These Students Look Beyond Books and Classrooms for the Future of Education

While lawmakers on Capitol Hill continue to debate teacher evaluation and preparedness, several potential educators are hitting the road — instead of books — as part of a month-long road trip to find inspiration.
The TEACH Roadtrip, which is sponsored by Participant Media and Roadtrip Nation, follows three twenty-something students as they travel from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., stopping along the way to interview teachers, activists, lawmakers and entrepreneurs who are shaping the education field.
Over the next 10 years, America will need to replace the 1.6 million teachers expected to enter retirement, according to the U.S. Department of Education. But in order to do that, future educators need to see past the exhaustive debates that plague the education space. And that’s exactly why Rafael Silva, Nadia Bercovich, and Grace Worm are looking for affirmation as they contemplate heading into education.
Inspired by Davis Guggenheim’s documentary, TEACH (which airs on Pivot TV this fall), the group will travel 4,000 miles to spotlight influential leaders like Robert Florio, a veteran and special education teacher with Troops to Teachers; Kelly Meyer, creator of American Heart Association’s Teaching Gardens; and Rahm Emanuel, mayor of Chicago.
Along the way, Bercovich, Silva and Grace hope to glean insight to inspire themselves, as well as the next generation of teachers.
“Every person has a responsibility to teach,” Worm says, “by being part of a world that kids can look to and learn from and, with our help, make it better.”
Worm graduated from the University of Texas at Austin this past summer and is hoping the journey will bridge her transition into a teaching role. Bercovich, who was born in Argentina, has spent the past year backpacking South America and teaching a combination of English, yoga and art therapy. She hopes to meet education innovators to inspire her goal to teach creatively.
University of California at Los Angeles junior Silva has been working toward a career in medicine. But he’s more interested in teaching and is looking to the road trip to convince him.

“I care about education because I have received such a great one, and it has made me who I am today,” Silva says. “I want to make sure other people have the opportunity to go through the same experience I did.”

Their journey may end on September 6 in the nation’s capital, but their potential to shape education is just starting.
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Want to Help Save the Planet? Take This Pledge to Eat Less Meat

America: The country where people are applauded for eating a 72-ounce steak in one sitting. The country where, in the name of competition, people wolf down 79 hot dogs in 10 minutes. The country that celebrates a national holiday by cooking a 20-pound bird that no one ever finishes.
There’s no denying that a steak is delicious. And it’s certainly okay by us to indulge during Thanksgiving. But it’s a fact that Americans are over-proteined. We eat more meat than nearly every other population on the planet. And even though the American Heart Association recommends eating less than six ounces per day of meat, many of us eat double that amount — putting us at a much higher risk for cardiovascular disease.
But not only does eating too much meat takes a toll on the body, it’s also bad for the planet. Did you know that meat production is responsible for 14.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions — more than all forms of transportation combined? Or that wild animals such as wolves, elk and prairie dogs are threatened because we eat so much meat?
That’s why the Center for Biological Diversity has launched a new campaign called Take Extinction Off Your Plate that urges the public to eat less meat in order to save wildlife, habitats, water resources, air quality and the climate.
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According to the organization, if Americans eliminated meat for a single night a week, that’s the same as taking 30 to 40 million cars off the road for a year. If we reduced our meat consumption by one-third, it would have the greenhouse gas equivalent of driving 2,700 fewer miles and saving 340,667 gallons of water per year. The good news is that meat consumption is already down — we’re wising up about how unhealthy it is to eat so much, and we are buying less due to rising beef, poultry and pork prices, the New York Times reports.
For anyone interested in taking the pledge, you can sign up here. And in the meantime, does anyone feel like loading up on some broccoli?

Are Marketing Tricks the Secret to Making Healthier Choices?

Forrest General Hospital in Mississippi wants fewer heart patients. The hospital partnered with the American Heart Association to commemorate National Eating Healthy Day and the “My Heart, My Life” program, and they brought cafeteria revolutions to a new level. They didn’t stop at swapping out fatty, high-sodium foods for healthier options. And they didn’t stop at adding low-calorie and diet drinks. They took a marketing-minded approach, implementing strategic steps like rearranging vending machines to put the healthy options right in front of everyone’s faces. They connected with nearby colleges as well—students contributed recommendations based on the latest research, while chefs, culinary developers, and nutritional developers have been rotating in to create a well-rounded menu. The project became a comprehensive community-based program that can help people learn to make permanent diet changes.