Ecotopia Now! will be participating in the school assembly on April 14.  Our plan is to pose a question.  After the question is asked, we will give students a minute to think about that question and their answer. 

We will then encourage them to share their answer in a small listening group with five classmates immediately following the assembly, where free pizza will be provided.  We’ll let them know that Youth Court members, and perhaps other students, will serve as peer facilitators and lead those Circle-Ups.

Please help us decide which question we should ask!

Bonding Over Shared Experiences and Struggles

1.  Teen life in general:  According to experts, teenage life today is really hard, maybe harder now than it has ever been.  Do you agree?  Does that sound right to you?

On a scale from 1 to 10, let’s see how much you agree.  1 means that you totally disagree, that the experts are wrong and only seeing what they are trained to see—life for teens could not be better!  10 means that it is way worse than the experts are reporting. Despite their effort and training, they are not reporting just how bad it really is.  5 means that, yes, teenage life is filled with pain and hardships but also with many new opportunities as well, so it is a mix of good and bad.

or

2.  Community building at school:  Do we give ourselves enough opportunity and encouragement to get outside of our comfort zones to get to know classmates who are different?  How important do you think it is to increase these encounters and exchanges?  How important do you think it is for us and for the school to plan events for all of us to ask better questions and listen to each other?

or

3.  Gratitude for others:  Bring to heart and mind someone who has been helpful to you, lent you a hand when you needed it.  It could be someone who directly went out of their way to help, maybe taught you a lifelong lesson through that act of kindness.

It could be someone who you’ve never met in person but because of what they did with their life you feel you are standing on their shoulders.  It could be a writer who helped you sort out a question, that gave you key insight. 

How did that feel do have someone do you such a good turn?  Were you surprised?

or

4.  When you think of your favorite spot in nature (waterfalls, lakes, red rock,  forests, etc.), what positive and negative feelings do you sense?  What do you feel when you are in that special place?  Awe?  Joy?  Celebration?  Elation?  Confusion?  Sadness? 

or

5.  Do you see yourself as an optimist or pessimist when it comes to the future of the planet?  As you see it, is the health of the planet getting better or worse?  Are  our best days behind us or ahead of us?   

Or

6.  If you could design your ideal school curriculum, what kind of classes would you want? Where would the classes take place? Who would be there? Who would teach?