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Category Archives: Environmental

Eco-Schools

Posted on July 2, 2012 by mragregory
Eco school in Maida Vale

Eco school in Maida Vale (Photo credit: Artivist)

The progress my school has made in this area over the past year has been astounding. With a group of enthusiastic young people and equally enthusiastic staff we have:

  • Established an Eco Council
  • Gained the Bronze and Silver Eco Schools Awards
  • Completed Two ‘Switch-off’ fortnight’s with the help of our eco ninjas
  • Raised awareness across the school about environmental issues
  • Worked with our local community to complete a litter pick in the area surrounding the school
  • Participated in the ‘Big Pedal’
  • Reduced the amount of energy that the school uses
  • Run an eco art competition
  • Worked alongside the environmental regeneration charity Groundwork
  • Created our own ‘Moodle’ page for eco activities

This is remarkable progress within a single year.  I only hope that we maintain the momentum next year and build upon all of this good work.  Hopefully by July 2013 there will be a Green Eco Schools Flag flying outside the school :-)

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Big Pedal = Big success

Posted on March 26, 2012 by mragregory

The Big Pedal that was led by our school eco council proved to be a massive success.  We involved lots of the school community including staff, students and a parent.  I had  a bit of a disaster with my bike the first week (see blog post here) but managed to clock up 200 miles in the second week.  My biggest weekly distance so far.  The whole school got behind the initiative and it was good to see so many people throwing them into the spirit of the competition.  As well as reducing our carbon footprint and keeping ourselves fit and healthy the data from the 3 weeks of cycling will be analysed in Maths and ICT lessons.

The school eco council continues to go from strength to strength and this is just one of the many things the group are currently involved with.  You can see local newspaper coverage of the Big Pedal by clicking here.

Hopefully the amount of staff and students cycling to school will remain high throughout the coming months.

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The Big Pedal

Posted on March 5, 2012 by mragregory

Today marks the start of The Big Pedal.  This is an activity we have signed up to as part of our eco-council activities.  You can find out more about the challenge here.  As well as doing this from an environmental point of view I’m also using it to hopefully up my mileage on the cycling to work.  I’ve not managed to get above the 125 miles in a week mark so over the next 3 weeks I’m aiming to do something about this.  We have 40 staff and students signed up for cycling as much as possible over the next 3 weeks so that should spur me on!

Platform pedal with pins

Image via Wikipedia

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A good week for publicity

Posted on November 13, 2011 by mragregory
It’s been a good week or so for publicity for my 30 Challenges with articles in the following:

Leigh Journal

Leigh Reporter

Wigan Evening Post

Bolton Evening News

I’ve been pleased with the progress I’ve made with the cycling to work having now notched up over 400 miles.  I’m getting into the swing of it now and think I’ll be able to get my weekly total up to the 125 miles a week I need to meet my goal of 500 miles a month.  I’m also really enjoying going swimming which has surprised me a lot!

I’m on day 21 of my 30 day vegetarian challenge and the end is in sight.  This is one challenge that I’m finding hard to look on the bright side with.  I’m eating lots of different things which is a bit of a novelty but I doubt I could maintain my vegetarianism any longer than the 30 day challenge.  It doesn’t however seem to be having any impact on my physical challenges, something I was worried about beforehand.

 I’ve also just submitted another assignment for my MSc dissertation course.  The focus group discussions I have conducted so far have been fascinating but there’s still a lot of work to do.  I need to run 6 more focus group sessions and transcribe them before Christmas.  My literature review chapter could do with being rewritten and I need to make a start on the project review chapter.  Before the end of January I could do with having all of this finished so that I can submit a draft copy of my dissertation, prior to handing in the finished product by the 17th of March.

Tomorrow I’ll be attending another full governor meeting at my school.  I go to all three sub committee meetings- finance, curriculum & staffing and pupil welfare and am the governor responsible for looked after children and children with special educational needs.  So far I’ve been to two governor training sessions run by the local authority and I’ve got one this coming Tuesday on improving the attainment of children in care.

So in summary… I’m incredibly busy but loving every minute of juggling all of these challenges alongside my other responsibilities.  The fact that the students I worked with managed to raise over £4000 for Cancer Research as part of our harvest appeal is giving me a further boost and spurring me on.  Well done guys!

