Just Grace Goes Green (2 page)

Since Mr. Frank left, Miss Lois has been
trying a lot of new things, and mostly that has been exciting for us. She likes to give out her new ideas on Monday mornings—that way she says we will be excited for the whole rest of the week about a fun, stimulating learning experience.

Stimulating
means that the parts of your brain you use to learn stuff are excited and exploding like mini fireworks. Owen 1 said that Sunni's head was probably going to explode one day, because she is the smartest kid in our class and she really likes learning. Then he started asking her lots of questions so she would use her brain and make it blow up right then and there.

Sunni just turned around and called him a peon. Of course, Owen 1 didn't know what a peon was—none of us did. She is smart like that, and uses lots of words no one has ever heard of before. But for sure it was not a compliment, and since Owen 1 was being mean and is not one bit smart, I bet it meant something perfectly awful. I was definitely going to look it up in the dictionary. Mostly I don't like looking stuff up, but it's always good to know about new name-calling words, even if you're not supposed to be using them. Just in case.

WORD FOR LATER

WHAT MISS LOIS SAID

"Owen 1, if I have to tell you to stop talking one more time, I'm sending you down to the principal's office! Do you understand?" Owen 1 nodded his head yes, and Sunni smiled, and her perfectly round head did not explode.

FIREWORKS INSIDE SUNNI'S HEAD

FIREWORKS INSIDE OWEN 1'S HEAD

WHAT MISS LOIS SAID NEXT

"Class, it's time for us to go green. Does anyone know what that means?" Everyone had lots of different answers.

WHAT GOING GREEN DOES NOT MEAN

1
Studying frogs.

2
Dressing up as Irish leprechauns.

3
Getting free money.

4
Eating lots of spinach or salad.

WHAT GOING GREEN DOES MEAN

Learning about new ways to save energy, recycle, and save the planet and its inhabitants, which means all the plants and animals and us. Miss Lois said our planet needed our help and we were all going to be superheroes of conservation and save the earth! Then she did something that was totally like Mr. Frank and not at all like Miss
Lois. She asked us to each design our own superhero costume.

When a project is fun, people sometimes want to do even more work than they are supposed to. This doesn't happen very often, so Miss Lois smiled when she said it was okay to design two different costumes if we wanted.

MY SUPERHEROES OF CONSERVATION

It was hard to get everybody to stop doing the fun part of saving the earth and concentrate on the learning part of saving the earth. Jane Dublin was especially unhappy when she found out that Miss Lois was not going to take our designs home and make us all real costumes to wear. Her costume was a pretty cool butterfly kind of thing. She would have sure looked great in it because she's got long, skinny legs kind of like a bug.

Other people, like Owen 1, didn't really do a very good job of thinking about their design as a real costume. It would have been really hard for him to even fit in his.

OWEN 1'S COSTUME

Miss Lois tried to make everybody feel better by saying that all our designs would make great Halloween costumes. She just doesn't know that most boys would never wear superhero costumes when they could wear gross masks and creepy clothes dripping with fake blood instead.

SUPERHERO

SCARY GUY

THREE WAYS TO SAVE THE EARTH

1. RECYCLE

This means you put things in special bins so that they can be used again to make new stuff, instead of just throwing them in the garbage.

THINGS YOU CAN RECYCLE
Paper Products
Plastic

Glass

Foil

Cans

2. CONSERVE

This means if you are not going to be in a room, then you should turn out the light so you don't use up energy that you don't really need.

There are lots of way to conserve energy that were too hard for us to do. Things like making sure you have good windows in your house and lots of insulation in the walls. Insulation is padding stuff that is stuck in the walls of houses. Miss Lois said it was like the fluffy stuff inside winter jackets only it was for the house. She said it worked the same, and that is how people kept their houses warm and cozy in the wintertime.

Then she told us she did not want anyone to go home and knock holes in their walls to try to get a look and see if it was in there. As soon as she said this, Owen 1 said,
"Aww, man!" So you could tell that he was totally thinking of doing this exact thing.

INSULATION IN A HOUSE WALL

Miss Lois said that conservation was something we could all practice at home right away. Marta said that she was going to try to get her little sister to stop playing with the toilet and flushing it all the time. Miss Lois said that was an excellent idea since every time you flush the toilet you use up around 3.5 gallons of water.

Sammy said he could just wear the same clothes every day—that way his mom wouldn't have to do any laundry and that would save water too. Miss Lois said that was an interesting idea but not necessary because being clean was important too. I think she was probably being like me and imagining what
Sammy's shirt would look like without being cleaned for an entire week.

SAMMY'S SHIRT