The Human Environment - Background

The APS community has over 87,000 students and approximately 11,000 employees; more than one-sixth of Albuquerque's total population. Each one of these persons gets up, washes, dresses, eats, goes to school. Each one uses fuel, water, roads, needs stores, power lines, sewage systems, and parking lots.

Yet, every one of them is a . . . ME . . . having his or her own physical and emotional, inner environment--an environment that revolves about him or her--and interacts with every other ME and the total environment.

"To the other guy, you're the other guy."

Everyone comes to school carrying parts of his or her environment.

Everyone leaves school carrying away the end products of the school's impact.

Each school is a community within a community. As in all communities, every living thing has a niche: its own function, and its own place in which to function--student, principal, assistant principal, librarian, dietitian, custodian, nurse, counselor, coach, teacher, and parent. Each school community has its own government and social structure as well as sub-governments and sub-environments that involve rules, actions, decision making, and enforcement.