Last Monday, a fellow parent and I had one of those brief, thought-provoking conversations which often punctuate the early-morning drop-off period at the Lycée Français. For this father, and I could not agree more, a demanding challenge of raising children in an urban setting like New York City is exposing them to nature in such a way that a sensitivity to and feeling of responsibility for the natural environment becomes an integral part of their identities. Upon hearing this comment, I thought immediately of a poem by the American poet Walt Whitman, “There was a Child Went Forth”.
“There was a child went forth”, writes the great 19th –century lyricist, “And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became,/And that object becomes part of him for the day or a certain part of a day,/Or for many years or stretching cycles of years./The early lilacs become part of this child,/And grass and white and red morning glories, and white and red clover,/and the song of the phoebe bird…” (the rest of this wonderful text can be found at http://www.bartleby.com/142/103.html). What can we do, our parent and I ruminated, when our young people do not regularly encounter “winter-grain sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn, and the esculent roots of the garden,” to quote again from Whitman?
If our students were to answer this question, among the proposals they would make, in my experience, would almost certainly be a leadership role for our school. To them, the Lycée Français, through its educational programs, its operational policies, its everyday practices, needs to set the example, to nurture a sense of connection with and commitment to protecting our planet. A significant expectation which we take very, very seriously, as evidenced by the phenomenal work being done by our Environmental Task Force (ETF). Guided by our expert Director of Facilities, advised by an inspiring group of teachers, staff members and parents, and led by several outstanding secondary school students, the ETF has been instrumental in transforming our school into the sort of environmental actor our young people believe it should be.
There is much which I would like to describe about the Environmental Task Force, but please allow me to focus on just one of their projects today, that of hosting the annual conference of the Green Schools Alliance, “a global network of schools…working together to solve environmental and climate challenges,…sharing and implementing sustainable best practices, and promoting connections between schools, communities, and the environments that sustain them (http://www.greenschoolsalliance.org/about-us).” Intended for “students and club leaders, school administrators, business officers, facility managers, teachers, parents, community leaders and elected officials, green businesses, NGOs and environmental groups who care about our shared future”, this unique event provides an extraordinary opportunity for our entire community to join together and with others in the building of a sustainable world.
The conference will be inaugurated next Thursday evening with a showing and discussion of “The City Dark”, a powerful documentary by environmental filmmaker Ian Cheney about the effects of light-related pollution. The event then continues at our school on Saturday, April 20, from 10 AM to 4:30 PM, beginning with two remarkable key note addresses, one by the renowned Columbia Environmental Science Professor Peter B. deMenocal and another by the acclaimed architect Maya Lin. For further information and registration, kindly visit http://greenschoolsnyc2013.eventbrite.com/. On behalf of the ETF and above all our 1336 students, I look forward very much to seeing you there!
About the Author :
Sean Lynch was Head of School at the Lycée Français de New York from 2011 to 2018, after having spent 15 years at another French bilingual school outside of Paris: the Lycée International de St. Germain-en-Laye. Holding both French and American nationalities, educated in France (Sciences Po Paris) and the United States (Yale), and as the proud husband of a French-American spouse and father of two French-American daughters, Sean Lynch has spent his entire professional and personal life at the junction between the languages, cultures and educational systems of France and the United States. In addition to being passionate about education, he loves everything related to the mountains, particularly the Parc National du Mercantour.