Cancer Research UK

Image via Wikipedia

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The Devil’s highway

Posted on November 3, 2011 by mragregory

It’s been an interesting few days that I’ve been having.  The cycling is going well and I’m now on day 11 of 30 being a vegetarian.  I’m finding being vegetarian much tougher than doing without caffeine (my last 30 day challenge).  I know exactly how many days I’ve got left to go.  On one of the few days I decided to drive rather than cycle home I was treated to a 2hour traffic jam, the majority of which was spent alongside a Burger King lorry and it’s giant picture of a succulent burger…  

The cycle home from work is definitely providing me with the toughest challenge so far though.  I usually  really enjoy the cycle to work- the roads are quiet, the world is peaceful and it’s nice to be around to watch the sun come up.  This isn’t the case for the ride home!  It’s stressful, people constantly seem to be trying to injure me or knock me off the bike.

A roads in Zone 6 of the Great Britain numberi...

Image via Wikipedia

Wednesday evening was probably the hardest ride, what with being pelted with stones by kids stood at a bus stop and then crashing the bike in the dark on the A666.  Without street lighting this part of the public highway seems to be living up to it’s code and it’s pretty treacherous.  Fortunately my only injury was a bruised ego and a slight laughing fit at ending up in a heap at the side of the road.  I’ve cycled 300 miles so far which equates to a saving of 360 miles that I would usually drive (it’s 30 miles driving on the motorway, 25 miles if I cycle).  I need to be averaging 125 miles a week to achieve my target of 500 miles a month and I’m happy I’ll be able to get up to this figure now that I’m feeling fitter and more comfortable on the bike.  Overall I’m glad to be doing the cycling from a fitness and environmental point of view.

Continuing with the environmental theme, tomorrow is the first meeting of our school eco-council.  This is part of the challenge to make the school that I work in more sustainable.  I’m looking forward to hearing the ideas our young people have to make the school a greener place.  Other progress I’ve been making recently includes submitting an assignment for my MSc, reading some more of War and Peace for the 12 novels challenge and attending some school governor meetings this afternoon.

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Posted in 12 Novels, 30 days, Academic, Cycling, Eco School, Environmental, Physical Challenges. Bookmark the permalink.

Cycling to work

Posted on October 3, 2011 by mragregory
Pictograms of Olympic sports - Cycling (mounta...

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Due to the delay in obtaining a bike to do the cycle to work I’m currently about a month behind in my attempts to clock up 5000 miles.  My challenge is to cover 500 miles a month by cycling to work instead of driving.  Using this logic I’m aiming to cycle to work and back 11 days a month, of the roughly 20 days a month I go to work.  I work in a school so will work around 10 months over the Challenges 30 year, so a total of 5000 miles if I do 500 miles a month.  I expect that I’ll do more miles towards the end of the challenge year with it being nicer weather and hopefully an improved level of fitness, as long as I do 5000 miles in total it doesn’t matter when I do them.

Today was my first proper attempt and I managed the approximately 23 miles (one way) in about 1hr 45min.  Hopefully this time should go down as I get fitter and more used to the bike.  I really enjoyed the journey and being awake to see the sun coming up!  With a swim on sunday and a cycle today I’m definitely enjoying the physical training that I’m doing at the moment.  The Triathlon and cyclo-cross seasons won’t start until next year (around April)  so I’ve got plenty of time to get myself in shape.

The most pleasing part of cycling today was seeing that the distance was do-able and that I don’t always need to drive.  I’ll enjoy it so much more when I don’t.

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A busy week

Posted on September 30, 2011 by mragregory
List of invasive species in the Mid-Atlantic r...

