On November 22nd and 23rd, the members of "Nature Preservation Service" Richard Fitzmaurice and Lena Emelyanova taught together 8 lessons at School #39 in Kazan. Their presentation was entitled ⌠Alternatives to New Year▓s Trees■. The idea of their lessons was to encourage the students to find alternatives to using trees cut from forests for New Year▓s celebrations. Since School #39 is a special English language school, part of the lesson was conducted in English. Richard began each of the lessons with a small warm-up game designed to introduce the students and get them thinking in English. The game was entitled ⌠Three truths and a lie■ and involved having the students write three things about themselves, two of them true and one of them false. After the students read their sentences out loud, the other students had to guess which of them were not true. After this game, Rich then began a discussion with the students about the similarities and differences between New Year▓s in Russia and Christmas in America. He also pointed out to the students that before the reforms of Tsar Peter I, Russians celebrated New Year▓s on September 1st and gave each other apples as presents. They also did not use New Year▓s Trees, a tradition that was later imported from Germany.
After revealing that the use of New Year's trees was not an old Russian tradition, as many of the students had thought, Richard then asked the students whether they thought it was a good tradition. During their discussion, Rich tried to avoid lecturing to the students. Instead, he steered the conversation by asking them questions and tried to have them talk as much as possible. When the students had difficulty understanding his English, Lena also helped translate what he said into Russian. Lena also played a small game with the students illustrating the dangers posed to forests from the uncontrolled cutting of New Year▓s Trees. She first drew some pine trees on the board and asked the students what things in a forest depend on trees, and following the responses of the students, she drew various animals, plants, mushrooms and ⌠fresh air■ on the board. Next, she asked the students which of them would like to cut down a tree for New Year▓s, and then invited students to the board to erase a tree. After all the trees were gone, Lena asked the students what would happen to the things in the forest which depend on trees, and then proceeded to erase the animals and other objects on the board. Finally, Lena asked the students to reconsider their choices, and invited them back to the board to redraw the trees.
Lena also demonstrated the sheer number of trees that are cut down every year around Kazan by first writing the figure of 1,200,000 on the board as the population of Kazan. Lena then asked the students to divide that number first by 4 to get a rough number of the households in the city, and then again by 3, since about 1/3 of households in Kazan celebrate New Year▓s with a tree. The resulting figure of 100,000 is roughly the number of trees that are cut down each year for New Year▓s celebrations in Kazan, which is enough trees to make up a small forest. The total number of trees that are cut down each year in Russia as a whole is much larger. Some of the students believed that a solution to this problem was to plant new trees to replace the trees that were cut down. Although this would alleviate the problem a little, Richard then explained that it takes about 7 years for a fur tree to grow one meter. Since the average size of a New Year's tree is almost 2 meters, it takes 14 years for a fur tree to grow that height. Over that same period of time, a family would have consumed 14 other trees for New Year's celebrations each year.
Richard then explained about some alternatives that could be used instead of cutting down real trees for New Year▓s. The first alternative was to use an artificial tree. There are many advantages of using an artificial tree over a real tree. It can be reused, saving families a lot of money over the years. Installing and caring for an artificial tree is also a lot less work than a real tree. Although some of the students objected that artificial trees lack the fragrance of a real tree, Lena explained that special "tree" air fresheners can be bought that would make an artificial tree smell like a real tree. However, Richard also pointed out that there are also problems with artificial trees. They are made from petroleum products, which unlike trees, are non-renewable resources. Also artificial trees are non-biodegradable and take up space in landfills after they are thrown out.
Richard then told the class about 2 more ecologically friendly alternatives to New Year's trees. This included using a small living tree in a pot, such as a small pine or fur tree, which then could be planted into the ground after New Year's was over. In this way, people could be giving birth to more trees for New Year's instead of cutting them down. The other alternative was to create a tree-like sculpture from recycling. He told the story of a friend back in America who borrowed a skeleton from his father, who was a teacher of biology at school, and then created his own Christmas tree by dressing the skeleton in clothes, including a bandana and sunglasses, and then wrapping the skeleton in tinsel and Christmas lights. The resulting sculpture was really unique and much more interesting than a standard Christmas tree. Richard explained that the students could create similar New Year's tree sculptures by looking around their apartments or around the city for old items no one is using, and then putting them together to make a New Year's tree sculpture.
For the last part of the lesson, Richard and Lena played a game with the students called "Design your own New Year's Tree". They divided the students into groups of 5 or 6, and gave each of them a piece of paper and some color markers and pencils. The students were then to draw their own design for an alternative to a New Year's Tree, either using an artificial tree, a small living tree or a tree created from recycling. The students were given about 15 minutes to come up with their design. They then presented their creations to the rest of the class. The students enjoyed the lesson, and some of their designs for trees were really interesting and creative (maybe scan into the website some of the better designs as examples?).

Richard Fitzmaurice
Nature Preservation Service, Kazan

http://www.sopkgu.narod.ru