Atrium School class convinces governments to decrease margin sizes and help save the planet There is a lot of wisdom in the “don’t sweat the small stuff” philosophy, but one of the smallest classes in Watertown’s Atrium School has made a huge impact by promoting a small idea. This spring, the fourth grade managed to convince two towns and the entire city of Boston to “Change the Margins” to save paper. “We planned to study government after studying global warming. And the kids wanted to do something to reduce our carbon footprint. Paper seemed a natural resource to look at,” said teachers Dan Berman and Norah Dooley. A simple and relatively small change in how one prints out word processing documents saves water, trees and significantly lowers the CO 2 in the atmosphere. The teachers told their students about an idea to change the margins on word-processed documents to increase text area and how it reduced use of white office paper by more than 19 percent. The class studied paper use in their school, and the fourth grade had the Atrium School change the margins an all computers. Their combined study of how government works, persuasive writing projects and science culminated with each student researching and writing to their respective town governments. “We contacted Watertown Council member Susan Falkoff, and she was in our corner from the very beginning. Her advice and encouragement were invaluable,” said Dooley. The students wi ...
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Atrium School class convinces governments to decrease margin sizes and help save the planet There is a lot of wisdom in the “don’t sweat the small stuff” philosophy, but one of the smallest classes in Watertown’s Atrium School has made a huge impact by promoting a small idea. This spring, the fourth grade managed to convince two towns and the entire city of Boston to “Change the Margins” to save paper. “We planned to study government after studying global warming. And the kids wanted to do something to reduce our carbon footprint. Paper seemed a natural resource to look at,” said teachers Dan Berman and Norah Dooley. A simple and relatively small change in how one prints out word processing documents saves water, trees and significantly lowers the CO 2 in the atmosphere. The teachers told their students about an idea to change the margins on word-processed documents to increase text area and how it reduced use of white office paper by more than 19 percent. The class studied paper use in their school, and the fourth grade had the Atrium School change the margins an all computers. Their combined study of how government works, persuasive writing projects and science culminated with each student researching and writing to their respective town governments. “We contacted Watertown Council member Susan Falkoff, and she was in our corner from the very beginning. Her advice and encouragement were invaluable,” said Dooley. The students wi ...