Leading the conversation

Thank you to everyone who came out last Thursday to Gordon’s screening of Future Council.

The film is a coming of age story of students on an epic international adventure challenging powerful leaders and seeking solutions to the greatest ecological challenges.

It was precisely what families needed after a busy Earth Day week at Gordon.
 

After the film was a call to action: the audience was challenged to name specific acts they might take as a result of seeing the film.
 

Then, seven sixth graders took the stage and led a conversation with everyone present, one that wove together the issues of the film with the science and the international politics that are packed into the sixth grade curriculum.

The talk wasn’t just a reflection of what sixth grade learns: the sixth grade work is firmly in the context of the strategies for systemic change that span the entire school, from Nursery students advocating for dandelions to the eighth graders spending four weeks working for the greater good at service learning sites.
 

Afterwards, a fourth grader revealed her train of thought, from identifying a problem to beginning strategy, with these notes:

I don’t know about you guys but when I go to a cafe or something I rarely find recycling or compost, and most towns in RI don’t have compost and a lot of places don’t have compostable wrappings and packaging. So that was the long way to say I want to do something to change that, like maybe educating ourselves and then talking to our representatives in RI to see what policy changes we can make in our state. And maybe we can make an environmental club right here at Gordon!

That's how it begins.

The showing of Future Council was made possible through the generosity of an eighth grade family.