Journal #11 Hurricane Katrina

I think one of the biggest questions that my seventh graders will have for me upon my return is about the Hurricane damage. To be honest I haven't seen a whole lot of damage. When you travel the area it is spotty. I bought a video that we can watch together about it so we can learn more about natural disasters. Everyone has a story though about it and it is something that has scarred the lives of the people who live here forever. Ihaven't been to some of the neighborhoods that have the most severe damage because they are not safe. There is unfortunately much discord right now in New Orleans.

Today I saw the above picture at the zoo. Even the zoo was damaged from the Hurricane. In this case the zoo had many bamboo trees and because of the hurricane they are now leaning. There are many environmental impacts that we don't get to see on the news. For example every time I go out in the forest there are a bunch of down trees. When I get back I want to look in further but there was a recent scientific project in which satellite imagery was used to assess damaged areas and specific forrested areas were giving a number based on the severity of their damage.

When things change... living things are forced to adapt. This is something that I am going to talk about all year in my seventh grade. Every topic that we will talk about has something to do with adaptations and surviving. Sometimes adaptations are for basic needs of survival. This is often what we mostly talk about in science class. For example certain animals can blend in very well with their surroundings, we call this camouflage.

There are other adaptations though that we don't get to talk about in science but they affect all of us. The better we are at being flexible the better we will psychologically and physically be. Such psychological adaptations sometimes get overlooked in science.

For example when one our classmates has an annoying habit. Instead of causing a disruption or make a comment, if we were just able to adapt and become flexible, our environment is greatly improved.

Many of our Girard students are so very good at adapting. They adapt to new teachers, new residential advisors and new students.