Just Grace Goes Green (6 page)

Valerie put her hand up and said, "I'm sorry, Miss Lois. I'm having trouble paying attention because I'm just so excited about my superheroes of conservation project. I already started on it and I can't wait to show everybody. Can I show everyone now what I've done?" Miss Lois looked surprised too. Valerie is not always the best worker, and she does a lot of not paying attention.

What Valerie showed us was for sure not what Miss Lois was expecting, because she looked even more surprised than before.

Valerie held up two of her Barbie dolls dressed as superheroes. She showed us the picture she had drawn too, so everyone could
see what a good job she had done making the actual real-life costumes.

VALERIE'S SUPERHEROES

ENVIRO-GAL

GOTTA-GO-GREEN-GIRL (GGGG)

Miss Lois said that all the boys had to stop laughing immediately. I think boys sometimes laugh because they are embarrassed about liking girl stuff. Even though
I'm too old to like Barbie dolls anymore, I thought Valerie's superheroes were pretty good. Miss Lois put them on the table at the front of the class so that everyone could have a closer look at lunchtime. And that was how I didn't get caught not paying attention.

LUNCHTIME

Mimi was so impressed by Enviro-Gal and Gotta-Go-Green-Girl that she said we had to make real superheroes too. She said we could make a whole scene out of clay and craft stuff, and it could show our superheroes coming to help save the red panda, which is perfect because that is our endangered animal mascot. Mimi loves clay or any kind of supplies to make stuff that stands up on its own. She
doesn't like drawing very much but she makes really fun, cool model projects all the time.

WHAT MIMI MADE FOR ME LAST WEEK

At lunchtime Mimi told me about all the things I had missed when I had not been paying attention and was instead thinking about my excellent play with Miss Lois and me as the big star.

FOUR THINGS I DID NOT KNOW ABOUT PLASTIC

1
Polyester carpet is made from recycled plastic bottles. That means one day I could
be standing on a carpet made from a bottle I had a drink from and not even know it.

2
You can make one grown-up person's fleece jacket out of just twenty-five recycled bottles. Of course, they have to do special stuff like grind the bottles up, but still it's pretty cool that you could one day wear your bottle.

3
Even though it's good that you can recycle plastic bottles and use them to make other stuff, it's still not great, because when you finish using the other stuff, you have to throw it away and it has
to go in the garbage because it can't be recycled again.

4
It takes about five hundred years for a plastic bottle to break down and dis; into the earth.

I found out all these things from Mimi after she said, "Don't you feel bad?" when I was throwing my plastic water bottle into the recycling bin in the lunchroom. Mimi had learned it all when she had been paying attention in Miss Lois's class. Mimi said she
was going to keep her bottle and use it for lunch again tomorrow. That way she wouldn't have to feel guilty about throwing it away. Of course my bottle was gone and it was too late, so I got to feel guilty about polluting the environment all by myself. It was not a good feeling!

After lunch, we learned some more things about recycling.

FOUR THINGS I DID NOT KNOW ABOUT PAPER

1
It takes 500,000 trees to make the paper for all the Sunday newspapers each week.

2
The average person in America uses seven trees a year in paper, wood, and other stuff made from trees.

3
If all newspapers were recycled, we would save about 250,000,000 trees a year.

4
Every ton of recycled paper saves seventeen trees.

Miss Lois was full of excitement and energy about being green. I did not feel that way. My empathy power was feeling sad for the earth, for the trees, and for the world!

REGULAR LEARNING

After telling us all about paper recycling, Miss Lois said it was time to talk about our regular schoolwork again. How could she do that? How could she not know that saving the earth was 100 percent more important than studying clouds, or fractions, or even cursive writing, which I like and is fun because it's kind of like drawing! Superheroes can't suddenly turn off their hero energy to learn about cumulus clouds. That's the difference between real superheroes and pretend ones, and the difference between Miss Lois and me.