Sustainability

I really enjoyed the trip we made to the Sustainable farm in Monteverde.  I have always felt like I was a person who was big on “going green”.  After seeing everything they are doing on this farm however I’m not so sure that I have been into it enough.  I’ve recycled my whole life and I’ve always been one to make sure the lights get turned out when leaving a room.  I always thought this was enough.  I had never thought to have compost or anything like that.  After this visit there are a handful of things that I would love to be able to take back and implement in my life.  For one thing, I would like to learn more about compost and how I can use compost.  I was also impacted by the natural light in the rooms.  This may not always be very practical, but I would love it if I could try to use more natural light and less electricity.  I would also like to have a garden of spices and vegetables.  This isn’t all stuff that I can do in my classroom, but some of it is.  I would love to try and have a class garden and then donate anything we are able to grow to the cafeteria.  I realize this may be difficult to implement but I feel that it is an important issue and it is worth shooting for.  I also would like to have my classes’ research different ways to help with sustainability.  I would like for us as a class to brainstorm things we can do in our classroom, school, or at home to help our planet.  Sustainability is more than just a unit I would want to do.  I would want to continue lessons on sustainability throughout the school year.  I feel that if I can get my future class to work toward making our classroom more sustainable, we can then work to make the school more sustainable as a whole.  I was very impressed with the Cloud Forest School and all of their efforts to keep sustainable and I think this would be a great lesson/project for classes in the U.S. to pick up and start working on.