Educon reflection

So after thinking about the conference for a few days a lot has been going through my mind. In some ways the whole talk is sort of a blur to me and if you asked me to tell you exactly what we talked about I wouldn't have a clue. That’s where I'm going to have to just sit down and watch it on Ustream.

First off it was great to finally meet Peter Brown in person. Along with his niece Molly Brown, and Christian Long. They are all extremely cool!

So about the talk, it brought up many very interesting topics. Peter and I presented what we were up to first and what tools we are using, then we opened it up to discussion. We talked about both mentoring across the country and Green design. It was so interesting to have a room full of adults and I was the one teaching them. That rarely happens in schools, however at SLA it does quite often. It was the first time though I really felt like a teacher. I think the main thing I brought away from this weekend was how amazing SLA really is and how hard of a job our teachers have. We always are throwing hard questions at them and they either have an answer or know where to find it, that is super hard! Everyone but especially Christian asked me some really hard questions that I had no idea how to answer fully. So over all this weekend made me see SLA in the eyes of visitors and how different we are from normal schools. To us this is our life; this is how it is every day so it is normal. To others though our school is just a dream, close to how schools should be but aren’t.

Ok so going back to my ILP. Everyone in that room really opened my eyes up to how big this project could be. My project that started with me going into Lehmann’s office one afternoon last year to say that I didn’t want to do any of the options we had for our ILP’s. That I wanted to just stay here and research sustainability and other green building ideas to try and green our school building. I never thought that I would find as an amazing mentor that I have and that I would have an impact on him and not just the other way round. Actually Christian pointed out that I’ve actually had an impact on many people, and that my project could get pretty big. That actually was a shock to me I never would have thought that what I was doing was such a big thing. That people would start looking at what I was doing, me a sophomore in high school. And that if I was smart enough and made a log of what other schools could do to go green easy that it might just catch on. I couldn’t believe it but then I thought about it and that might actually seam possible. Everyone I have talked to about my project has thought it was pretty interesting. So now my job it to plow full steam ahead and get stuff rolling, but not too fast that I can’t manage it well.