An Unexpected Turn of Events at Devil's Gulch.... By Julietta Saccardi

Julius Caesar once said, “No one is so brave that he is not disturbed by something unexpected.(Brainyquote.com). In my first year of MarinSEL, I have encountered many things I wouldn’t have anticipated. Everything from the difficulty and intense labor we would have to put into project week to how close I got to everyone in my class, or the fact that we actually had finals!  Unexpected things can be uplifting or they can be disappointing, but most of the time they teach us something or give us a new perspective. Either way, they happen all the time and we have to learn to make use of them.

Right now in MarinSEL, we are learning about food. We kicked off the unit by going on a field trip to Devil’s Gulch Ranch in Nicasio. When we arrived there it was a lot colder than we had planned and we started to question if we would rather be bored in a warm classroom or stand in the rain listening to Mark Pasternak, the owner, talk about his farm and organic farming (during that conversation, we learned that not all Genetically Modified Organisms are harmful. Some of them can actually help countries with deficiencies by altering their main food staples with the right vitamins. Who knew?). These thoughts completely changed when we went into the bunny barn. I felt like a five year old walking into a room filled with adorable, incredibly innocent creatures. Or so I thought. As we were all busy taking pictures of the little fluff balls, all of a sudden I overheard someone talking about bunny eating another bunny.

What.

We all rushed over to the cage and sure enough, an albino mother rabbit (Patrick Shami can now confirm his theory of albino bunnies being evil) was eating her dead rabbit child, swinging and flaying it around like a carnivorous monster. We were petrified, but our teenage reflexes told us to whip out our phones and take videos, so we remained somewhat productive. Later, Mark explained that it was part of the rabbit’s nature to eat her dead children to not leave any evidence behind for predators to sniff out. So, even though it had an explanation, we still thought it was pretty weird. Thankfully, we distracted our minds a little bit by saying hello to the horses and the goats (the gentle herbivores). Then came the pigs. The pigs were an amazing part of the farm besides the fact that they smelled horrid and looked really dirty. We learned that pigs eat almost anything, including wasted milk. We learned that over 6,000 gallons of milk are wasted everyday from stores like Walmart because no one buys them. So, the Devil’s Gulch Ranch takes them in and can keep them for the pigs as long as the milk is kept in the open (so that it doesn’t rot). Unfortunately, because they do this instead of importing expensive organic feed from Portugal, they cannot label their pigs as organic. This was something that I found surprising; wouldn’t it make sense that being organic is the more sustainable choice? Shouldn’t organic mean that it is the natural option? American pigs don’t originally eat Portuguese food, do they? Anyways, right after we saw the pigs we realized that we didn’t have anything else to do and we weren’t supposed to go back home for a few hours. So, we decided to go to the cheese tasting factory. I felt sorry for the lady working there. Imagine thirty teenagers crammed into a tiny room fighting for some cheese. Oh dear.

           

On this trip, we learned and experienced a lot of unexpected lessons. Like I mentioned before, GMO’s (Genetically Modified Organisms) can actually be really useful. For example, scientists have recently come up with genetically modified rice that has Vitamin A in it because in some developing countries where rice is their main food staple, they have deficiencies of Vitamin A. From what we’ve been learning, GMO’s seems like the worst possible thing to have happened to food. When you think about it, though, they must have invented them for a reason. That changed my view on scientists and food engineers or anything for that matter. It isn’t that we have to stop making GMO’s or coming up with new technology; we just have to learn how to use it correctly and for the right reasons, not like Monsanto and their invasive, toxic soybeans just for the sake of profit.

I was also surprised that in order to make the ranch’s pigs organic, they had to import food all the way from Portugal. Not only does it cost a lot of money but it emits fossil fuels in the shipping process. So is organic really all that great after all? Maybe just buying local food is better, organic or not.

