4 Going Green

Chapter 4 Going Green Boy, Mr. Granite wasn't kidding about making Ella Mentry School green. Everybody was doing their part to save energy and help the environment. Miss Lazar, our school custodian, put solar panels up on the roof to collect the sun's rays and turn them into electricity. Miss Lazar is bizarre! Ms. Hannah, our art teacher, hates throwing stuff away. She told us to bring in plastic bags from home instead of throwing them in the garbage. She showed us how to make plastic bags into butterflies, kites, and dream catchers. Ms. Hannah is bananas! Mr. Docker, our science teacher, is off his rocker. He has a car that runs on potatoes

instead of gas. Mr. Docker converted the school bus to run on potatoes, too. And he helped Mrs. Yonkers, our computer teacher, to hook up potatoes to power the school computers. So now she says that "PC" stands for "potato computer." Mrs. Yonkers is bonkers! Mrs. Cooney, our school nurse, brought a giant tube of toothpaste to school one day. It was about the size of a first grader! Mrs. Cooney is loony! She said that when you buy large sizes of stuff, you don't have to go shopping so often. There's less waste, and you save money, too.

Ms. LaGrange, our lunch lady, told us to pack our lunches in reusable containers instead of in paper bags so we'd have less garbage. She also brought in a bunch of cows to graze on the grass in the field behind the school. Now the lawn doesn't need to be mowed anymore. And we get free milk too!, I don't know where Ms. LaGrange got the cows. I guess she went to Rent-A-Cow. You can rent anything. Ms. LaGrange is strange. Mrs. Roopy, our librarian, read us a book about how trees give off oxygen (which is good stuff) and absorb carbon dioxide (which is bad stuff). Then she helped us plant a tree in the middle of the library. Mrs. Roopy is loopy! And Mr. Klutz, well, he put up a giant windmill in the field behind the school. When the wind turns the blades of the

windmill, it makes electricity. The whole school was going green! Part of the reason was that we all knew it was good to save energy and reduce waste. The other part was that we all like chocolate cake. "Do any of you have other ideas to help the environment?" Mr. Granite asked us while we were pedaling to nowhere. Little Miss I-Know-Everything was waving her hand in the air like she was trying to signal a boat across the ocean. But Mr. Granite called on me instead. So nah-nah-nah boo-boo on Andrea. "I know a way to save energy," I said. "You should close the school down and let us stay home all day. Then we could sit around and do nothing. That would save a lot of energy." Everybody laughed even though I didn't

say anything funny. "How about you, Andrea?" asked Mr. Granite. "Can you think of another way we can help the environment?" "We could use both sides of every scrap of paper," Andrea said. "And then we could recycle it." "That's an excellent idea, Andrea!" said Mr. Granite. Andrea stuck out her tongue at me. What is her problem? "Oh, snap!" whispered Ryan. "Andrea stuck her tongue out at you, A.J. Are you gonna take that?" "At Andrea's house," I told the class, "they use both sides of the toilet paper… and then they recycle it!" "That's gross, Arlo!" Andrea said.

"So is your face," I told her. "Oh, snap!" said Ryan.