It’s a Sunday afternoon and youth from George Mason High School and neighbors from the City are meeting in the home of Peter and Riva Adriance. We go around giving introductions and saying a few words about what brings us to the Transition Movement. Sandy is a Master Gardener with strong community interests; Tim is an environmental leader and chair of the City‘s Environmental Services Council; Dana is a member of the garden club and has interest in building a strong local community; Peter works with youth and adults to raise awareness on the moral and ethical dimensions of climate change. He and Riva both serve on the board of VPIS.

And the high school students like Elinore, Maria, Matt, and myself?  As youth, we have come to be engaged in a conversation seeking solutions to the challenges of our generation. To us, the Transition Movement offers a holistic approach to problems like peak oil and climate change, reaching into the domains of local economy, culture, and civic society. It is a means of fostering new relationships and a more tight-knit community. It addresses issues of energy consumption and use of resources and the values underlying them.

The Transition Town movement aims to foster local responses to the challenges of sustainability, and in the process, through the fostering of new relationships, to make communities culturally and spiritually richer. It has been taken up by cities and towns all around the world, stimulating a growing consciousness of possibilities born of collective action.

In Transition Totnes in the UK, the first Transition town, neighborhoods have become more vibrant and the local economy strengthened through a range of community enterprises.

In Transition Pittsburg, PA, local gardens planted in sunny patches on vacant lots of run down neighborhoods are not only reducing food miles, but providing affordable food for an ignored section of the community, instilling a new pride in the neighborhood, and engaging at-risk youth in an empowering alternative to getting in trouble.

In Transition Fujino, Japan, after the recent nuclear disaster, members of a local Transition group are hosting workshops that teach families to assemble solar panels to power their homes.

We ask ourselves, what are the possibilities for Transition Falls Church? This initiative began in early 2012, when seniors from the George Mason High School heard mention of the movement during the film “The Economics of Happiness” shown in a Theory of Knowledge class. Inspired, a group of interested youth came together, and a new Transition project was born.

Although this is the project’s second year in Falls Church, it’s a project that’s supposed to last decades because it aims at facilitating new structures founded on the values of community well-being and environmental stewardship -- a long-term and ongoing endeavor.

Currently, Transition Falls Church is in a phase known as “Awareness” which focuses on introducing the project to the community. Through talks and public films, we hope to foster discussion and spark imaginations. A few film screenings and discussions have already taken place, and the project continues its efforts to foster engagement and conversation. Central to this organic process of building interest is the development of new relationships.

Transition poses the possibility of an intergenerational movement. It also poses the possibility of becoming more present to one’s civic society. At these meetings, I’ve also met members of my City Council, discovering that they too are passionate about the blossoming of such efforts. Where I once thought there were only a few people who took problems like climate change seriously, I now have a sense that there are many individuals and groups in the community yearning for more action. Imagine the potential of Falls Church if these yearnings are consolidated and mature into concrete initiatives.

Thus far, I’ve come away from the project with these things: an appreciation for community connections, a desire to become more engaged in my civic society, and an excitement for the future.

A key message of Transition is that people can be awakened to a new power to address challenges like climate change when tapping into the unchecked potential of community, and we can do it creatively and become richer from the lessons we learn in the process. As Rob Hopkins, the pioneer of the Transition model has said, we don’t need to wait for anything to respond to these problems for us, because we’re already here.

In cooperation with VPIS, Transition Falls Church will host at the Community Center a screening and discussion on In Transition 2.0 on Sunday, May 5^th, 3:00-5:00pm. The film captures 16 inspiring stories from 7 countries around the world of ordinary people doing extraordinary things in their own communities. Come and get inspired!

Editor’s Note: Ronald Lapitan is currently a senior at George Mason High School.

Dear Editor,

Have you ever had a scheduling conflict that kept you out of a class? Well, with the creation of hybrid learning classes (also known as HyC), you could take that class online and alleviate the problem. The HyC classes can also be used for students who missed or failed a class necessary to graduate. While this sounds great in theory, it’s not as easy or fun as it sounds.

HyC takes place in the bowels of the school in a room hidden from plain view. Difficulties of finding the room aside, the HyC classes are still very rough around the edges in terms of learning and completing the units on time.

The teachers who staff the HyC classroom are highly skilled, but not necessarily in the content area of each students’ assigned HyC course.  Students in the HyC classroom are taking a wide array of courses in any one period, so there is little or no opportunity to question teacher-experts about the content.

Since it’s a self-paced class without a guaranteed curriculum-based teacher to expertly answer questions about a lesson or review a test or quiz with students, students are expected to complete the course work on their own time but within the semester. This can cause issues for students who slack and get behind. While this loose arrangement may be great for some, for the procrastinators out there, this causes student to get off track and likely get behind where they’re supposed to be, with the possibility of not finishing a semester on time or not being able to finish the class before an SOL in the class.

The worst thing about the HyC class is the nature of being taught not by a human teacher in a classroom able to answer questions, but by a cast of on-screen characters who act silly and wear outrageous costumes. Speaking for the geophysics class which I am enrolled in this year, the course is taught by everything from an alien (obnoxious voice included), a captain on the high seas (also with the bonus of an obnoxious voice), a faux TV channel, a talking rock (you heard me), and a woman in an air balloon. Not only is this agitating and aggravating, but their little “skits” in the middle of the lessons not only distract from the lesson but take away from what I’m supposed to be learning.

