For an entire week in April, a group of 22 students at
Cass Technical High School in Detroit were immersed in the minutia of sustainability. The program, dubbed Generation G by its designers and implementers,
NORR LLC inspired the students to form a Generation G Society at the school in order to implement some of the concepts they learned about.
How it went down is that architects, planners and engineers from Detroit-based NORR created a curriculum complete with lessons, demonstrations, art projects and field trips. We're not talking about planting a sunflower in a cup, but rather building two varieties of green roofs, exploring green career choices and even enduring an end-of the-week test on all the stuff they learned.
The kids scored an average of 90%, so apparently info was retained.
By all accounts, the program was a smash hit. The kids formed a group, the Generation G Society, to take their learning into the coming year and already plans are being made for another week-long session next year.
And NORR has already expanded the program, conducting a condensed three-day version of the program at Burton International Elementary School just last month.
But don't take my word from. Read a letter from one of the students themselves:
Dear my friendly NORR associates, This is Molly Brown, a senior from Cass Tech and the appointed President of Generation G. I wanted to give you a report on how things are going for our first ever Generation G Society! First of all, we'd really like to thank everyone again for creating an outstanding organization at our school. Things have been rather busy the last few weeks of school and therefore our first official meeting was this morning. School will be letting out very soon and teachers and students are preparing for finals. The meeting held this morning covered planning for next year. Malcolm, the vice president, and I, went over a few things we thought fit for ideas for next year, as well as, a mission statement to run by. Though NORR created a statement we still felt the need to take it into our own words to use as a device for recruiting new members. Our mission statement is as follows:
Generation G is an environmental design group that uses educational awareness of eco-friendly architecture, sustainability, and energy efficiency to create a greener environment for our school.
I am planning for next year and sending our ideas to you if you'd like to see it. I have great faith that next year will be successful and fantastic! Our green roof is doing well! Hope to hear from you soon. Sincerely, Molly Brown
Um, sounds pretty great from where I'm sitting.
Source: Elaine Taylor, NORRWriter: Kelli B. Kavanaugh
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