"Ecotopian School Day"

"Suggesting a curriculum yet-to-come, while enjoying it in real time." Combining elements of participatory public theater, experimental high school, and political protest, Ecotopian School Day was a free, all-ages "alternative school day" that took place on July 9, 2022 in Salt Lake City, UT. It featured free breakfast & lunch, and eleven drop-in classes, many taught by the students themselves, that dove into topics like:

• Climate anxiety and mental health

• Indigenous stewardship and indigenous knowledge

• History of students' critical role in effective nonviolent justice movements

• "Circle-up" training and practice (restorative justice circles)

• Opportunities to get involved in local ongoing campaigns for eco & social justice

The event was a creative response to the lack of meaningful climate education in Utah's public schools, combined with students' urgent and unacknowledged calls to the Utah State Board of Education for curriculum change (which included a hand-delivered IPCC report and open letter).

Unwilling to wait around for the Utah State Board of Ed to lead the way, high school students from the youth climate activist group Fridays For Future Utah collaborated with my eco-theater organization Ecotopia Now!, to reimagine what school could look like if it were truly preparing them to outsmart the apocalypse and triumphantly create a world of sustainability and social harmony.

"What would your ideal curriculum look like?" we asked each other.

"What does school look like in ecotopia?" "IS there school in ecotopia?"

"What's the value, if any, in learning together, in-person? Why isn't the pandemic-style of school preferable: everyone lonely at home, glued to a screen, stuck in a never ending Zoom call?" "What's the role of mentors or teachers? Do we need them? If we do, what qualifies someone to be a teacher?" "How could a school day prefigure/ model/ be a microcosm of the more ideal society that we're suggesting?"

We were refreshingly uncertain. We leaned-in to our uncertainty and embraced the spirit of trusting our hunches. Everyone had at least one idea they wanted to try out, so we put it together like a mosaic. A big experiment. In that sense, Ecotopian School Day was a living experimental workshop: a mechanism for provoking, and discovering the way forward together. As the old saying goes: "you either win, or you learn" -- and we did both.

In the tradition of political theater like Gandhi's "Salt March", and Dr. King's "Lunch Counter Sit-Ins" the event worked on multiple levels: we effectively pointed to the mountaintop that we want our society to summit, while simultaneously enjoying the views from that summit right here and now. Or put another way: we knocked on the doors of The Powers That Be, by paradoxically building our own door, and letting ourselves right in.

Event website: https://www.studioecotopia.com/ecotopianschoolday