Chapter I: What Can We Do? We’re Just Kids
Michelle and Rachel were laughing and talking, oblivious to their surroundings.
“Michelle, Rachel!” said Mrs. Hatcher in a loud voice.
As they both looked up towards the front of the room, they saw Mrs. Hatcher staring right at them.
“May I begin teaching now?” she asked them.
Michelle and Rachel looked around the room and saw that all eyes were on them. They were both slightly embarrassed.
Michelle tried to regain her composure through humor. “Okay, Mrs. Hatcher, we’re ready. You may now begin teaching.”
Michelle heard Zack and Tyler laughing in the back of the room. Mrs. Hatcher gave Michelle a disapproving look.
“Today”, began Mrs. Hatcher, “we are going to start talking about ecology.”
Zack raised his hand and asked, “If this is Sociology class, why are we learning about ecology?”
“That’s a good question,” said Mrs. Hatcher. “Can anyone answer Zack’s question?”Michelle raised her hand and Mrs. Hatcher called her on her, reluctantly.
“Sociology is the study of people and their interactions with each other in the world. Ecology is the study of people and their interactions with the environment. If we let the environment be destroyed, then there will not be a world left, and nothing for people to interact with. The actions of the people can either destroy the world or preserve it.”
“Very good answer, Michelle.” said Mrs. Hatcher. “Our environment is being destroyed all over the planet at an alarming rate. It is the responsibility of every man, woman and child, to stop this senseless destruction.”
Rachel raised her hand and asked, “What can we do? We’re just kids.”
Mrs. Hatcher thought for a moment and then said, “Your generation will soon become responsible for the problems of this world. Why not start thinking of ways to solve the problems now. There is a famous quote by Mahatma Gandhi that goes something like ‘Be the change you want to see in the world.’ You can be either part of the problem or part of the solution. Do yourselves and your planet a favor, be the solution.”
For their first assignment, Mrs. Hatcher asked each student to identify one problem that they could solve right now, and list the steps necessary to solve the problem. She gave them the weekend to think about it.
On Tuesday morning, when the first bell rang, Mrs. Hatcher began collection the homework assignments from the students.
After reading through some of the papers, Mrs. Hatcher started reading the problems and solutions aloud. A few students suggested urging family and friends and family to ride bikes instead of driving, to save gasoline and cut down on pollution. Others suggested public transportation, carpooling, and using cleaner fuel.
Mrs. Hatcher picked up one paper, rolled her eyes and read it aloud. “Tyler thinks that teachers should stop giving homework and tests, to save paper and thereby saving more trees. Well, Tyler, That isn’t going to happen.” The entire class laughed, including Mrs. Hatcher.
Other students suggested simple solutions, such as turning off dripping faucets and taking shorter showers to conserve water, and turning off lights when they are not being used.
When Mrs. Hatcher got to Michelle’s paper, she was silent, while she read the entire paper, and then, she read it to the class.
“Now, here is a problem with a well thought out solution. Michelle wrote; ‘I think that the biggest problem facing our planet is pollution. This is one problem that kids like us can do something about right now. The parks in Los Angeles are full of trash. Some have so much trash in them that they are no longer safe to play in. I took this assignment, one step further. I called the Parks department, and asked if we could help them clean up the parks. Not only did they say yes, but also they said that they would supply the work gloves, trash bags, and pointed sticks for picking up trash. The park service would go around and pick up the bags of trash.’”.
Mrs. Hatcher asked Michelle if she was serious about wanting to help clean up the parks.
“Yes”-said
Michelle. “In fact, I plan on starting this Saturday. Does anyone
else want to help? The more people there are, the quicker the parks
will get cleaned up.”
At first, only Rachel, Tyler and Zack
volunteered, but eventually, the entire class volunteered.
“I am very impressed,” said Mrs. Hatcher. I will talk to the principal and see if we can make it a school project.”
The principal supported the project and by Friday morning, over three hundred students had volunteered for the park cleanup project. Michelle called the Parks department and arranged for clean-up supplies to be dropped off at the first ten parks on her list. The volunteers were divided, into ten groups, of thirty students each, and each group was assigned to one of the parks.
Mrs. Hatcher was put in charge of the student project, as an advisor, and she named Michelle as the student in charge of the project.