I, as well as many other HyC students, would prefer a teacher who dresses in less ridiculous fashion and delivers the lesson in a more professional manner. It would be a drastic improvement compared to having a man pretending to be German and a glacier whisperer when learning about glacier movements.

While the content is chosen from the program by actual teachers at George Mason High School, and there is a math, science, French, and history teacher monitoring the HyC classroom (one at a time), it can be challenging to try meet with a content-expert teacher of an assigned HyC course to answer questions. The teachers monitoring the HyC classroom do a good job of helping students stay on track by monitoring progress and giving encouragement, but with so many people in the room at a time it’s easy for one to fall through the cracks.

The best thing to do with the HyC program is find a way to make it more structured and more serious. The students in every class have a teacher who assigns units; these teachers should meet with the students and create a plan with weekly goals so they can finish on time. I know teachers have their own classes to deal with, but if they took five to ten minutes with each of their students during Mustang Block they could help create a plan with clear dates of when units should be completed and update it every quarter so it’s not just a mass of online folders to be completed by a vague date. This could prevent students from getting too far behind to be able to complete the class on time.

While the program is helpful for students in need of credits or who have scheduling conflicts, overall it’s still very rusty and has a lot of problems aside from the program itself. If the program becomes more regulated by teachers, it could become a better tool. Otherwise, I feel the school is wasting time and money on this program.

Read more from Simone Tucker >>>

Your first step into Falls Church’s new Caribbean-themed restaurant called The Caribbean Plate will be met with a bevy of bright, tropical colors. With the giant mural of a parrot to the beach umbrellas to the fish tank, you’ll be tempted to say “I don’t think we’re in Falls Church anymore, Toto.”

Thanks to my parents coming along, I was able to try three different dishes: the Chorizo and Fries platter, the Spinach and Artichoke empanada, and the Crispy Chicken Rolls.

The empanada and chicken rolls were both sufficiently crispy and full of mouth-watering flavor reminiscent of the Caribbean. Beware of spiciness, though. My favorite was the Spanish chorizo (pork sausage), which was satisfyingly succulent and flavorful. The yuca fries, similar to French fries but better in my opinion, were delightfully golden and crispy.

Despite the delectability of the food, the meals are served on Styrofoam plates and the metal chairs are cold and uncomfortable, which is somewhat disenchanting, but hey, you can always get the food to go.

So take a trip to the Caribbean, take a bite out of a juicy empanada, savor some jerk chicken, and sip on a refreshing tropical fruit smoothie, all without ever leaving your beloved Falls Church.

Dear Editor,

Picking up students after school is always a busy time in the loop along the side of the school. There are a few things that can make this process a little easier on everyone though. In regards to dropping off or picking up kids from the main entrance of the building, here are the top five do’s and don’ts in order to increase efficiency.

1. Don’t pull into the senior lot, stop in the middle, and/or circle around! If you can, avoid coming into the senior lot at all costs. When parents are stopped to drop off, pick up, or circle, it creates an added element of danger for kids who are walking through or trying to maneuver to get in or out. If you must pull into the lot, it is suggested by School Resource Officer Rau to back into a space near the back and out of the way, to create minimal interruption to the normal traffic as possible.

2. Do pull all the way up in the loop for picking up and dropping off. The loop does not stop at the front stairs! As convenient as waiting there may be, pulling up all the way could create room for up to six or seven more cars to wait in line and get out of the way of traffic on the main road, and especially from backing up onto Haycock Road.

3. Don’t forget about the back lot near the sports fields. If you arrange to pick up and drop off your child in the back, you will avoid an extreme amount of traffic and be in and out in much less time. An added benefit to this arrangement is being able to leave through the back and taking Route 66, avoiding all the traffic in the front of the school.

4. Do stop to let seniors in and out of their lot. Please don’t forget to yield to the seniors trying to enter or exit their lot from either exit. Every other car can create an easier flow of traffic and relieve congestion either from the main road in the morning or from within the lot in the afternoon.

5. Don’t sit in the loop for long, be ready for the student to exit the car and pull away in the shortest time so it does not hold up other people.

Try and keep these things in mind as they will help to improve the process for everyone involved. Thanks for your consideration.

Letter to the Editor: What’s the ‘buzz’

You've heard about it on the announcements. You've seen photos of the team in the news. Now this Thursday, April 4, is your chance to find out what Scholastic Bowl really is.

Scholastic Bowl, or Quiz Bowl, is a high school quiz competition team with a true community behind it. The Mason team currently holds several State Championships, yet it encourages all interested students to join it at any point during the school year.

"The great thing is that Quiz Bowl is open to everybody. Anyone can come and play whether they're looking to be a great player or just have fun and learn interesting things," said Liam O'Connell, senior captain.

This Thursday after school in Mr. Scharff's room (D124), the graduating Mason QuizBowlers and their teammates are hosting an interest meeting practice to introduce Quiz Bowl to curious students. The meeting will be open from 3:00 to 4:30. Students from all grades are welcome to drop by for any length of time to grab a brownie, hear some Quiz Bowl questions, and just have fun. No commitment is required.

“I'm hoping the meeting will clear up some of the misconceptions about Quiz Bowl,” said Crystal Luo, senior, “like the idea that you need to be a dedicated academic superstar in order to be part of the team. In reality, the competition is informal, and team members have widely varying interests. 

So whether you're into history, science, art, pop culture, literature, music, videogames, sports, or even none of the above, stop by D124 this Thursday to meet the team, grab some food, and try your hand at Quiz Bowl trivia.

Sincerely,

Elinore McLain

Guest Contributor