Grassroots Reform, Sans Funding

I think it's worth all of our time to consider our obstacles to reaching our goals and reassess our ability to make a difference. I've kept my ears peeled for the past few years to the discussion on education, and what comes out of that void all too often is the universal YAWP for more funding, a lack of funding as the cause for declining test scores and unimaginative curricula devoid of exposure for students and a lack of funding as the answer to the most pressing questions board members have for educators and superintendents. It's a valid complaint, but it seems universal, and unfortunately people at the top aren't interested in hearing even the best ideas if there's even an infinitesimal price tag attached. The response in the lobbying community appears to be to just keep working at it, with a persistence in getting ideas heard that floors me, truly. And I wish people like me, students who wish to take a more active role in the way we learn, could get ideas up there with any degree of success to begin with. But how many of us have really been able to break through those walls? Even with proven success, my curricula have yet to reach any level of real change. It's something that we're going to have to fight, bureaucratic sluggishness and an aversion to the new, and the best way to do that is to learn to let go of the price tag.

Money runs most of the things around us. But it doesn't have to run the way we think about activism. I'm personally invested in education because I think it's the best way for us to jumpstart our lives. There's something about stepping into the world with at least some familiarity of it (not just booksmarts, but social and practical awareness that we too often neglect in school) as opposed to staggering into it afraid, shivering, and hostile to it. It's just a matter of how willing we are to expand our minds, and how we are choosing to share the joy of knowledge with others. If ancient scholars could impart their wisdom unto others by word of mouth or writings on stone tablets, we can go back to basics and do the same without expecting a price tag at the end of it. The difference in this modern age is that we wonder whether grassroots randomly devised assignments and projects can really be accomplished without paying for the comfort that comes with formality. We need not wonder, for there is no real merit to formality if it doesn't actually deliver. What's the use of bidding on loftily-titled "initiatives" if we don't take any real initiative ourselves? I get both sides of the argument, but I'm on the more jaded side where I'm a bit sick of waiting for funding or for some governmentally-devised solution to our problems. I'd rather grab the nearest supplies to me in the room and find ways to devise creative lesson plans on the fly.

So that's why this masterpiece of paper plates and styrofoam cups on a trash-bag canvas is currently hanging on the wall of the office in an Orange County school. Because it came from a moment of excitement in my kitchen and the idea that we can teach kids ecology, systems biology, geometry, collaboration, interdisciplinary thought processes, Haikus, and reclaimed art all in one. It took about an hour, and by the end of it the word "interconnectedness" made its way into the minds of some of the sharpest and most imaginative fourth-and-fifth graders I'd ever worked with. Sometimes being a little creative and, most importantly, enthusiastic about learning is what takes our potential as students- and as teachers- to the next level. We clock in at $0.