At Eight o’clock Saturday morning, Michelle and her younger sister Mara and Mara’s friend Karen met Rachel, Tyler and Zack at their assigned park. They had assigned themselves to the park that was the most trashed.
By nine o’clock, everybody had arrived, ready to work. All of the students were in high school, except for Mara and Karen, who were in fifth grade. Everybody was dressed appropriately, in old clothes; long pants, long sleeved shirts, work boots, or other sturdy shoes with hats and sunglasses.
When Michelle and Rachel saw, just how big the park was, and how much trash there was, they realized that it might take longer than they thought, to clean the entire park. While much of the park was still undeveloped, it had been used as an illegal dumping ground for years. There were a lot of trees and bushes, with trash hidden all around them.
The students divided into teams. Some would just pick up glass containers, some- plastic, some metal containers. Other students picked up paper trash, cigarette butts, and garbage. There were some students assigned to collect large objects, such as old tires.
By one o’clock, when they stopped for lunch, they were only half way done. They did not think that they would finish the job by five o’clock.
They finally finished at a few minutes after four o’clock. They had collected twelve bags of recyclables, twenty-five bags of trash, twenty-six tires, three old TV sets, construction scraps, and even one toilet.
Mara and Karen had wandered off and Michelle and Rachel went to look for them. They finally found them a few hundred yards away, behind some trees, playing near a large brown and white boulder half buried in the ground.
When Michelle got closer to the rock, she noticed some graffiti on it. It said; “Jim loves JoAnn” and “Class of 1953”
As the four of them were about to head back to the park entrance, Michelle tossed a rock at the boulder. Instead of sounding like rock hitting rock, it sounded like rock hitting wood.
Michelle and Rachel began to examine it more closely. They started digging around it with a hand shovel, they finally figured out what it was when they found many teeth attached to it.
Rachel’s mom worked in a museum and Rachel recognized it as a dinosaur skull. She had seen one like it at the museum. They had discovered a dinosaur skull and possibly the entire dinosaur skeleton. Rachel knew that no dinosaur skeletons had ever been discovered in California before, as most of California was under water during that era.
Mara and Karen wanted to tell the others, but Michelle told them to keep it a secret for now.
“We may be able to use it as a bargaining tool, to help fund our cleanup,” said Michelle.
So, the four of them agreed to keep it a secret for now, and they went to join the rest of the group. Michelle had taken pictures of the skull, as well as the graffiti, then she used the cameras to take pictures of the piles of trash and the cleaned up park. She took pictures of the park when they had first arrived. Now, they had before and after photos.
Michelle and Rachel called group leaders from the other parks to check on their progress. Everybody was finished.
The total amount of trash collected from all ten parks, included fifty bags of recyclables, over one hundred fifty bags of trash and garbage, and over a ton of old tires and junk.
After the last of the volunteers had been picked up by their parents, Rachel, Michelle, Mara and Karen waited until the Parks department truck came to pick up the trash and the tools.
Before Michelle and Rachel dropped off Karen at her house, they told her to ask her parents to meet at Michelle’s house that evening to help plan their strategy for the rest of the park clean-up project.
That evening, when Rachel and her parents, and Karen and her parents arrived at the Pasteron house, Michelle started the meeting with a slide show showing before and after pictures of all the parks. The other group leaders had taken before and after photos of the other nine parks, and had emailed them to Michelle.
The parents were very impressed by the slide show, and what the high school students had accomplished.
Michelle told the adults that she wanted to expand their clean-up efforts to include the rest of the city’s parks, and then start working on the neighborhoods.
“I know that we can get more kids across the city involved, but we need funds to cover the clean-up costs. I think we may have come up with a solution for our money problems. We are going to ask the city of Los Angeles and the Museum of Natural Science, and possibly the state government to help fund this clean-up.”
Rachel’s mom asked how she planned to convince the museum to help pay for cleaning up the park.
Michelle looked at her and said, “That’s where you come in. At one of the parks, and I can’t say which one, we found what we believe to be a dinosaur skull, partially above ground.”
Before any of the adults could doubt their claim, Michelle showed the slides of the skull, including the side where they had dug down to reveal its teeth.
“If the museum agrees to help fund the cleanup of the parks, we will show them where the dinosaur skull, and possibly an entire dinosaur skeleton is buried,” said Michelle.
