SOY in Cougar Country

Today, we had a great lunch tabling at Crockett HS, home of the Cougars.  Because of that, we had added a question to our t-shirt challenge about cougars: where are they native?  None of the students we asked really knew for sure!  In truth, we had to do the research first ourselves...

Also, because tomorrow, December 10, is International Human Rights Day, we asked students to write down the human rights most important to them.

We added #BlackLivesMatter to the Peace Wheel, hoping students are involved and learning about what's happening all around the country.

We really appreciated all the students coming by and taking on the t-shirt challenge.  Penny poll results:

Environment: 30% of the budget
Education: 20%
Military: 18%
Health Care: 16%
Humanitarian Aid: 16%

SOY tabling at Lanier HS

Last Tuesday, we had a SOY table at Lanier HS and we had a full crew of five!  We had a steady stream of students passing by and becoming curious about the materials and getting interested in the t-shirt challenge.  Penny poll results were:

Education: 42% of the budget
Environment: 24%
Military: 16%
Health Care: 13%
Humanitarian Aid: 5%

I especially liked seeing students clustered around the globe, not only to find the countries we asked them to find, Syria and Afghanistan, but to show us what countries they would like to travel to if they could.  The first countries mentioned were Japan, Spain and Italy.  This made me think about the time in the not-so-distant past when Japan was considered an enemy nation, and it was bombed relentlessly during WWII.  It is the only country to have suffered the horror of two atomic bombings of their civilian population.  Japan has risen from that period of terrible suffering and destruction to become a world economic power and tourist destination.  Today's students are not likely to say that they would like to travel to Afghanistan or Syria.  But, I hold out hope that years down the road, wars there will end and students will name those countries as places they would like to go to witness the beauty and character of the people and the land.

One of the ribbons on the peace sign in the school's lobby

Other ribbons on the peace sign

There is no future in war: a youth manifesto

We, the youth of the United States of America, oppose war. 
We oppose war not because we don’t care about the rest of the world; we oppose war precisely because we do.
We oppose war not because we don’t care about our security; we oppose war precisely because we do. 
We oppose war not because we don’t care about our troops; we oppose war precisely because we do.
We oppose war not because we aren’t concerned with our future; we oppose war precisely because we do. 

There is no future in war.

-- Statement written by Ben Norton, Tyra Walker, Anastasia Taylor, Alli McCracken, Colleen Moore, Jes Grobman and Ashley Lopez

Read the entire statement here