The strange events we saw and unusual information we heard at the farm can represent unexpected experiences we had in our first semester of MSEL. The not-so-bad GMO’s can symbolize to how close we’ve gotten with each other. I learned that once you take a deeper look at someone you may find how similar you are or how well you get along, like how we learned that GMO’s can actually be very helpful. The sustainable-not-organic pigs reminded me of project week and how difficult it was. Sometimes it isn’t about having a huge goal and depending on important people and figures, but just getting things done. We need to learn how to use what we have around us. Just like organic feed imported from Portugal isn’t necessary, the pigs just need to be fed healthily. Finally, the bunny situation. This reminded me of finals. Yes we were shocked and slightly disturbed but it didn’t really hurt any of us and we now know there is a reason for both. Unexpected things come at us everywhere; in a classroom, on a farm, at home, on the street, anywhere you can think of. MSEL is not an ordinary school, so unforeseen things are bound to happen and we need to learn how to work with it.

By Julietta Saccardi

Creating the Leaders of Tomorrow By Taylor Saling

A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way,” said renowned pastor John C. Maxwell. Leadership skills are the difference between a good leader and a great leader. The five characteristics of a great leader are flexibility, communication, patience, presence, and responsibility (according to Maxwell). MarinSEL’s goal is to build tomorrow’s
 environmental leaders. The L in MSEL stands for leadership. During the past couple weeks in MarinSEL, all our classes seem to have one focus: Leadership. Our teachers want us to learn how to professionally show our leadership skills. Right now, we are learning the skills that will help us become effective environmental leaders in the future.  

In English, we have begun to write a paper about local heroes. All through the year, our English class has been studying the hero’s journey. A hero’s journey is a set of steps that the main character goes through during the story. One of the criteria for our paper is an interview. Every great leader must know how to ask effective, high level questions, our English teacher Ms. Leonhart says. For the past week, the main focus of our lesson has been how to ask questions. We learned about the three levels of questions: Level one is your basic questions, for example who is it? A level two question is more complex: it gets people to use their knowledge and really think. The highest question is a level three: it causes people to think creatively and intuitively. Another way we learned about leadership was a TED talk by Simon Sinek we watched . The talk explained a concept called the “golden circle,” a three-ringed circle. In the first biggest circle, is the “what,” which is what the leader is trying to do or master. The next circle is described as the “how,” or how it will improve. The center circle, which is the most important but asked least frequently, is the why. The why is what drives highly effective leaders. Most people follow leaders who are driven by a deep belief: “People don’t buy what you do; they buy WHY you do it.”  

What drives us for being in MSEL constantly shows up in our projects. We get to choose how we can make a difference in the community. Since it is the beginning of the second semester, we have just started our second project, for Project Week. Last week, was the first time we met with our parent helpers for our group. While working, our parent gave us some insight on how much our projects need leadership. My group is focusing on creating a Zero Waste lunch program for Terra Linda High School. Each step of the process to making a successful project takes leadership skills. While thinking of ideas to do for our project, we had to be intuitive. After a lot of thinking, we made a plan to create a waste free lunch program. Since we need bins to do this, my group had to come up with ways to get money. Using our problem solving leadership skills we decided to make reusable t-shirt bags to sell at farmers markets. Every step we take with our project we practice leadership skills.

The concept of questioning and inquiry shows up in our Seminar class too. In seminar, our teacher Mrs. Frack gave us a lesson on professional emails. In her class, we were assigned a paper called an I-search paper. Each of us got to choose our own topic to write about. For our paper, we had to find an expert to interview and send a professional email to. Everyone in our class composed an email to an expert and sent it. It was fascinating seeing how many of my peers got replies because the emails were professional instead of our teenage texting type of email. For example, one of my classmates emailed Bea Johnson from Zero Waste home and she replied within a couple of hours to the questions emailed to her.

