Green Inner-City School Needs Laminator to Reuse Materials

Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month

This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.

My Students

Have you ever had hand-me-downs that were so ratty you wondered, "Why bother?". Well, that's how our students in our Citizenship and Sustainability feel almost everyday when we try to reuse paper materials that rip, shred, and generally fall apart from repeated use! A laminator is an easy solution!

My school is a new public school that serves all inner-city students from grades 9-11 and is 100% free lunch.

Our school is located in heart of a thriving metropolis in New York State, but in my students' neighborhoods, it's rarely safe to go outside at night. My students are hungry to learn and communicate with a larger, better world than the one with which they are familiar. They are curious about other cultures and thier own communities. Our social justice curriculum allows students to explore various forms of justice and injustice at work in their everyday lives and around the world. Our entire curriculum is taught through a green lens, and our students are always fast to point out that we never reuse materials because all we have are regular paper materials. They rip the first time you do a group-sort or post them on the wall for an activity. Our students love our curriculum, and a laminator would allow us to reuse materials and help us all 'walk the walk' in our Green school!

My Project

Our Citizenship and Sustainability class is a hands-on, problem based class that helps kids explore and interact with major issues in our community and around the world. This curriculum uses pictures and images to introduce deep concepts and allow students various entry-points to their studies. We are always doing group-sorts where students manipulate pictures into groups to support an argument or brainstorm ideas for where they 'fit' into issues like environmental racism and food justice. Our kids also point out to us everyday how unsustainable it is to be cutting and printing images and pictures for 6 class periods and multiple groups within that class period. Our kids learn from watching us live sustainably, not just listening to us and paying attention in class. It's time that our Sustainability classes get to 'walk the walk' and show everyone what it means to reuse materials and make small decisions with a large impact!

Students rise and fall to expectations, and just like they initially respect a well-dressed teacher, they are much more eager to participate in an activity with materials that are nice and fun to interact with.

Having well-made, reusable materials to interact with that help foster a deeper understanding of challenging concepts in our class well help our students become agents of change for a sustainable future. And, all this with just a laminator!