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