Our Common Responsibilities - end of semester letter to my students

COLUMBIA SECONDARY SCHOOL FOR MATH, SCIENCE & ENGINEERING
A Public School, Community and University Partnership

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Our Common Responsibilities

To my dear students:

At the end of this amazing first semester of CSS’s existence I want to direct our collective attention to a moment of reflection – about what we need to do to become a more humane and caring community, about how we can improve ourselves as individuals by putting into practice the values we hold dearly, and about how we can contribute more to the greater good of humanity. That is…. I want us all to reflect about our school community, about ourselves, and about our planet…

I have said before that THIS IS A CRITICAL MOMENT IN YOUR LIVES – a critical period in these your most formative years. This is where you will define your goodness, your capacity for empathy, for caring and love, for being committed to a greater good… and for being a moral and ethical being. CSS should teach you many lessons, but the most important ones will not be measured by standardized tests, by grades, or even by admission into great colleges and universities.

The greatest lessons we have to offer you deal with values we should all hold as members of the most powerful, free, democratic society and as privileged inhabitants of this planet. These include the capacity to not just tolerate, but also, to be sensitive enough to appreciate and learn from human diversity. To be caring and empathetic – that is to love others and not only wish, but actually be committed to working for the fulfillment and happiness of others. To respect and protect nature – to be ethical stewards of this fragile blue planet to whom we owe our existence and on which our lives and that of millions of other species depends on.

There are three questions I want you to ponder about:

1) What is your responsibility towards yourself ?

2) What is your responsibility towards the others members of our school community?

3) What is your responsibility towards our planet and its future?

You are the most important citizens of our school and I propose to you that you can decide what kind of community we create – you can choose to build a generous, responsible, kind and caring community by your individual decisions. You can choose to build a community of scholars through dedication and hard work. You can choose to be leaders and become engaged as citizens of our school.

This year I have seen and heard beautiful acts of kindness, consideration and solidarity amongst you. I have seen incredible dedication, passion and commitment – and seen its results in academic excellence. Most of you have committed in principle, and more importantly, in action, to being respectful, loving and caring. Most of you have helped us become a better community by many small acts of kindness, by becoming involved in building, beautifying and cleaning our school. Thank you.

I have also, and I say this with concern and sadness, heard or witnessed unkindness of the kind that wrenches the soul and hurts the heart. Some of you have deeply hurt others and behaved towards our community in ways that are disrespectful and suggest uncaring. Those of you that have behaved in this way know who you are – and it is your responsibility to reflect on your actions and do something about it. I have also seen students who refuse to work – who are lazy and mediocre, who choose to not respond to the many attempts on our part to help them improve academically. And I have seen students who over and over again violate our standards of behavior, decency and community responsibility. I hope you will reconsider your attitudes and your actions and join us in building a community of caring and of excellence.

Just as this first year is a critical period in your life and in the life of our young school community; IT IS ALSO A CRITICAL TIME FOR OUR PLANET. The onslaught of our irresponsibility, our uncaring for our planet, is showing its devastating effects on our biosphere and its capacity to regulate the earth’s temperature and climate. Our world is warming as a result of our discharge of CO2 into the atmosphere – and it is your generation that will suffer the most severe consequences. For the first time in our species history, we are confronting the reality that our actions – our collective stupidity some would say, will alter our planet’s atmosphere, change its climate, melt the icecaps and radically alter the geography of our coastlines. This is a turning point in our history and the history of our planet – and you will be the first generation to live with these outcomes – and the last to be able to do something to prevent the worst damages from happening. This is a crucial responsibility – a moral imperative that you, as citizens of the country that has most polluted and damaged the planet, now have. How we respond to this challenge – how we change our behaviors to minimize our carbon footprint will determine how badly we damage our planet. I hope you all consider what each of you can do to make a difference.

As an institution we will take action. CSS will join Columbia University in its efforts to minimize our carbon footprint by implementing a green code of conduct. Next semester we will offer a Green Science elective class where you will learn how to assume environmental stewardship – so that you may become leaders who protect our environment. In our June mini-semester our 3 courses will be oriented towards understanding the environmental problems that effect biodiversity in Puerto Rico, the environmental problems associated with water for NYC, and green architecture – how to build a green building – which will include designing of our new school. And in the summer we will host an environmental leadership workshop where you will join students from other Harlem schools to identify and educate others about local environmental problems.

Join us in these efforts to become a Green school. It is efforts like these that will stem the tide of the devastation that is affecting our planet.

Finally I want to say how incredibly proud I am of all of you and of your mentors your teachers. We have grown much as a community in these short 3 months together. We are on the right track to build a community of excellence and of caring, and I am proud and excited to be part of this experiment. I look forward to next semester, when all of us, with renewed energy and commitment, can continue in this adventure of building CSS.

May the spirit of goodwill, love, and civic action, that our humanity so badly needs, permeate you during the holidays.

Sincerely,

Dr. Jose Gabriel Maldonado-Rivera
Principal

WE BUILD CSS TOGETHER!