Career Day Lesson: What’s a Vegan?
Apparently I am a career woman now, or so says the faculty at a local grade school who invited me to speak at career day today. I talked for about 20 minutes about working for animals with my job at the Humane League to four different classes, ranging from 4th grade to 8th grade.
I started talking to each class by telling them what a day looks like for me: Working from home on the computer in the morning, heading out into the city to work on different campaigns in the afternoon, and then working a second job teaching classes at local recreation centers in the evening.
Then I showed pictures. I held up photos of sow and veal crates, battery cages, and more. I told them that this was why I work for an animal advocacy nonprofit. I told them that the hope of changing this was why I am willing to work for pennies. Every child in every class was listening to what I had to say and looking at the pictures that I shared. I also made sure to follow the more graphic photos up with ones of animals that had been saved, while telling the a few stories about animals that were rescued.
Lots of the older kids were very curious as to what, as a vegan, I eat. Most had only heard off vegetarian, if that, and didn’t know what being vegan meant … but after today I am sure that they know now because I was not the only vegan talking to them today! There was a nutritionist and someone from a wellness center who also talked about veganism. And I’m sure that hearing the chef talk about the sea animals screaming when she boiled them alive didn’t hurt either.
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