Leadership skills are the most important part of a great leader. Learning how to make professional emails will greatly help us later in our lives, as will the ability to ask high level questions in all situations. In another text we read, a Chapter called “In Google We Trust” from the book The Death of Why, the author Andrea Shlessinger actually said that asking questions is at the root of a healthy democracy and society.  Since we are among these future leaders in society, it is important for us to be able to ask questions. We are the next generation, the next leaders, business people, and parents. The skills we are learning right now in MSEL will greatly help us strive in the world outside Marin. The knowledge and skill of our generation affects the future of our earth.
  
Here is the link to the Simon Sinek TED Talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html

Time, Time, Time...See What's Become of Me! By Ava Virginia Anderson

Growth Over Time

“Time is like the wind, it lifts the light and leaves the heavy.” ~Domenica Cieri Estrada.

Because finals are over, first semester is done, winter break has come and gone, and 2012 is past us, a new energy seems to glow on everybody’s faces. It’s as if we are on a second chapter to a long and adventurous book where nobody really knows the true outcome. Time, though, has taken the old stress out of the picture, making it all just a distant memory. Now, it is easier to focus on our lessons with everyone reenergized and curious. There are many ways in which my peers and I have grown since the beginning of the year in the Marin School of Environmental Leadership, but I have taken a broad approach on how our school has affected us the most. We are all back from break now, but the way in which this transition has come upon all of us is unique as if a new beginning. Like all of last year was just a learning experience and we have come back with a stronger and more confident mindset. The easiest way to explain this change is through a signature piece of MSEL,  called Project Week.

Project Week is a project that we work on in five groups of six people for an entire semester. Six project ideas are presented to the class and each and every one of us writes down our top three choices in order and based off of what we write, we are placed into a group of people who have chosen the same topic. From there, we all, as a group, come up with a project that we would like to complete and challenge ourselves with that falls under our topic. My project last semester was under the topic of “Bay Water Quality” and my group and I decided to go out into the San Francisco Bay and collect water samples to which we would test for chemicals so that we could calculate the quality of our bay. Some parts of our project we had to twist with conflicts that came up in money and time, but what matters is that we were able to end up saying that we had positively affected the world, even if in just the slightest bit.

Last fall’s project week was an experience of difficulty, laughter, mistakes, and overcoming all that went wrong. The road that we all took to put our best effort into the final presentations paid off, as we all had great success in one way or another. Two weeks ago, we were given our new projects that we would work on for all of this semester. And that was when it hit me- we were starting all over just this time, the blindfold was removed and the light of memories from last year can lead us to do better, thus, creating the perfect environment for growth. 

Goals surround us now, and plans that can lead us further into success are swarming into the minds of my peers and I. How can we use teamwork to progress more? What skills can we use to achieve better time management? How can I get my idea across the group while actively listening to the opinions of others? The break really did us a lot of good, separating the year into two easy and simple parts to make us keep going. But what all of us must learn is the idea that in MSEL you must be able to move forward like that even when the times are rough. For example, there was a time during last year’s project week when I was to make a phone call to a lab where we would test some samples from the Bay to see what types of chemicals were and were not in it. When calling, however, I forgot that I was supposed to ask the lab could donate to us so we could get the samples for free. After I had scheduled the time and types of tests for the lab and hung up I was informed that it would cost something of $2000. For the rest of that day I sat in my classes worried sick from thinking that I owed the school so much money. Relief filled me when I was able to, with some help, cancel the appointment I had had with the lab. We can all laugh at it now, but in reality, in MSEL, you must have the skill to move forward after such incidents and still make a change in the world. We must choose to feel that feeling of a new beginning when at the hardest stages of a project, or in general, life.

Time seems like a word that means something of days or weeks or years, yet truthfully, it can be just a second if you choose it to be.  And if you blossom that skill like we all did during our experience of project week, all of the stress or “heaviness” can be left behind. And here I am talking to you about new beginnings, however the word “beginning” does not really match the Marin School of Environmental Leadership. The process that all of us students, teachers, and parents have taken is similar in the way that each of us has our own goals for the semester or year or next few years. But all of it is being pulled around in a big circle, connected by strings that we must all look between the lines to notice. One project week may seem like it ends after the presentations that we give after all of our time is up and goals completed but it actually keeps going in the way that making a change in the world never stops. There are little ways to positively impact our community but we never have to be done for there is always more to learn and act upon. In reality, the MSEL experience is just an ongoing project- one that will never stop or start or begin again, but grow.

