By Valarie Schwartz
 “What improvements would you like to see in your community with respect to environmental stewardship, social equity and economic prosperity?â€
The above question started a contagion of thought that, like the falling leaves, continues to rain upon our community. The Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber Foundation for a Sustainable Community posed the question as an essay contest for students of our three high schools. Three prizewinners — all students at Chapel Hill High School — were selected from the 50 entries.
The first- and second-place winners, Pete Singer and Julia Ganzi, respectively, both 15, are students of Thomas Greene, a native of Hickory, who’s in his first year of teaching civics/economics and world history. He saw the contest as an opportunity for his students to connect what they were learning in class with the nearby outside world and offered extra credit for students who entered.
“It’s good to connect with the community,†Greene said. Reading the essays (10 of his students participated), provided him a closer look at his new community.
Proof that Greene’s on the right track with his teaching comes through in his words and actions: “If your life is not improved or your understanding of life is not improved, I’m not doing my job right,†he said of what he teaches about government policy, his passion. “I don’t lie to my kids.†He lets them figure things out. “The youth of your community is what is going to make it sustainable, along with the quality of their education.â€
“He’s really an inspiration to his students,†said Debbie Singer, mother of Pete, herself an inspiration and sustainer, having found room in her family of six children for two more children whose mothers’ troubles left them without the attention they deserved.
Pete won $500 for himself and $150 for Greene as teacher of the first-place winner.
But Pete didn’t keep the money. He went with Plan B, which was to give the money to a neighbor whose home was lost in March to a fire. Plan A had been to start the nonprofit he mentions in his essay.
“HOPS, or Helping One Person Succeed, is my idea of a program funded through private and public means, through the community, that would mentor and assist the single African-American mom,†he wrote. “A program to be set up to give emergency food assistance, and to also guide and mentor the mom in childcare, educational guidance and job applications.â€
Pete’s mom said he had considered using the prize money to get HOPS rolling, but as a starter on the Chapel Hill High School varsity basketball team (hmmm, wonder what inspired that acronym), Pete knows he hasn’t the time now and that the money wouldn’t go far. The neighbor, however — a single mother whom he has not only personally helped but through getting friends involved earning community service hours helping her — could find many uses for the money now.
Third-place winner, Chelsea Guild, a 17-year-old senior, entered the contest not through a teacher’s guidance but through her father’s. She, like Pete and Julia, provide compelling insight into the minds of the youth we are raising in this community. Take a look for yourself by clicking on the website version of this column at www.carrborocitizen.com, where all three essays are posted at the bottom of the column.
Our village certainly grows some good ones, and contests like this one fuel and expand their ideas, sowing seeds of sustainability.
Contact Valarie Schwartz at valariekays@mac.com or 923-3746.