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Here’s a story about the best teacher I ever had. My sixth grade science teacher Sara Lukens.
My understanding is she moved to Arkansas from FL where she worked for NASA. That might be legend, I was just a kid. But she was new to our town and was unlike any of our other teachers.
She taught the class about the ozone layer and CFCs (this was 1990) and how consumption was destroying the planet and it would soon be uninhabitable. She told us about styrofoam, which back then was EVERYWHERE
Our assignment was to go to a local McDonalds and ask to speak to the manager and ask them why they used styrofoam instead of paper. Then we had to report back on what they said to us. I did not want to do this.
I remember my dad driving me to McDonalds and how nervous I was to talk to the manager. My dad refused to go in the store with me. He said he thought this was a dumb assignment. He waited in the truck while I went in alone.
I asked to talk to the manager and the woman at the register yelled “it’s another kid looking for the manager” and a man came out from the office and handed me a brochure about mcdonalds commitment to the environment and walked away.
When I got back to class that Monday the whole class was completely keyed up. Everyone had stories of arguing with the manager or, like me, getting the brush off.
Then Ms Lukens told us that mcdonalds complained to the school and they were sending someone to speak to our class to give us “the other side”
She was annoyed the school agreed to this but she prepared us for it. We trained all week for the presentation from McDonald’s, which she said shouldn’t be a one sided presentation but a chance to confront powerful people who could change things
We were SO excited for it. I went from dreading talking to a manager to looking forward to a fight with them
The newspaper sent a reporter. I can only guess McDonalds wanted them there for the publicity. It’s possible Ms Lukens called them in anticipation of what would go down.
This is what they ran. Front page, too.
It was exhilarating. Our class felt like super heroes. And most importantly we were pissed off. We started an ecology club at school and kept working on environmental projects in the community.
It turns out what we were doing was part of a national effort by the Center for Health, Environment and Justice called the McToxic campaign. Thousands of kids around the country were also doing the same thing. http://chej.org/2018/01/11/mcdonalds-decades-later-eliminates-foam-everywhere/
Six months after we did this, McDonalds announced they would stop using styrofoam products in all of their stores nationwide.
And I learned how it felt to collaborate with my classmates and neighbors and community and take on power and win. It was scary at first but felt good. And I never stopped. Thanks to Sara Lukens, who probably changed my whole life.
