Saturday, December 21, 2013

The Problem with Keeping Orcas in Capitivity.


Recently two of our students had a bit of a disagreement on Sea World. One thought it was a wonderful place, and the other, a life long animal advocate shared what she had been studying elsewhere about the truth of how Sea World's captive animals were treated. Both students continued the discussion which included  more research about the life of whales at Sea World. The ethical treatment of all beings - including animals is very important to our students.

 Several petitions have been launched on the social activism platform www.Change.org to request that   prominent musicians including Willie Nelsen, and Heart, cancel their upcoming shows at Sea World, which they did after seeing the Sundance Film Black Fish. Another Change.org petition is hoping to gain enough momentum  to free the beautiful Tilikum.  National Geographic reports that children are also boycotting Sea World. 

Here's the YouTube preview for the film Blackfish - it is rated PG 13.




Saturday, December 7, 2013

On Gratitude - the Word of the Day for December 1st



  Gratitude  

Thanksgiving
Flowers 
heat
 food 
animals

Lego's 
sunlight
darkness
toys
fingers
peace
nerds
candy
books
cats

love
life
clothes 
school
sister

little sister
BES
Physics
TV
Hedgehogs

Hats
Homes
Element S2
iron
transistors

shopping
money
earth
cheese
Kerri-gold Dubliner

Tomorrow
Swiss Cheese
Kids section of Forever 21
blood
oxygen
air

sight 
photons
planets
heart
buddies

head
running
other body parts
and senses
friction
kinetic energy.

fun
energy
people making web comics
fiction
enjoyment
existence

the coast of Africa
calm
great food
death deities (Japanese)
scythe
Video Games.

All Rights Reserved
BES Sunday School Class December 2013









Saturday, November 16, 2013

On Growing a Green Wall, Having Enough, and Learning about Creativity and Cooperation

This month is the first official month where we've started to gather content for our blog. I will be acting as advisor for this Awesome Blog, and will contribute a monthly posts about what we've been doing and what we have planned.

We talk about a lot of things during Sunday School - and the topics this year have ranged from, bullying and how rules get broken, to when enough is enough, to and how young people contribute to making change in the world.

We've adopted as a group the program Free Rice as our community project this year, with an invitation to all of the BES members to participate in this great educational and humanitarian effort.

We started out the fall with the younger students planting lettuce terrariums, and the older students learning about growing green walls in Brooklyn, thanks to Ted Talks for Kids. Embedded next to this post is the Ted Talk on the student powered movement to bring city grown food to the local table in neighborhoods where food deserts had been the norm. The teacher is very energetic, and inspires the kind of passion neccessary to propel a movement. The older students also learned about the good, the bad, and the ugly of Sea World. They hope to continue a conversation/debate on varying view of how PETA handles mistreatment of animals.

In two weeks we will be presenting an original interpretation of the fairy tail Stone Soup during the annual Baltimore Ethical Society Harvest Festival. Learning the story and practicing for the play has been a great way for each of the students to individually and as a group to contribute to creatively building the story. We're looking forward to seeing how the play turns our next Sunday.

In future posts, we will be featuring segments from an interview with a young adult member Kate - and our VLOG editor Camille, along with more artwork, and contributions from all of the students.  

Here's a portrait of the gang - brought to you by one of our Awesome Kids, Brianna.