Montessori Grandparenting
We Are All Stewards of the Earth by Margot Garfield-Anderson
H
ave you been observing this young student from Sweden? Greta Thunberg is a teenager who is credited with raising global awareness of the risks posed by global warming/climate change, and with holding politicians accountable for their lack of action on the climate crisis. “People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you?!” Whether or not you subscribe to global warming or climate change, look at the impact on raising awareness this one person is having. What, as parents, can you do to support your child’s place in the world and reinforce all the global citizenship lessons they are learning about at school? Here are some ways that I do my part that your family might consider. When you engage in conversation with your child(ren) about these ideas, you are opening up new channels of dialogue as well. It’s a win-win for all. When I was 14 or so, my friends and I (I was along for the ride at the beginning and for context this was in 1969. Yes, that makes me 64 and counting) organized a club called STEP, Students to End Pollution. We organized some of the very first paper-recycling drives on Long Island, New York. Later, we added aluminum can recycling as well. We did this all throughout our high school years. Being a part of this early movement made me very conscious of my place in the universe. And, while I might have strayed from time to time (yes, I used dispos-
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able diapers on my twin daughters), I have always tried to do the right thing by our planet. Last year, my husband and I went solar. It was a rather large investment. Some of our neighbors questioned how people in our age bracket could justify such an expense. We’d been thinking about it for several years and finally decided it was just the right thing to do. Tim Seldin, his wife, Joyce St Giermaine, and our Accreditation
I’m just one person, the same as Greta Thunberg. But when all the “one persons” tally their numbers they become a huge amount of people who can make a difference. Director, Lorna McGrath, all drive either a Prius or an electric car. Our county recycles, and we read every single label on everything we purchase to make sure anything that has the now famous recycle logo ends up in this container. For this holiday season, I have purchased 4Ocean bracelets for my four granddaughters and bought them each a copy of a (very unMontessori-like) book about a sad straw that lands in the ocean to help them get some of the connection between what 4Ocean does and how to prevent it from getting worse. We’ve recently purchased stainless steel straws and ask waitstaff in restaurants not to open plastic on our behalf. My daughters and I have purchased reusable snack and sandwich bags. We try to limit the number of plastic bags we use. I chose mine from a company called
Art of Lunch because some of the money from their profits goes to helping the elephant population. I do not purchase toys for my grandchildren made out of plastic. I try to purchase solid wood or items made of sustainable bamboo. When we are in extremely dry or drought weather conditions here in Florida, I use a giant pot in our shower to catch water while it’s heating up and use that to water our plants and landscaping. When we send packages to Foundation clients, we use newspaper that would have gone in the trash or shred paper we couldn’t use. We reuse the few plastic garbage bags we have from super markets, but tend to use those conference bags I save from all the conferences I attend instead. Did you know that each of those bags (most supermarkets sell them at the check out stands) uses approximately 20 of the plastic bags they collect for reusing? Remember, bring
your plastic bags back to the store for recycling. Several years ago, I was a chaperone on an overnight experience with our laboratory school students (The NewGate School, Sarasota, Florida). One of the activities during the two days was communally eating our meals with our group in a large dining hall. All the meals were buffet style. At the end of the mealtime every group was assigned their own garbage pails to scrape food off the plates and then bins for the plates and utensils. Each group was then taken into a room and one of the camp personnel came in and talked to us about the impact of food waste. Our garbage was then weighed and charted. We were told it was fine to get more food if we wanted. The point was to raise our awareness of how much waste we created. This went on after each of the three meals we ate during this time and each meal our weight of waste decreased significantly.
TOMORROW'S CHILD © § NOVEMBER 2019 § WWW.MONTESSORI.ORG
