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A Little More Nature in the Urban Jungle By Ryan Maney, Elementary School STEM coach Concordia International School Shanghai ryan.maney@concordiashanghai.org “We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us. We can never have enough of nature.” - Henry David Thoreau Concordia teachers have a mission to “educate students holistically in a nurturing environment.” As we work together to unpack the terms “holistic” and “nurturing,” we have to consider the importance of creating meaningful learning opportunities that are fueled by student inquiry, especially those that take place outside the walls of the classroom. However, when you live in an urban environment such as Shanghai, it can be challenging to carve out authentic outdoor learning experiences for students. Pondering ways in which to provide such opportunities at our school, I had a revelation while watching students participate in one of the most commonplace activities of the school day—lunch. From the doorway of my office, I see the comings and goings of our 400+ elementary school students as they gather in the cafeteria for this daily ritual. Observing them, I noticed that some students left whole trays of food untouched. While this is not all that unusual for young children, what made this an eye-opening observation was that this food was then bagged and thrown into the same trash receptacle as all the other waste. An immediate solution came to mind: Let’s compost! My epiphany wasn’t exactly new terrain for our school—some of our teachers already had small composting systems for their classrooms. However, what if we were to tackle all of the food waste 28 EARCOS Triannual Journal
generated from elementary school lunch? It would be a huge project. And it would take time. Time to plan, time to collaborate, and time to create the necessary partnerships in order for a project of this scale to be successful. This is how the composting challenge at Concordia International School Shanghai was realized. The challenge: “Create a composting system that provides authentic and meaningful learning opportunities for the Concordia community.” Step 1: Create a plan. We shared our observations with the Concordia High School Global Issues Network committee. Our GIN students then met with the school’s food service provider to determine just how much food waste was generated every day. Students compiled the data and presented it to Concordia’s Director of Operations, who we hoped would help us spearhead an initiative to radically change our current policy for dealing with food waste. Step 2: Find the right compost method. We discussed several types of composting systems, including vericomposting, which uses worms to help break down organic materials, but we needed a system that would be easy to maintain and efficient in terms of overall maintenance and time. Five elementary school teachers ventured to have their classes pilot an anaerobic composting system, which seemed most beneficial as it allowed their students an opportunity to become active participants in this process. From their research, we determined that this system was the preferred method of composting for our purposes. Again we enlisted GIN students to perform a data analysis to determine the number of systems that would be needed to handle our project. Step 3: Build a composting site. With the data in hand, we went back to our Director of Operations, who collaborated with us on the
