Olympic effort at SVES

Solar City Tower,” proposed for the island of Cotonduba situated at the mouth of the bay east of Rio de Janeiro, may be the welcome symbol and point of reference to the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio. It would be the first sight for arriving visitors and participants by air and water.

The tower captures solar energy to supply all of the Olympic City and pumps up water from the ocean to create a waterfall that will run turbines that produce energy, including the eternal fires of the Olympic flame.

We notice this even before the London Olympiad 2012 completes greening a previously dilapidated brownsville to underscore the change in our relationship to the future. Where Alvin Toffler previously identified our anxious experience of what is ahead in Future Shock, the challenges of tomorrow is increasingly becoming the logistical structures of today.

The London Olympiad met the challenge of real estate development and transformed an old industrial site on the East End of London into a more humane venue for public and private housing after its role as the Olympic Village this year. (For a brief moment in our wanderings, we did manage to hear the sheer glee out of Rio’s Copacabana, and breath the dusty decline of East End London.)

We witnessed what Shanghai did with the International Expo when it invited the world to showcase national efforts in humanizing urban dwellings and lifestyles, as 50 percent of the traditionally agrarian make-up of China had moved into the urban centers.

I remember the warehouse ambience of the two rooms I occupied at SVES where teachers put up images of their whole-year curriculum on the walls of the classroom, including the window panes since the rooms were air-conditioned; student learning was classroom confined where they read, listened, and memorized to pass standard tests.

We changed the pedagogy in our room, opened the windows and allowed natural light to shine. Preferring the coolness of natural air breezing into the class, we ran into the then SVES culture of imposed academic silence; our class sang songs, encouraged laughter, promoted the banter of open discourse, and repeated loud salutations. We proved to be a distraction to the neighboring classes.

We found the single air-conditioning unit distracting when it failed running at max capacity long past its warranty, abused rather than maintained tending to dysfunction. So we got StuCo funds to get us a second unit, ran them at normal capacity, with minimal breakdown disruptions when one coughed itself into repairs.

Guest worker Cris Lumanlan put wheels on our bookshelves and cabinets, turning and extending the ambience of our classroom to designs of our choice; the room center became the focus of the class away from the green board and the teacher. Student learning was our concern, and PSS’ Student First slogan was our delight.

When PSS installed flat screens and WiFi, our Science class watched BBC Attenborough’s award winning Blue Planet, of land and the oceans, fauna and flora of Gaia’s continents, instead of just burying one’s nose on a textbook.

Our memory and recollection was jarred when we finally viewed the YouTube show of Rob Stewart’s Sharkwater Saipan story where the CNMI banned the capture and possession of sharks in its sovereign territory. SVES teacher Kathy Pagapular-Ruszala and her 6th Grade class were shown in the SVES classroom I occupied, going one long mile further in actually aiding Diego’s effort to legislate the ban on shark finning, supported by Cinta and, presumably, her Carolinian network, and researching the sale of shark fin soup in Saipan restaurants. Wow, an effort worthy of a nomination for a Benchley Youth Activism award!

Which brings us back to building the future now, not from anxiety but from gracious resolve. That is what the Solar Tower of Rio and the Olympic East End village of London signify, our Shanghai Expositions on the Pudong side glorify, and now, the glocal teacher and her students in San Vicente Elementary School exemplify. The myriad of efforts and opportunities in making our planet green is inexhaustible. They also attest to a sustainable future NOW!

The audacity of hope is not just Obama’s catchy title to his book. It is an invitation NOW to transcend and transform our anxieties of inadequacy and insecurity into the immanent and transparent confidence that the journey from womb to tomb is and has always been a celebration of creativity that knows no bounds.

From the top, we can transform Military Defense to the Department of Peace, a sword-to-ploughshare mindset.

From the local level, mayhap Kaipat and Olopai, Sablan and Tenorio, Rayphand and Thornburgh, Borja and Cruz, and all other walking and awake humans, heed and proclaim the admonition of one carpenter from the ancient hills of the Levant who intoned: “You want to be well? Well, why not pick up your life, and walk?” No guarantees, warranties, and certitudes; only the invitation to freely choose the destiny of our lives!

Are we standing tall this day? Everything else follows our fundamental answer. Looks like the SVES kids joined today’s Olympiad of the land, the waters, and the soul. How about you?