Come Follow Me and Garbage Land

After the girls went to bed, I started preparing a lesson for Sunday. I teach young women, ages 14-15, every second and fourth Sunday of the month. The LDS church launched not only a new youth curriculum, but also an outline for a new way of preparing and teaching. This will be my first lesson from the new curriculum, and I'm really looking forward to it. When I heard there was a change a comin', I spent several hours reading through the new material and watching helpful videos. I'm so happy for the change. The curriculum is called Come Follow Me, and I think most of it would be a useful study for people of any faith.

Our old curriculum was really dated, so I would spend most of my time finding supplemental materials that I felt brought a better, deeper understanding of the topic. Come Follow Me has lots of supplemental materials for each topic, and there is no real set lesson outline. I spend my preparation time increasing my understanding about a topic, and go to class prepared to teach and answer questions (that's pretty much what I've always done, but the prep work is much more enjoyable now that I don't have weird made up stories from a lesson I just read about how Suzy Q made a good/bad decision [that was really pretty lame compared to the decisions our youth face] that either made her feel good/bad in the end). My favorite part is how this allows for greater collaboration between me and the girls I teach. We're teaching one another. I'm a facilitator more than the one with all of the answers.

We started reading Stuart Little with Cora last night. She loves it. I'm pretty sure we'll finish tomorrow. Tonight, I was reading her a chapter where Stuart ends up in a garbage truck that unloads its contents on a barge that will be taken 20 miles off shore before it is dumped in the Atlantic. A time frame: the book was written in 1945 and is set in NYC. Stuart ends up being saved (you'll have to read it to find out how), but Cora and I were both like, "Say what?!?" She asked why they would dump their garbage in the ocean, and if it hurt the animals. I told her that we keep learning more and more about how to take care of our earth, and back then, people didn't know as much about the things that would hurt the earth and animals, but that they don't do it anymore...[at least not in NYC - I left that part out].

I was interested in seeing the evolution of waste management in NYC, so I did a little digging and found an interesting video. It's part of a series called City of Systems that I'd like to watch more of. Elizabeth Royte, author of Garbage Land narrates, and is basically sharing what she uncovered in researching/writing her book. I haven't read it, but I'd like to. The part that is astounding to me is the amount of trash versus the amount of recycling picked up in NYC, even now. I can't wait for the day when materials that can be recycled outweigh the waste put into landfills. Enjoy the video.

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