Is Water a Commodity? By Katya Yacob and Jon Woods

            Is water a commodity, or is it more? Water has been used to keep life nourished and healthy for billions of years. On earth, the only things needed are food, water, and an atmosphere, but the United States use of water as a commodity could cause our fresh water supply to run out. According to the USGS “In the United States in 2005, we used about 328 billion gallons per day of surface water and about 82.6 billion gallons per day of groundwater”(USGS). The way we use water is surprising. “Estimates vary, but each person uses about 80-100 gallons of water per day”(USGS). This past week in the Marin School of Environmental leadership we focused on water, from how it impacts health, education, poverty, and hunger in Africa, to our own use of water in Seminar,  the class were we look specifically at environmental impacts.

In the morning we have health class in which we discussed the movie Erin Brockovich. In this movie we learned about how PG&E contaminated water sources in Hinkley California with hexavalent Chromium. Then in the movie, as in real life, Erin Brockovich fights to win the case, but the point is that this has happened before and water can be contaminated and can cause serious damage to the habitat and to our valuable fresh water resources. In Hamilton Air Force Base there was a gas station that leaked and caused an oil plume to ruin a possible freshwater resource but because of the underground contamination it was too dangerous for people to live there. Another example is the B.P. oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which diminished and devastated the wildlife and many communities. If we diminish our fresh water we will run out of water. We need to focus on the facts.

            In Seminar, we looked at how water was more of a commodity then anything. We use water for everything: from washing dishes to manufacturing the dishwasher. If you think about it, water bottles are a commodity. We can get water were ever we want instead of walking miles and it is now to money to be made. These companies want money and do not realize the impact that they are truly making. They are manufacturing death. It has been proven that in most cases tap water is better for you then bottled water, but then the question is raised about why people drink bottled water. Well, it is because it is easier. Have you ever been walking around and just get thirsty? You can just go to the closest store and get a bottle of water, instead of filling up a reusable container before you leave. This is allowing people all around the world the produce a gargantuan amount of plastic. We also learned about how there is too little water globally. Say one country has water rights to this source. If a country does, it can be diminished by the time it gets to its next stop. Water stress is to be considered when there is less then 1700 cubic feet of reliable runoff per person. We are slowly falling into that category and what is next? The next stage is water scarcity were there is less that 1000 cubic feet of reliable runoff per person. To help increase our supply of freshwater, we use dams and reservoirs, which can cause valleys to flood. It also causes downstream estuaries and cropland to be deprived of nutrient silt. Sometimes people do not realize our soon to happen water crisis but everyone requires to have to help. Not just a small community but also the whole world.

In Biology, we learned about many things including acids and bases. Acids make things sour and bases make things bitter, but in an acidic solution there is more hydronium ions then hydroxide ions and a base is the opposite. In order for life we must keep the pH levels balanced. When chemicals run into rivers it cause the pH to change, which can cause the habitat to die and kill the life using it for survival. And speaking of rivers, we carried this idea into language arts.

In English we read a book called A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean. It was about childhood memories and how fly-fishing was the family's way of keeping in touch and seeing each other, and how the family relaxed and got to spend time with together. Since we are learning and talking about water, this book is a great example on how much we rely on water, not only for our daily usage but also for our hobbies and activities that we enjoy doing. MSEL English is where we look at our thematic focus on a symbolic level, so we talked a lot about water’s importance as a symbol of life and time and interconnectedness.  As Maclean wrote, “All things merge into one, and a river runs through it.”

