At climate change school: the teacher who plants trees with the students

“We are a lucky school, we miraculously have the availability of a large private park, which borders the public green area (fortunately removed from building speculation) of the Vettabbia, south of Milanin the Corvetto area”. The speaker is the Italian and history professor Marco Pellegrini. The school is theITSOS Albe Steiner, a technical institute of cinema and photography which is also flanked by an artistic high school. A “private” park of the school that Pellegrini, together with some colleagues, managed to turn into a sort of teaching gym to start a reflection on climate change with the students.

The Gardens of Classe are growing

With the project Class Gardens, started in 2020, interrupted due to the pandemic lockdown. “At that time the school, like all of them, was closed, but the gardeners of the province came anyway to do ‘maintenance’, with the result that they razed all our sprouts and the plants that were growing…”. But despite the drawbacks, the project has germinated and now each participating class is planting a rectangle of land with trees, plants and flowers.

“From school – explains the professor – we observe nature between the city and the countryside, given our privileged position right on the border, we shoot migratory animals, but also sedentary ones, such as rabbits, budgies, and squirrels. We also plan to pose a nest for storks, which pass in the sky above southern Milan and look for a safe place to alight”.

The purpose is also of testimony, to resist the overbuilding of the metropolis, and “the profiteering of unscrupulous builders” continues Pellegrini who, as a good teacher of literature, promotes “original literature that touches on the theme of climate change, publishing collections of short stories of students and professors”. But the activity doesn’t stop there.

Why hemp in flowerbeds

ITSOS Albe Steiner is still a film school, so a series of videos about it is planned climate change, and “on the agenda, compatibly with the opinion of the manager, the planting of a flower bed of (legal) hemp, one of the plants that absorbs more carbon dioxide”. But how is the response from the students? “Kids are addicted, poorly informed despite having access to all human knowledge in theory, and above all they have no memory, they cannot have it. Like us, they do not remember that the climate was once different, they are too young to be able to Yet once they get in touch with the subject, even with the ‘minimal’ hands-on activities that we propose with Class Gardens, show great sensitivity, great interest. Despite everything, I see great enthusiasm and positivity in them”.