The Green School

Jan.28.09

Well that was intense! In more ways then one. We just returned from a seven hour journey to and fro from the Green School with a tour and dinner in between. I do not suggest taking a motor bike to the Green School. I do not suggest driving a motor bike in Bali period! Unless you are in a small town where the cops don’t care or you have already paid them off. The Lonely Planet book warned that you really do need an International license to drive here and unfortunately we didn’t believe it!

We got pulled over on the way to the school and had to pay 200,000 rupiah ($20) to the cop who pulled us over for having our bike slightly twisted to the right while waiting at a light, i.e. any reason that he could ask us for our non-existent International license. After we paid him he generously offered to show us the way to the school (maybe he felt guilty) and we were really lost. This was going okay until we ran out of gas. We luckily were close enough to a “petrol station” but by that time we had lost our cop tour guide. At this point we were not sure where we were on the map or where exactly we were headed. Even though we had directions from out hotel manager they didn’t seem to help because there were no visible signs for any of the roads. It became clear after asking three people for directions that counting street lights is the main way most people will direct you... “go through four lights and then take a left.” Amazingly, we left at 1:30 to travel the 45 minutes to the school for a tour scheduled at 3:00 p.m. “sharp” according to the website. We arrived at 3:15. We managed to take 1 hour and 45 minutes to complete the ride there. Yikes! We were grateful that we made it at all. We quickly jumped into the already started tour and interestingly enough found that 4 out of the 8 people on the tour had ties to Boulder. Go figure! Steve and I were two, then a woman named Sunny and the admissions director Ben, who was giving the tour.

The bamboo structures (as the website shows) are beautiful. (www.greenschool.org) The design, practicality and “greenness” of the campus is quite impressive. They have soaked the bamboo in Boric Acid to keep the termites away which is typically a problem when building with bamboo in the jungle. There is even a truck made of bamboo! The toilets are composting and even the pre-schoolers are aware of the pee seat and pooh seat which are separated. There is a very cool water vortex which will soon have a water turbine attached to create enough power for two or three households.

There are gardens close to all the “classrooms”. The preschool and kindergarten were growing egg plant to make baba ganoosh (sp?).



These classes are not really rooms and don’t really have walls. It turns out that the teachers are quite puzzled with how to present the student’s work. I am sure there are many complications like this when teaching in the jungle.



I feel excited about the whole place even with its challenges. It is growing and it isn’t perfect. Seven families left this year. A new director was brought in on December 1st, 2008. He has been there for two months and apparently walked in the day that all of the families were meeting for a group meeting to discuss their grievances. To top it all off CNN happen to be there for a special on the school. The revolting parents gave him a deadline (that is quickly approaching) of February 15th for a list of 78 things that they wanted changed. As I have experienced with Wondertree, communication seems to be at the heart of all the major problems. So now they have a fancy director and it seems that things are headed in the right direction. I hope so. It is a massive undertaking but the kind of thing that would really impact the world.




It is funny to have both Steve and I experiencing this together. I see all problems and think, “cool, this is the best time to jump in and get our feet wet”. While Steve thinks, “let’s wait and see if the school exists two years from now and then see”. It will probably be the latter for us so that Steve can get his Masters in teaching and I can get some more teaching experience but I do think that this was more than just a tour for us. If the school does succeed there will be plenty of positions that need to be filled. They currently have 104 students split up between a preschool, kindergarten and have children combined for grades 1st and 2nd, 3rd and 4th, 5th and 6th, and 7th and 8th. They hope to open up their classes to each grade on its own and adding a high school. We will definitely keep tabs on this project and I wish them the best in creating a school that combines “greenness”, "internationality", culture, and creativity!