Daisy Janes

I was born on a farm and so from a very young age I knew that all life was interconnected. I grew up watc A cat would kill a mouse or a sparrow or a coyote would take one of our c I knew death to be an essential part of life. There was no avoiding t I knew that the food on my plate was only possible because of generations and generations of life cycles. Birth, life, death, decomposition and rebirth as somet I knew that all biological existence is intertwined in t And as I began getting a little bit older I began learning not only about the systems that exist in nature but about societal systems, systems inside h And that is why when I began learning about climate change I was so fundamentally confused. It took me a while to understand that climate change is the result of h It's a reflection of the disconnect between h And it got us here. It's 2019 and science says that for most of the agricultural land we have 60 harvests left before the soil is so depleted of nutrients it cannot grow food any longer. We are about to push our emissions past the point of no return. And my generation is inheriting a very uncertain future. At the beginning of t And I was feeling really sad because our future is so uncertain and probably very And that the generation that is inheriting that's why I decided to devote t I used to hate school with a burning of passion. Every morning I would wake up resenting going and I'd be counting the seconds the entire day until I was allowed to go back home. But over the past four years at Green School I have developed such a deep love of learning that at the end of the day I don't want to go home. And over school breaks instead of resenting school starting again, I can't wait. All I wanted to do was be at school. And it's not the fancy bamboo arc What makes Green School different from all the other schools that I've attended are the teachers and the culture of inclusion and curiosity. Coming here was the first time in my life that I met all these teachers that treated me with the same respect that they treated each other. I was drawn to Green School because of my environmental passion and I saw people Because I thought that Green School was a radical trailblazing green leader creating sustainable community of But over the past four years I've began to peel back the layers be And this is that we preach progressive alternative education but one of the most fundamental pieces of progressive learning is not the curricul So t Sadly I didn't get as far as I would have But I know that many people t But sustainability is just as much about governance as it is about conservation. I began my project by advocating for student representation on the board of management at the school and right as t Recently the trustees a group of seven people decided without council or input from any of the other stakeholders inside of the school to completely dissolve the board of management. Along with dissolving the board they created a new role in t I had spent all t I believe that t Instead of lessening the Instead of creating an even more progressive model of governance they erased the board when the trustees created the main function of they allocated a place for student rep here but it sounded cool and when reading the trustees explanation of t But as I naturally look at t Because the previous board was extremely successful in its mission for implementing the strategic plan. Under the board has been the only time in green school And of course it was not perfect. But it still did a good job of representing the diversity of voices inside our community w The main t So my questions are if t And what is the goal of the trustees when putting a profit focused role in the focal point of the governance structure of a non-for-profit school? The new board of learners will have much less authority and power. The governance structure for next year is not yet finalized but as of now the main role of these changes have caused a major kerfluffle and a lot of uprise and anger inside our community. I understand why. When I first learned about t After all school is about the c And in an even grander scale it's about the future of h And to me it was obvious how these decisions were a microcosm of the patriarchy and reflected the conditioning of our society. I know that many people are very angry with the school right now, myself included and I that means we need to take action. I feel that these changes are not aligned with our mission of sustainability or community and in fact they are a step in the opposite direction. So if t And to be able to find the answer I had to look to the past to understand how we got here. I began at the very beginning. Religiously affiliated literacy oriented schools were the first type of education that looks similar to what we have today. But our current conventional education system wasn't created until about 150 years ago to meet the demands of industrialization. The same industrialization that began our climate crisis. With industrialization it came globalization and in education t Governments funded public education because they saw it as a really good opportunity to instill patriotic values into their citizens. As I see it school was kind of created for two purposes. The first being to prepare c The second being to create distracted misinformed cons So here at Green School we have the opportunity because t And in my search for solutions I found that it was vital to define purpose as well as mission. I believe that our purpose should be more in line with the giving the students the tools to live a good life answer but of course the definition of a good life is very different from person to person. I t I believe that our purpose should be to support c Support and guidance have been crucial in my own learning journey but somet A lot of the time when I say things Here at Green School I believe that giving students power over their own learning means recognizing that we are the biggest stakeholders inside of the school. T And as the biggest stakeholders we need to be centralized in the decision making process. As a school that markets itself to be a leader in progressive education it's ridiculous to me that our governance, one of the most important pieces of school does not reflect what we say we are. And I do not have a solution because for an issue such as t One person alone cannot have the solution. If we want to demonstrate the value of integrity we cannot have only seven people making decisions that are t I wish that I could give you a solution on a golden platter but it's not that simple but that doesn't mean that it's that hard. I can But the solution has to come from collaboration inside the diversity of everyone here. We cannot, the medi How the school is run equals the message the students receive. Our school has the opportunity to lead the way in setting the tone for how h Green school is so close to being an incredible solution but if you are a student or a teacher or a staff member here And if we keep pretending There is urgency in my tone because education is a fundamentally important tool that needs to be used to help h And urgency in taking action is imperative. We have seen what standardized requirement based education has given us and we need people who t Who are empowered. We need an education system that is authentic that puts c And most importantly we need to, the c We need power over our own learning because power over our own learning means having power over ourselves. Every Friday thousands of students are striking following Greta Thunberg and striking for the climate. One people are no longer asking for permission. We are demanding action. We have 11 years until we push our missions past the point of no return. Everything you think We need to ret We need to change everyt Let'start by putting the c Thank you.