(Chief Sealth students Rachel Varney and Tasha Addington-Ferris)
Just one more school day left before Chief Sealth International High School‘s World Water Week festival – since Friday is a day off for Seattle Public Schools – and students’ preparation stepped up even further today. We visited this morning as students made and distributed posters, particularly promoting the Walk for Water that is scheduled on Friday, at the end of a week that’s beginning with author Robert Glennon‘s keynote speech (free, community encouraged to attend) on Monday night, introduced by Congressmember Jay Inslee. Here’s another one of the posters:

More teamwork to get ready for the awareness-raising weeklong festival: Social-studies teacher Noah Zeichner, who’s leading the project with senior Molly Freed (here’s their backstory), says a team of students has scheduled the entire student body into 17 workshops for the schoolwide teach-in a week from Friday. That, he says proudly, represented 4 hours of scheduling work. Speakers that day are coming from:

National Wildlife Association
PATH
Seattle Public Utilities
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
A Child’s Right
King County Wastewater Division
Seattle BioMed
Miller/Hull
Starbucks
Cascadia Building Council
Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition
Cascade Designs
Water for Humans

Zeichner adds, “Students will also be participating in a school-wide art project, a tap water taste test, and will attend sessions with CSI faculty members and parents telling personal stories about water scarcity in east Africa.” Tomorrow, yet more work – meetings, including Zeichner conferring with the 9th grader who will be handling audio/visual for World Water Week events; Molly will meet with student-body leaders to review key points of next week; and there’s more work on everything from posters to welcome packets for speakers. They’re not even taking Friday completely off – they have a morning work party to fill the water jugs that will be carried around the field at Southwest Athletic Complex during the Walk for Water. But the biggest job of all is one you can help with: Next Monday night, come to the 6:15 pm resource fair – which promises food, music, and information – and the 7 pm keynote speech; learn about water issues, and celebrate the hard work the students (and their teacher!) have been putting in.