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This has possibly been the busiest week of my life but I’ve loved every minute of it.  I had a curriculum evening at work and an after work union meeting to attend but I’ve managed to do lots of things that contribute to my challenges:

  • On Wednesday we held a meeting in school to discuss the report from our environmental audit and how we could implement the recommendations.  We have chosen reducing energy and paper recycling as our main focus for the start of our eco journey.  The keen staff that we’ve got together will be delivering assemblies over the next few weeks to recruit students to our eco council.  We then hope that they will choose which way the school should progress.  This is all part of my improving the environmental credentials of the school challenge.
  • After this meeting I carried out my first of ten focus group sessions to collect data for the MSc challenge that I’m completing.  The students were amazingly frank and mature in the discussion and raised some interesting points.  They managed to talk for the whole hour which means I’ve got a lot of typing to do.  I reckon it will easily take 3 hours to transcribe the discussion and I need to get this done before the next one takes place next week.  I’d complain but I find it fascinating!
  • Also on Wednesday I attended some excellent training for school governors on Performance Management.  Despite being a member of staff in a school I was correct in thinking that I didn’t already know it all!  It was particularly interesting to hear how headteachers are performance managed by some of the governors.  It’s a challenge of mine to volunteer as a governor but in addition to this I’m also hoping to attend 7 evening training sessions I’ve booked myself onto.  One down six to go!
On top of all this I am part way through my 30 days of no caffeine.  I seem to be having less problems with this than I was expecting.  The main difficulty I’ve encountered is asking for decaf instead of just keeping my mouth shut and getting what I’m given!
This weekend I’m hoping to:
  • Crack on with with of the 12 books I’m attempting to read
  • Update and complete some more random acts of kindness
  • Sort the bike out I’ve bought so that I can start cycling to work
  • Go swimming
Anyway… after a quick update I best get back to transcribing the focus group recording…. :-)

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Finally got myself a bike!

Posted on September 24, 2011 by mragregory

Having a bicycle to ride is a pretty fundamental part of the whole challenges 30 concept.  I need one for

  • the olympic triathlon challenge,
  • the cycling to work challenge,
  • the completing a cyclo-cross race challenge, 
  • cycling the coast to coast trail challenge
  • cycling 500 miles a month to work to reduce my carbon footprint
which has made the 9 weeks it has taken to get one incredibly frustrating.  Lucky enough to work for an employer that is part of a cycle to work scheme I can get a bike up to £1000 and pay for it in 12 X 0% APR monthly payments.  Not only that, the final amount I pay is reduced (to around £650 if you spend the full £1000 permitted) because the payment for the bike is taken out of my salary before tax not after.  In principle the scheme is fantastic and now I have my bike I think I’ve got a really good deal.
Unfortunately the process itself is a nightmare.  For a start there is more than one cycle scheme, so each employer will be in one of the variations.  Similarly bike shops are affiliated to a scheme, as well as being affiliated to certain bike manufacturers.  So I’m sure you can tell what’s coming next….  Finding a shop that is linked to your employer and has a bike that you actually want to be is far less simple than it should be.  On top of this once you have matched all of the variables up the process to actually purchase the bike you want is equally onerous with paperwork being sent all over the place, codes being entered, more paperwork generated and finally (after 8 weeks in my case) a certificate being issued so it can be exchanged it for the bike you want.
However, I now have a bike I want for much less than it should have cost so perhaps I should stop whingeing about the effort required to get it and put some effort into making those pedals go round.  Yet again my list of challenges aren’t the extent of my challenges30 adventure. If I’d known how much of a challenge it would be to get a bike on the cycle to work scheme I would have added it to the list!

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Eco School

Posted on July 3, 2011 by mragregory

In my attempts to be more green I feel I should also try to influence the staff and young people with whom I work. Lots of primary schools do amazing things but I think us at secondary level are (generally but not always) way behind. So over the next year, and into the future, I’ll be hoping to follow the example of these young people:

Why not encourage your school to become an eco school? You can find out more about the scheme here.

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Cycling

Posted on May 8, 2011 by mragregory

I’ve been involved with an environmental regeneration charity since 2001 but it’s only more recently that I’ve thought more deeply about cycling and my commute to work. Now that I live 23 miles away from my workplace, as well as racking up a big fuel bill I also feel like I’m no longer doing what I know I should in respect to the environment.  So, I’m going to get myself a bike and attempt to cycle the 46 mile round trip as many times as possible each month aiming to cover at least 500 miles per month by doing this.

This should also prove to be a massive physical challenge as will competing in a cyclocross race.

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