Sustainable Teaching
Mike Franklin’s AP World History room is stripped bare for the summer. The desks are stacked in the back of the room and the bulletin boards are empty. A few notes from students wishing him a fun summer and thanking him for being such a great teacher are all that remains from another school year past.
But ask Franklin-this year’s Ellbogen Meritorious Teaching Award recipient—about his students and the learning that took place here as part of his new Sustainable Living social studies course, and the empty room seems to come alive again. He starts pulling out student posters that were tucked away and talks proudly about the different ways the students brought sustainable living out of the classroom and into the consciousness of the entire campus.
“The ultimate goal of the class is to raise consciousness—that there is a different way to live,” Franklin said. “Sustainability means so many different things. It’s being conscious of everything you do in life…asking yourself, is this sustainable?”
That is a question that Franklin was asking himself long before arriving at HPA almost five years ago. Sustainability is a lifestyle he adopted, first out of necessity, now out of choice, in his long journey to this place, where, in addition to his teaching duties, he is dorm head at Robertson’s Dormitory and coaches the girls cross country team.
Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Franklin wasn’t always the avid outdoorsman he is today. After starting out as a pre-med major at the University of California-San Diego, he switched schools, majors, and states after two years to attend the University of Montana where he graduated with honors with a degree in Literature and a minor in History.
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“First time in my life that I felt like I took a breath was in Montana,” Franklin said. “That was kind of where I found myself. It’s where I got into outdoor life and running.”
But it wasn’t where he found his passion for teaching. That came when he returned to Michigan to earn his master’s degree in Secondary Education and History at the University of Michigan. Early on in his program, Franklin found himself thrust into the inner city Detroit school system, which was desperate for teachers.
“I had 35 kids in an English class in an inner city school,” Franklin recalled. “I had gang kids in Detroit, with no opportunities, no adults caring, and they would just melt if you told them a good story. It was good for me to experience that.”
That experience served him well in his next teaching position on an Indian reservation in Bellingham, Washington, where taught high school English.
“You can’t be a lame teacher on a reservation,” Franklin said. “It was a challenging group of kids and I had to be dynamic and creative to capture the kids’ attention at all times. It was really great training. That’s where I learned that all kids really love learning.”
After a year on the reservation, the outdoors called to Franklin and he made another move, this time to a remote village on Alaska’s Kodiak Island. While Franklin, an ardent snowboarder, initially chose Alaska for its reputation as the Mecca for extreme sports, it was here when the concept of sustainability took on a whole new meaning for him.
Franklin had to adapt to the demands of living in an isolated environment while responsible for the welfare of 20 students under his care as the head teacher at the tiny K-12 school only accessible by flying in a four-seat plane. He had to learn how to fish in case they needed food, so he became a commercial fisherman. He had to learn to work on machinery in case the generator faltered. He had to learn to be self-sustainable in every way imaginable.
“That was another pivotal moment of my life,” Franklin recalled. “I lived in self-sufficient villages with zero contact with the outside world. Even today, the contact is limited if the weather is bad. The attitude there is if something is broken, you find a way to fix it. You don’t buy a new one.”
After 10 years in the tundra, Franklin and his wife, Tanya Everts, moved to Hawai‘i where Franklin took a teaching position at the High School of the Pacific in Kailua-Kona for a year before joining HPA’s faculty as the AP World History teacher in 2006.
While the environment in Hawai‘i stood in stark contrast to what he experienced in Alaska, the principles and attitude he cultivated over the last decade never left him. After his first year teaching at HPA, he approached the school about developing a “Sustainable Living” course on campus as part of the Social Studies Department. While the administration was receptive, the timing wasn’t right to add another course, so Franklin began incorporating sustainability topics into his history classes.
Over the next two years, as the school’s “Go Green” initiative gathered steam and the new Energy Lab came to life, it was the school administration this time that came to Franklin asking if he would be willing to teach sustainability as a course for the 2009-2010 school year.
“They realized it was good for the school,” Franklin said. “I appreciate our administration for that. They let me run with this and gave me the freedom to create a class tailored to this special environment.
“The ‘Go Green’ movement often centers around technology, like with the Energy Lab. But I always saw it as a lifestyle, not a technology solution,” Franklin said. “There is a way to live, how you treat others. It’s more on a political, social, economical scale.”
Franklin’s new elective class took off quickly and it wasn’t long before the students in the course were making an impact on campus. Franklin combined a classroom element, where they discussed and debated the sustainability of economic and foreign policies with a project element—where students went out and created sustainable solutions to problems. They developed “learning farms” in front of his classroom where they raised their own food and—as part of “our community philosophy”—gave away what they grew outside the dining hall during lunch. Students created public relations campaigns to raise awareness around campus and started worm farms for composting.
“Ten years from now, I expect we won’t be sending any waste off campus,” Franklin said. “That’s not just my goal, but what I see actually happening. We’re creating an academic foundation for a campus that is truly sustainable.”
But more importantly, what Franklin sees happening now is a shift in attitudes among his students as the course evolves.
“It’s kind of revelatory for the kids,” Franklin said. “It’s definitely raised consciousness, if not a change in lifestyle. They come to me and tell me when they come across things in their life outside of school that pertains to topics we discuss in class. They are becoming more conscious of how they live.”
[MKK Summer 2010]
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Story by: Betsy Tranquilli
Editor’s Note: Betsy Tranquilli teaches Lower School physical education at HPA. She is a freelance writer and previously worked as a reporter for West Hawai‘i Today.
