McLeod launches cleaning project, students should take action
The upper school principal called a short term scheduled assembly to introduce the planned solution.
The ZIS Upper School principle, John McLeod, called an unscheduled assembly in the theatre on last Tuesday, involving grades ten through twelve, in which he addressed the issue of littering in the school.
The solution that was presented, divides the school up in different sectors that are assigned to different grade levels. Every week a different advisory is picked, whose students clean up the area that is assigned to the grade level they are in. This concept met strong opposition amongst some students.
Furthermore he admitted that the solution was not ideal, but he encouraged the students upon their grumpy response to take the initiative and come up with solutions, but no suggestions have been handed in so far
Previously to this meeting there had been a number of announcements during advisory time, encouraging students to clean after themselves, however hoping for a feeling of responsibility in the students and stressing the importance of the community did not lead to the hoped results.
The incident that had triggered the discussion in the first place, was a tour for parents that wanted to send their children to the Zürich International School. However at the end of the tour the decided against ZIS, upon the behaviour of the students they saw and the mess that was produced by them. They stated that the conditions were unacceptable
One major flaw that students pointed out was the way the sections of the school were distributed. While on the second floor there rarely are large amounts of rubbish found, the cafeteria often is left in a battlefield, but the cafeteria was not assigned at all.
One theory that has been established to explain why the students are that careless is the lack of rubbish bins in the beginning of the school year, as well as the absence of any recycle bins. Since then the situation has improved drastically, but they are not being used as frequently as they should be.
Conversations among the students indicate how unhappy they are with the situation, not with the rubbish, but with the fact that they have give up five minutes of their lunch time to check if everything is cleaned up. They are not willing to do so and this attitude is contributing to the probability of this project not improving the situation at all. Most of the older students give the majority of the blame to the ninth graders, who previously have been proven to be immature in their behaviour. In addition the density of litter is the greatest in the areas that are usually occupied by the ninth and sometimes tenth graders.
Another problem that soon will arise is the fact that it is getting warmer and students will start too spent more time outside. As the students migrate outside, so does the rubbish. It has already been seen during the first two months of school that the current student body left the steps in front of the school and football field in a mess. Empty crisp bags were forgotten; lunch plates, empty plastic bottles and gum turned this usually pleasant space into a rather disgusting area. This is most probably going to repeat and no solution has been worked out for this scenario as to this day.
This problem has occurred multiple times in the past and usually the turned out to improve slightly after action was taken, but there was no real effect on a long term base. This incident is unlikely to be the last of its kind if there is not attitude change happening amongst the students.
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