By Owen Xu Li
In August, I entered a new American school in Mexico City. I founded my own organization called Environment Life Future (ELF). At first, I did activities all by myself, but then I realized my school enabled students to create their own clubs, which means students were in charge, instead of teachers. The idea of creating my own club rolled around my head for quite a while, I planned what I wanted to do. Some months later, my school held what is called a Club Fair, in which all the clubs registered in the school would have a chance to present themselves in front of everybody. I noticed that here was where every club gained the most members.
In January, I finally decided that I wanted to create my own club, with the name of my organization. I asked the activities coordinator about it, and she told me it was fine, but I needed a faculty sponsor, a teacher that would be supervising me and my club. I found it very hard to find a teacher that would be willing to be my faculty sponsor.
In February, another Club Fair was held, but I didn’t have my club registered yet, so I wasn’t able to participate. In this Club Fair, I joined the Sustainability Committee. In the Sustainability Committee, we recycled every day and we did other activities related to the environment.
One day, we were recycling, and I saw a professor I never saw before. When we finished I forgot about him. During lunch, I saw the same professor that was with us 10 minutes ago in his room. I noticed he was an animal lover and environmentalist immediately when I walked into his room. The first thing I saw where all kinds of fish, and a python, and various plants. I also noticed he had an axolotl. I told him about my club, and he loved the idea.
After that, I registered my club, invited 5 of my friends, and since then, the school provided us the Upper School Garden, many plants, and we certainly are eager to do more.
