Earth Week 2018

Oh, did you guys not know about Earth Week?  It’s like Earth Day, but longer.

Disclaimer: I actually sort of thought I made it up, but it’s mentioned on this Wikipedia page, so it must be legit. (You just have to scroll down a little).

We celebrate Earth Week instead of Earth Day at my school for several reasons:

1. Earth Day is sometimes on a weekend and it’s difficult to make the children come to school. (For example, this year Earth Day was on a Sunday.)
   
2. It allows us to have more events and raise awareness among our students, the future leaders of tomorrow.
   
3. Someone in school administration thought it would be a good idea to put me in charge of a committee so I decided to focus on the environment and make up fake holidays.

Here are some things I learned about during Earth Week this year:

People do amazing things with trash! Check out the Paraguay recycled instruments orchestra (the actual music starts at second 54).  Also, professional sports teams from the Golden State Warriors to Real Madrid (and Bayern Munich, if you’re into that sort of thing) are playing in jerseys made partially out of recycled plastic.

One word: insectivores.  Do you spend as much time worrying about how to feed the growing world population as I do?  I’m sure you do! The answer is simple: we are all going to start eating lots of bugs! My high school students love when I talk about this.   (Option B: petri-dish meats.  Option C: vegetarianism.)

Tesla is super nice about coming to school events (we had one of their Southern Europe reps come do an assembly for almost 500 kids, and she totally bought into the Earth-Week-as-a-holiday trend).

Angel Falls in Venezuela is the highest waterfall in the world at 3,212 feet/979 meters.  (I had to look it up for an trivia game assembly I designed.)

On the Friday afternoon before a long weekend, not even the BEST of free snacks (Cheese Popcorn AND Twizzlers) will keep high school students in the building for a school event.  Lower school students can still be coerced…mostly by telling the teachers in charge of them to come to the event, since kids that age don’t get to decide what time they leave school.

Picture of Angel Falls to celebrate!

PS: If you are still reading this, stop using plastic bags.  Seriously. Just stop.

Banner photo credit: NeONBRAND