Just Grace Goes Green (3 page)

Miss Lois said conservation is important because it helps save the animals of the world and their natural habitats. Which means the places where they live in the wild ... not so much the zoo, because zoo animals pretty much don't have to worry about their homes being taken away to build a road or a grocery store.

ZOO ANIMAL TALKING

3. REUSE

This means that instead of throwing something away you find someone who wants it and can use it, and then you sell it or give it to them. Miss Lois said lots of people donate clothes, computers, books, and even cars to people who need them.

WHAT I WAS THINKING NEXT

Sometimes if someone is giving me too much information, even if it is interesting and really important information like how to save the world, all I can think about is...
When is the talking going to stop so we can go do something else?

Miss Lois didn't hear my secret thoughts because she just kept talking, and talking,
and talking, right up until the bell rang for our break. "I'm passionate about being green," said Miss Lois, and then she finally let us go.

WHAT IS PASSIONATE

Passionate
means that Miss Lois probably wishes she could spend her entire life working on saving the planet. And maybe I was right about that, because right after our break she said we were going to skip math and talk some more about being green.

LESS TALK, PLEASE

Miss Lois said it was time to stop talking and time to start doing. She said nobody could save the earth all alone. We all had to work
together. She said it was time to team up. Miss Lois was acting like Mr. Frank again, because she even let us pick our own partners. Of course Mimi and I picked each other. I didn't get to work with her on the last school project because I was away in Chicago. After everyone picked a partner, Miss Lois gave us our green jobs.

JOB NUMBER ONE

Keep a chart about the way we are conserving energy and being green at home. Write down at least one conservation thing that we are doing every day. Keep the chart for two weeks.

JOB NUMBER TWO

Come up with a green project that we are passionate about and then put that plan into action. Miss Lois said it was important to not think too big. She said, "The best green plans are right in your very own backyard."

This was a little confusing, because Sandra Orr thought Miss Lois said that the best green
plants
were right in our very own backyard. So she put her hand up and said, "You're right! And I probably have the biggest green plant ever, because I am growing my very own pumpkin for Halloween, and those kind of plants take up the entire backyard. My dad is not happy about it, so Mom says this is the only year we are going to get to do it. Maybe the class can come over and see it, because it's really awesome!"

Max and Sammy both said they totally wanted to see it, and pretty soon everyone was excited about pumpkins and Halloween.

Miss Lois seemed a little confused and a little annoyed both at the same time. She wanted us all to be excited about saving water, saving paper, and saving metal cans, and not be talking about giant pumpkins instead.

THE NEW AND IMPROVED MISS LOIS

The old Miss Lois would have definitely been mad at us for not paying attention to her ideas, but the new Miss Lois said, "Okay, class, it's time for everyone to pick an animal mascot."

PUMPKIN VERSUS ANIMAL

WHO IS THE WINNER?

ANIMAL MASCOTS

Miss Lois said each group had to pick an animal from the endangered animals list as
its mascot. Endangered animals are creatures that will go extinct if people do not stop destroying the natural places where they live. Stuff like cutting down trees or building houses and factories near their homes means that the animals have nowhere to go and no proper food to eat so they die. It's very sad.

Miss Lois said that it was important to know about all these endangered animals. And to know them better we each had to write a paragraph about our mascot animal and present it to the class.

Saving the planet was sounding a lot like regular schoolwork. I bet real superheroes don't have to write reports and do all sorts of projects. No wonder the earth was in trouble: nothing was probably ever getting done.

Sandra Orr put her hand up and said that protecting animals was really important, and that it was really sad that humans had ruined the earth because now there were no more unicorns left and it was too late to save them. Miss Lois said, "Yes, Sandra, saving animals is very important." She knew you couldn't say one thing about unicorns not being real animals or else Sandra would burst into tears and have to go home. That had happened before.

THE LIST

Even though the list of animals on the endangered list was super long, Mimi and I had no trouble picking out our favorite three animals. It was a little harder trying to decide which of the three would be best.

THE THREE TOP ANIMALS ON OUR LIST

Finally we decided to pick the red panda because it was just so sad that an animal that
cute could maybe go extinct, and then no one would ever see it again.

WHAT BOYS DO

All the boy groups picked weird and ugly animals for their mascots, stuff like rats, mice, and snakes. Max and Sammy said they picked the aye-aye because they liked saying the name a lot. The aye-aye was also a very weird-looking animal, so for sure they were probably excited about that too!

AYE-AYE

FINALLY

This was a school day that seemed like it was going to last forever, even with Miss Lois trying to be fun and full of new ideas like Mr. Frank.

I was so happy when it was all over and we could finally stop thinking about saving the earth and go home.

MIMI'S NEWS

The minute Mimi told me I said, "I can't believe you didn't tell me this before!" Not because it was a bad thing, but because it was a good thing, and how can you not tell your best friend a good thing the moment you find out about it? Mimi said that at first it sounded like a good thing but really when you thought about it, it was not a completely great thing
after all, which is why she didn't tell me about it right away. She wanted it to sit in her brain so she could think about it a little bit first.

Mimi's brain is like that. It probably has all sorts of interesting things in there waiting to come out one day. My brain is 100 percent the opposite. It likes to let everything right out through my mouth the minute it knows about it.

THE THING

Mimi's cousin Gwen is coming to stay with Mimi for ten days. At first I thought this was a good thing because I love Gwen and we all have so much fun when she visits. But when Mimi told me the three bad things about it, it didn't seem so great anymore, at least not for Gwen.

1
Gwen was going to miss school, which is always a good thing, except she was going to have to hang out with Mimi's mom every day because Mimi was going to be at school. Plus, on top of that she was going to have to do all her homework anyway. How much fun was that going to be?

2
She was going to miss her birthday with her friends.