Chapter 5: Solutionary Leadership: Creating a Culture in Which Ecologically Minded Teachers Thrive

Construction surrounds Central Park School for Children, where we work and send our own children. The downtown area around the school in Durham, North Carolina, is undergoing an urban uplift in order to bolster business and drive demand. Every day we are witnesses to an array of bulldozers and dump trucks pushing and hauling mounds of soil, cranes twirling steel beams like batons, and orange cones rearranging our usual routes. The demolition of one building uncovered a red clay square, a noticeable anomaly in a sea of cement and asphalt. Roots from the leveled landscape protruded from the ground as if raising their arms in surrender.