address that questioning impulse by finding real life examples, applications and uses for the Standards of Learning that allow students to DO something that makes a difference.

There is a never-ending supply of problems to be solved: troubles with the soil, the plants, the animals, the air, the water, the elders, the teens, the immigrants, the economy, the use of illegal drugs– an on and on. All these challenges are here to teach problem-solving, meet standards and make the world a better place.

The youth of today have important work to do in bringing fresh hope and vision to beleaguered and weary adults. When I told my fourth grade class at Novato Charter School that many windmills, which generate needed electricity, are being placed in the migration paths of birds, they came up with 11 fascinating ideas in five minutes. One thought was to make barricades using discarded tires, solving two problems at once. This kind of imagination leads to new knowledge, as the children think through the results of each step

The marriage of adult intentional activity coupled with the learning process is a win-win proposition. Here are some examples – Tom Furrer of Casa Grande High School in Petaluma and his students have helped to restore salmon and steel-head trout to the Adobe River. Christian Gelleri’s Waldorf High School class in Prien, Germany, invented a currency to help with a lack luster local economy. Within six months, $50,000 worth of bills was in circulation. Kelydra Welcker, from Parkersburg, West Virginia, was honored by Intel in its high school Science Talent contest for her work isolating a contaminant in the Ohio River – a byproduct of a local Teflon plant.

Young people want to help. In every class I’ve ever taught – rural, urban, suburban, elementary, middle and high school – virtually every hand shoots up when I ask for volunteers. Let’s harness that positive energy, link it to standards, and unleash this bright intelligence to help solve our messy challenges. With a change of paradigm and clear will, the U.S. can once again become an educational leader.