Educational Media Reviews Online

This documentary film highlights the transformative power of a community that comes together to build and teach children how to care for one another and the environment they all share. When a fire that destroys a classroom at Grant Elementary School in the Colombia Public School system in Colombia, Missouri, teachers, parents, and community business leaders set out to not only rebuild a classroom, but reform how they think and act when it comes to environmental sustainability. Unfortunately, very little information is provided as to how they went about achieving these goals.

While the film attempts to show how the contractors, architects, and engineers collaborated to build an eco-friendly classroom, too much of the film focuses on how the adults in the building felt about the fire and the financial difficulty of having to replace the trailer in which the fire occurred. Other than a lesson about recycling and another about energy efficient light bulbs (which are used for a lesson but the viewer is not told if the same bulbs are used in the classroom), why the single classroom—not the entire school—should be considered “eco-friendly” is unclear.

The film’s website provides access to the architectural plans that were used to build the classroom, but no insight into what made the materials they used eco-friendly is included. The DVD case mentions curriculum and bonus material, but neither is provided on the DVD or at the website. The contractors and engineers in Colombia, Missouri deserve credit for their efforts and the possible effect this project had on how young students think about their responsibility to the environment. The filmmakers could have gone much further in detailing what made the construction of the new classroom an environmentally-friendly project and the role played by students in sustaining their new found concern for the environment.