In World Geography, we take a closer look around the world and how each country and the people inside are either suffering without water or have a plentiful amount of it. In Marin County, most people have access to as much water as they please. In my family we don't worry about us running out of water if someone takes a long shower or we keep on washing our clothes. I bet the thought doesn't even run into most family members' minds. But remember, while you're having gallons and gallons of water per hour another child probably younger than you walks for miles to get water for the family. They miss school, work, and almost anything to get water. Since water is something we have to have to survive how will the world look in 50 years if we keep on being careless about the amount of water we are using now? We take advantage of having water while others will fight over having a glass if not sip. Conversations and questions like these are what we are trying to address, going into detail about what we as individuals can do to help.

Each person uses about 80-100 gallons of water per day in the United States! Now multiply that number of gallons per person, per day to the millions of people who live here and maybe use more. That will be over 300 billion gallons of surface water per day! How much surface and drinkable water do most people think we have? An endless supply of water? NO! Before it's too late we really need to act now! Water is a precious resource and if you can go without an hour of using it in any way (pencils, paper, shoes, clothes, and etc.) then we would applaud you, because life relies heavily on it.

http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/qa-home-percapita.html

http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/earthhowmuch.html

            

Wealth, Health, and Learning: Deborah Okpo and Khan Tran

Please note: this blog post was written in the fall and thus pertains to lesson and events that were our focus at the time.

 “Learning is the beginning of wealth. Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins"-- Jim Rohn

      

            

“A healthy mind, body, and spirit are all you need to survive.” Mr. Garcia, our health teacher, says these words more times that one can count. He taught us to keep our bodies healthy by taking the class on 4:00 AM hikes and pushing everyone to their limits all in one day at the retreat. Even though many people complained, Mr. Garcia had a positive attitude and sang I will “Survive” or “Eye of the Tiger” throughout the whole exhausting hike. When we reached the summit of the mountain, everyone was tired and quite grumpy that we had to get up, and emotions ran high when we got a measly half a small muffin. But, one memory we will all cherish was looking around and seeing the tops of trees eerily surrounded by mist as the sun rose a pinkish-orange hue, and thinking quietly as we gained a deeper understanding of ourselves as both individuals and as a group. Everyone helped each other going down the mountain with our slips and falls but we trudged on with our new friends, hoping for a better breakfast. We would not have had the wonderful experience if Mr. Garcia had not walked the trail before us, even though we got lost several times, but in life one has to get lost in order to be found. These lessons we learned on the hike relate to academic lessons we learn in our MSEL classes.

           

In Seminar, a project based learning class, the class is in groups for project week, which is quite literally a week of projects, and one group is finding out more on the Bay Water Quality. According to Savesfbay.org, people spill, dump or leak over three million gallons of oil into San Francisco Bay. And this in not just big companies an average person with a car leaks more oil into waterways than oil tankers do! This result shows that our bay is being polluted and affects the environment making the water unhealthy for the fish that live in it. We could help by driving less and instead walk, bike, or use public transportation. When you fix your car, don't forget to fix the leaky part so the oil won't spill. Tell everyone around you, so they can give a hand too!

           

The oil definitely  gets in to other ecosystems. In Biology we are learning about ecology or the study of how organisms, biotic and abiotic, interact with each other in an environment. What are those big scientific terms being thrown around? None of us, when we first came, knew the importance of or meaning of the words. It was only after many sleepless nights that it clicked: ecology just means how everyone and everything interacts! Healthy, what does that mean? It means everyone is doing his or her part in helping the environment and each other. All parts are necessary in the trophic levels, or position in an environment, and if one were to take away even one level it could disrupt everything and not allow the animals to have a healthy habitat. Everyone and everything in one circular planet, and it is our job to protect it.

Circles can show cycles and cycles are the way of life. A river is a good example of this because if river has good water quality it can properly function and allow fish and animals to survive off of it. In English, we just finished a novella called A River Runs Through It, and according to Norman Macclean, the author, (a round character who changes and keeps the plot moving) the river has to be healthy so the fish can survive, especially the Rainbow Trout!  Rainbow Trout show up a lot in the story and fishing for them is one way Norman comes to terms with the loss of his brother, Paul (a flat or static charter who doesn't change much. He was addicted to fish, girls, and gambling-- not exactly in that order). 

