Environmental things...

Saturday is the day of the week when I try to get something done around the house. Laundry, filling the freezer with bakery, sorting out toys, games and strange electronic gadgets I never even knew we had…

Under it all I try to find surfaces I can clean. I am not a compulsive cleaner, I just make enough out of it to feel good about it when I comfort myself thinking “it may look bad, but at the bottom it is clean”.

Anyway; part of my tidying up routine is to recycle rubbish on my way to the store. I have children, and I want them to inherit a healthy world... and it is a fairly easy way to buy oneself a bit of clear conscience. 

Here we have waste containers placed at public places for those who want to do the extra effort to save the world.

I recycle glass, scrap, cloth (what is too worn out to be handed to charity), paper, organic waste and plastic. Batteries, light bulbs and electrical things are to be thrown in special containers we have at home and is picked up ones every 6 months. Writing it down now it looks pretty insane, and thinking about the diversity and number of bins for domestic waste sorting under my sink, it is ridiculous. I have 4 litter bins outside my house. Looks like a small industry area rather than the green heaven I want the entire world to be.

As I was throwing away empty jars of jam I got the image of Al Gore, in my head, doing the same thing I was, and I thought to myself “You and I, Al, we know what is important”.

On my way home I started thinking about it, and I never heard or read anywhere he recycles anything. Does he? Does he do the extra effort?

Just wondering, since I have heard his electrical bill is 20 times as big as the average. There are good excuses for this: Al Gore's home is more than 10 times the average. The house has five bedrooms and is of nearly 1000 square meters. He only uses green renewable electricity, which costs about 30% more than conventional electricity. In addition, he and his wife Tipper each run their own office from home with several employees. It certainly attracts a lot of extra electricity. Probably the average American does not stay at home during the day. Al Gore has security staff on site often, as well as other important guests. So, I give him that…

On the other hand… does he feel at all guilty for using a private jet when travelling around the world talking about environment?

I understand it is important to travel fast and comfortable when you travel a lot, some people are too busy to wait and do security checks like others do. I get that.

http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/an-inconvenient-question-should-al-gore-fly-to-stockholm/

Our own prime minister, who adds more taxes to everything than anyone else in the world (in the name of environment), went to the South Pole to celebrate Roald Amundsen. In 11 days he polluted what an average Norwegian pollutes in 3 years. I understand it was cool and an experience of a lifetime, but…

What I would really like to know, as I struggle with enormous amounts of wrapping paper from Christmas eve; do they recycle at all? Do they, honestly?

I am a teacher

I am a teacher. I put it in writing for everyone to see, even if this is something I hesitate to say out loud in social settings.

To some this might seem like a strange manner, but there is a reason for my propensity to avoid the topic: Everybody has a story, a history or a reason to criticize what is going on in school. And even if this is 30 years back in time they feel it appropriate to let me know, even try to make me defend their own misbehavior, based on their own opinion of the situation at the time.

I have no urge to engage in these sometimes heated discussions. I try not to judge (but I do have thoughts on how I would have reacted in similar cases) and speak up. Maybe I should. I know that to lean back and merely listen might be misunderstood as being indifferent to what they tell me (and everyone in near surroundings who follow the conversation), but I am not. I just do not feel it is the time and place to correct or come forward as a smarty-pants in a setting where we should all feel good about ourselves and enjoy. I do not avoid discussions, I love to exchange views and believes, but not when I feel I might come down on somebody who is not totally oriented on the matter, but never the less have strong feelings towards it.

(Just now I revealed what a smarty-pants I actually am, didn’t I?)

I am proud of my job. I am proud of what I do in the classroom. I am proud of what results I get. But most of all I am proud of my students.

Young people of today have in many ways a tougher life than I had when being a teenager. Even if I was a teenager during the 80s when fashion, music, politics and strong ideals changed rapidly and often with great contrasts, I feel society demand a lot more of the young ones of today.

We often complain about teenagers and how they fail to follow through when it comes to what we expect them to engage in, whether it is schoolwork, chores, how to spend money, how to interact with others and many other aspects of life.

I somewhat feel that most of what we complain about is unfair.

They are so busy. They are always engaged with something (unfortunately not always what I tell them to engage in) and most often what they engage in are pretty serious matters.

They have strong feelings of loyalty to others, political believes, ideals, morals (yes; morals, not always my own choices of morals, but then again who am I to judge? I chose my own, it would be unfair to disagree with their choices), environment and materialistic issues. I even feel that they have reflected over their own future.

Through the years I have seen what they become, who they become and what success they will achieve. I hear about their victories and failings. I know that the boys I meet when they are 16 in most cases turn out to be great fathers, good partners and reliable providers for their families. Now, that is, to me, a great motivation to keep doing what I do. And when I run into them, years later, they tell me that they remember I was their teacher. And I have not yet experienced that was, to them, a bad thing. Not something they feel to hold against me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o