THE STORY AND
ACCOUNTS OF A
SQUARE METRE
From metaphor to mascot
Susirosa 2011
THE
STORY AND ACCOUNTS OF A SQUARE
METRE
There was a long, long time a sweet girl who liked
walking...... She liked pure and blue air in Summer,
and she liked feeling the cold walk of the Winter
rain, on her face. She liked putting on her boots to go anywhere and getting
lost herself in the most unsuspected places to discover, often spontaneous
and aggressively, a nature that it was the same as that many people
enjoyed and cared, over time… She liked sitting down, when fatigue was
intense, and watching the horizon, leaving her mind free to imagine what
anyone, since immemorial time, had thought in that same place: in what
living conditions could be those that preceded it in that scenario?
She learned, thanks to her peculiar sensibility and particular experience, to
respect what she was seeing, listening, smelling ... and she learned, the
taste of tranquility to feel a part of it.. Some time she even learned, after
much effort, as Great Sioux Chief told in his letter to American People, to
listen to the growth of the leaves in the trees... And that, that precisely,
was what changed everything. That effort came with the tacit and perhaps
unconscious commitment to the land that gave sustenance to her feet daily.
The girl was fond of many more things: chocolate, friends, music, reading,
dreams... and even her job. She considered herself a lucky person because
she had the best job in the world: Teaching was her profession. In this
environment she wanted to leave, not only what she had learned with her
studies, but mainly all the discoveries which had come as slaps and had
changed her life and her commitment to it. That was done not only using
the example of her own attitude , but also with the creation of situations
for children, with whom she had the luck to work, found out and making her
find out (spontaneous and, at the same time, aggressively) what the space,
to which they belonged them as gifts wrapped in brightly coloured papers...
It was in this stage that the young teacher found a new educational idea in
her autonomous region: The 21 scholar Agenda of Galicia, derived from
that other, general, the Agenda 21, with compromises with our Planet, this
one was related to commitments to the land (and all that is part of it) we
are stepping on. And she liked it... Now, you know the girl's great vice: her
taste for almost everything!!!
Education is a pillar, instruction another, training another one... She knew
it! It was then when she added the Scholar 21 Agenda in her training and,
most importantly, she included it into her job plan and methodology and
into her life plan and methodology. She decided to go gradually, like
constant droplets of water, soaking in everything she did for her school, to
raise awareness and to obtain commitments to the social and natural
environment in which all of them live.
It wasn't easy and, indeed, she didn't always get it: people, she discovered,
also have their tastes, different, respectable, even desirable (she was
insatiable with tastes)... but the idea was so good that she couldn't stand
alone in it... She thought to convince children first(they are always open to
live dreams without shame or measures), and in that trend, she thought,
adults would end up by doing the same... She thought...
Everything was clear, She had already made the first moves: permissions,
project, approvals... and it was time to face the game. But it wasn't
supposed to be easy
... How to present that form of metaphor? It would be necessary another
kind of metaphor closer to the language of children, perhaps also for
adults... Involved in those thoughts, she took the car to drive the forty Km
that separated her from her job... Unconsciously, music was entering her
brain
, automatically, as the own radio link... And so, among the sound waves, a
solution came: “titititi, un metro cuadrado para sentirse bien, un metro
cuadrado donde me guste vivir, tititi” (1) Pau Donés, the leader of Jarabe
de Palo was singing, with his particular style... Well... a classic for teens!!
The unconscious became conscious, then... a square meter became the
mascot of the entire presentation:
 “Think about making a change in my own square meter, the one I
have because it's where I'm moving... That's easy. To improve that
same square meter... That meter, we would like seeing better in the
School... How easy is it????”
 “Yes, we think so” - It was the verbal and gestural response of the
classes
 “So... If we are almost 300 people in the school... then... we are
talking about 300 square meters improved!!!!
 “It looks fantastic!” “We like the idea!!” “I already know what to
suggest to improve” “I also do...” “I thought good to...” “And why
not...?” - everybody was talking at the same time.

Well, but... there is no need to be a mathematician with a reputation
to make other calculation: If there are billions of people in the
world.... then... then... they would be billions of square meters
improved!!!!!”
After those presentations, activity was intense... And the girl thought she
no longer liked to be addressed in the corridors with it
, which seemed to be
the only thing she did!! But something else was still missing... a witness to
form a chain between everything that was already being done...
And so, in a inspiration moment, searching for a project, in a perfect
symbiosis with eTwinning, she obeys the shadow of a computer key and, the
reflexion of the same, some islands were emerging... far away, so far away...
into the mid – Atlantic, spitting out by volcanoes and sculpting by the sea...
Islands which weren't always seen on the maps, so, when she found them,
she could be considered a lucky person! What a magic moment that one!
They were there, like tides full of winds that challenged sailors and
cartographers who drew them, and whose beauty was presented as flowers
bouquets, they were announcing themselves to the world, revealing a sense,
mirrored on the water: Azores Islands!!!!
In one of this islands, boys and girls were living , and they were very similar
to her in their love for nature, in the personal and professional
commitment, and in the enchantment by the power of her profession which
had the minds ready to reflect something that they were already living,
though unnamed.
And, on the platform, people from one and other side echo this idea, they
exchanged words and emotions, dreams and desires... and, they felt nearby
in a virtual, though real, world which transports a new horizon self-forming
and outline new dimensions of living with “open mind” ...
Memory, that so volatile thing!... Do you remember that girl we were talking
about? She became more famous for pronouncing those words... (Blessed
song she had heard!!):
With the aim of spreading all good things they were doing in her school, she
sent an invitation! A great joy was felt by people who, on the other side of
Atlantic, were hoping new winds and new knowledge long ago... and, like a sea
pirate, it arrived, in the opposite direction to the habitual routes to the
Island. Winds were very different, she knew it…lightweight but thick...
Then... what could they give to so distinguished hostess? But the sea
didn't answer.. The wind whispered “build the m2: nothing better to
recognize her value that converting her words as a mascot.
And as word filmmakers, they placed the capacity
of personifying it into children's hands, people left
the island and took it and delivered it. And the girl,
who had trained, acted on, as if it was the very
first time she looked at it to surprise everybody
that hadn't noticed how easy it was to improve this planet, and she invited
others to do the same thing.
In fact, a image is better than a thousand words... That's why that dream
became a reality, fortunately, it was decided that this gift, transform the
metaphor of our mascot position, should be telling this story in other
places, to name and pick up whatever good was already being done for the
planet.
The square meter continues the trip... It crossed the entire Atlantic and
now, slowly, it wants to be witness in how many stops it made on the
Mainland, carrying not only the idea, but also the practice of many schools
which, day by day, try to improve the ground beneath their feet, and
whatever is part of it, with the objective to bring emotions and to allow a
full European citizenship exercise. It will certainly want something better...
Probably, it will want to share how that happened...We can tell the
beginning, we can dream of the end... Let it go on his return, it will be,
indeed, the bearer of a story created under the terms of our participation,
in a network of schools, people, emotions to tell, again, enriched...
(1) N.T.: song lyrics: “a square meter to feel good, a square meter where I like to
live”
Susirosa /2011