Addiction is one of those topics that makes everyone uncomfortable. When we hear the word people immediately we think of drug addicts, but what if we were addicts ourselves, not to drugs but to pollution?  Ms. Leonhart made us ask ourselves this question when we wrote our "Trash Talking" essays or what the trash we collected after twenty-four hours of living our regular lives says about us. Many people who thought they were environmentally friendly realized that the few things had certainly left a huge impact  on the world, whether it was plastic container that can't biodegrade or paper bag not properly recycled. One should look inside and ask themselves what they can do to change to become healthier. 

            

Winston Churchill once stated that healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have. In World Geography we learned about the five themes of geography:Place, where something is located; Human and Environment Interactions, or how we change the world and our surroundings; Movement, or how we go from location to location; and, Region-- the area around us. Everyone knows that countries will interact with each other, sometimes not always for the best. Debt (spending more money than a country has), is not a healthy way to run a government. There are many ways to stop this such as opening up trade in all countries which would in the long run set every nations debt clock back to zero. There are many solutions that have their downsides and there is not one simple answer. Another example of taking sides was when the class was given the assignment of writing a position paper everyone in the class was given either a one (industrialized nations should help developing countries economically and technologically) or a two (foreign aid supports weak governments and discourages economic growth). With both sides battling it out to be right new insights were gained on the world around us. There are many threats and decisions that can affect the environment either negatively or positively and it is up to Marin School of Environmental Leadership to make environmental decisions for ourselves and our community. The health of the world depends on it.

We're Baaaaaaaack........

Greetings, Marin SEL Community (and world!),

I'm sure you've all been wondering what happened to our regularly updated blog from last year as we began our program, and we have definitely taken a while to get the ball rolling...but here we are! Our new (now newish) freshman class will be cranking out blog posts from here on out, and we sincerely hope you will take the time to read, comment and share with your friends as Marin SEL grows as a presence in our school and community. The kids are super stars, they work hard, and the goal of this blog , as always, is to draw connections between the various Marin SEL classes and activities they partake in each day. Sometimes these connections are academic, but often times (as last year), kids make connections that are moral, even spiritual and emotional.  It's very cool to see what all our collaboration, communication, and inspiration as teachers can provide for "our" kids in terms of their learning experience and the kind of critical, thoughtful insights they often reveal here. We hope to make what we learn and how we learn it transparent to the larger community!

It's a LOT of work--not gonna lie, as they say--but not enough teachers get the chance to work collaboratively at this level, nor do we get to forge relationships with distinct groups of kids over many years. Thus, it's worth it--and makes coming to work to see the MSEL Family a whole lot of fun. Hopefully you'll be able to see that in these posts, and share in the unique, at times crazy, always interesting and challenging--and sometimes challenged--program that we build as we grow.

So, just so you know, a few changes: because we have a back up of two blogs, I will post the first two pretty quickly, then we will be back to our about every two weeks schedule. And--also so you know--the blog here on out will be the domain of the Honors students. This will ensure that every honors student has a chance to write his or her OWN blog, and in addition to the extra book and project they complete, will comprise the honors section of the class. I do this partly because we only have one semester left, but also because these kids willingly take on extra work, and it's up to me to create it for them.  If we have more time at the end of the year--or if a non-honors student really wants to write a blog post? You can bet I'll make that happen, too. Oh--and another thing! If you have great photos from MSEL activities, outings, or just funny shots you'd like to share from either our freshmen or sophomores, please feel free to send them my way at teagenleo@hotmail.com. You'll note the photos up now besides profiling our bloggers are of the annual retreat, this past August at Wesminster woods.

So, welcome back, happy blogging and reading, and enjoy!


All the best,

Teagen Leonhart
(Ms. L)