There was a knock on the door. When Michelle opened the door, she saw that it was her grandparents. After she hugged them, she led them into the dining room where the meeting was taking place. Michelle’s father introduced his parents to the other parents.
“These are my parents, Jim and JoAnn Pasteron.”
All of a sudden, Michelle and Rachel both thought of the same thing, the graffiti on the dinosaur skull.
“What year did you and Grandma, graduate from high school?” Michelle asked her grandfather.
“Why, it was nineteen fifty five. Why do you ask?”
Michelle smiled and said. “Think back some fifty five years or so. Did you and Grandma ever write your names anywhere, like a tree, or a rock?”
“We may have”, said her grandfather. “Why?”
Michelle showed them the slide with the graffiti on it.
“Oh look Jim, said Michelle’s grandmother, “It’s ‘Kissing Rock.’ You wrote that back in nineteen fifty one when we started going steady.”
“Well”, said Michelle with a big grin on her face, “It turns out that ‘Kissing Rock’ is not a rock at all. It is actually a fossilized dinosaur skull.”
After Jim and JoAnn reminisced some more about ‘Kissing Rock’, the meeting continued, and they discussed Michelle’s and Rachel’s plan to get funding. Karen’s dad was a lawyer, and he helped them develop a strategy to convince the city council to help with the cleanup. He suggested that the entire sociology class attend the meeting, to show support.
On Monday, Michelle and Rachel talked to Mrs. Hatcher and told her about the discovery at the park, and about their idea to help clean up more parks.
Mrs. Hatcher smiled at the two girls. “I am so proud of you girls, for taking on this project and trying to make a difference.”
Later, that day, in Sociology class, Michelle and Rachel told the rest of the class about the dinosaur bones and about the meeting with the city officials. Everyone in the class agreed to go to the meeting.
On Tuesday evening, the entire Sociology class; dressed in their sharpest clothes, arrived at the city hall, along with their parents. Mrs. Hatcher arrived just before the meeting was about to begin.
When the meeting was called to order, the mayor asked if there was any new business to discuss.
Michelle stood up and walked to the front of the room. She waited until the room was quiet before she began speaking.
“Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen. My name is Michelle Pasteron. I am a sophomore at Kennedy High School. For the past couple of weeks, my Sociology class has been studying ecology and how we can help the earth. We found a way to make a difference in our community.”
“This past weekend, with permission from the Parks department, about three hundred students from Kennedy High School, spent an entire Saturday, cleaning up ten city parks.”
Michelle signaled to Rachel to start the power point presentation/slide show that they had hooked up to the computer.
The presentation showed the before and after pictures of each of the ten parks, as well as pictures of all the trash and junk removed from the parks, as well as pictures of the students doing the work.
“Our school has formed a group called ‘Kids For a Clean America’. We now realize that we can no longer wait around for the adult population of this city to clean up our parks, our city, or our nation.”
“Since we will one day inherit this planet along with its problems, when we become adults, we have decided to start cleaning it up now.”
“We are asking the city to help us in this effort, by helping to fund the clean-up campaign. We also need the city to pick up the bags of trash and other junk that we remove from the parks. We also need supplies, such as garbage bags, tools, etc.”
“We also need the city to pay for an advertising campaign to get the city involved in this important cause.”
All of Michelle’s classmates and their parents started applauding Michelle. When the applause died down, the mayor stood up to speak.
He told Michelle that he was proud of her and the rest of the students of Kennedy High, for taking on the clean-up project, but then he added;
“I think that you should leave the clean-up of our parks, to the city, and the adults of Los Angeles.”
This made Michelle furious, but she kept her cool. “No, Sir” he said. “I intend you no disrespect to you, but this city’s government and the adults of Los Angeles have had plenty of time to clean up the city, but have failed to do so.”
“Now, it is our turn. It is our time to be heard. It is our turn to try and fix the problem that has gotten out of hand and has been ignored for far too long.”
“No, Sir, Mr. Mayor, we will not sit down on the sidelines and watch, while the problem is swept under the rug by bureaucracy.”
“If necessary, we are prepared to take this issue to the newspapers, radio and TV stations all around the city.”
Everybody in the room was applauding Michelle for her courage and determination.
The mayor was noticeably embarrassed, by a fifteen-year-old girl knocking him down a peg or two. “There is also the issue of legality and responsibility,” said the mayor. “If a student were to get hurt, the city would be held responsible.”