Responses to my Emails

I had previously requested information from several people highly involved in the green initiative at Brookline High School by email. When I checked my email the next day, I was happy to see that I had received several responses. Mr. Grande responded offering to meet with me later in the week. He informed me that Ms. Mary Minott, a social worker at Brookline High School, would be more qualified to comment on the successes of SAJE's Green Committee. Although I had known that Ms. Minott was involved in the green initiative (you had recommended I talk to her after my first blog post) I had no idea that she was actually in charge of the Green Committee. This was news to me. Mr Grande then went on to list what he considered the Green Committee's major accomplishments. These were:

• Sustainable dining practices (including reusable plates, recyclable plates, locally grown food, and less meat)

• Recycling (Toter Tuesday)

• Paper and plastic bottle reduction (Through the effective encouragement of teachers and students to reduce the amount of paper they used for school work)

• Climate Action Day (In addition to its normal methods of raising awareness, which include word of mouth, email and facebook and other online social networks, and posters and images around the school.)

This is already a great deal of information. After sending Mr. Grande a thank you email, I went on to read Rachel Sandalow-Ash and Sophie Lazaar's responses. In addition to a similar list, they explained to me the reason for the split from the SAJE group. The two are still highly intertwined, but the idea was that much more could get done if the problem was attacked from many different angles at the same time. Their committee was more about research ways to have a sustainable education environment while SAJE was more about spreading the word and implementing changes that their committee would research, explain, and try to facilitate.

I went on to contact Mary Minott and let her know about my project. She has not yet responded, but if she does not, I expect the students involved will be just as willing to talk to me about it themselves.