GA Milestones EOG Practice Test 12

Fix It Here: Why Our School Needs a Repair Café

¹Last spring my little brother's backpack lost a zipper pull, and within a day the whole backpack was in the trash. It still had years of life left in it. It just needed ten minutes and a pair of pliers. Our family is not unusual; most of us throw away things that could be fixed simply because we do not know how to fix them. Our school should host a monthly repair café, where students, teachers, and volunteers fix broken things together instead of throwing them away.

²The first reason is practical skill. When I surveyed 120 eighth graders at our school, only 14 said they had ever sewn on a button, and only 9 had ever patched a bike tire. These are not hard skills. Most students have never learned them simply because no one has ever shown them how. A repair café would give students hands-on practice with problems they will face for the rest of their lives. A few scraped knuckles are a small price to pay for skills that last a lifetime.

³The second reason is that the idea already works. The first repair café opened in Amsterdam in 2009, and today there are thousands around the world. Closer to home, the Fernwood Public Library has held repair events every few months, and at its last one, volunteers fixed 31 of the 40 items people brought in. Most people picture a repair café as a cluttered garage, but the library's events are as orderly as a study hall. In three years of events, the library's coordinator told me, no one has needed more than a bandage.

⁴The third reason is community. Repair cafés depend on people who know how to fix things, and many of them are retired. At the library I watched Mr. Ellison, a retired electrician, teach a fifth grader how to replace the cord on a lamp while explaining every step. Our school rarely brings students together with older neighbors like him. A repair café would give them a reason to meet.

⁵Some parents and teachers worry that a repair café would be unsafe, since students would be handling tools, sewing needles, and electrical cords. That concern is fair, and any repair café at our school must take it seriously. Under my plan, students would never repair anything that plugs into the wall, and a trained adult volunteer would sit at every table. Students would work only on clothing, bikes, toys, and simple household items, using hand tools that the volunteers check out and collect. Mr. Banerjee, our technology teacher, has offered to train volunteers using the same safety rules the library follows.

⁶Fixing something is a small act, but it changes how we see the things we own. Instead of asking "Where can I buy a new one?" we start asking "How does this work?" I urge our principal and the school council to approve a trial repair café next semester. Bring your broken things, and let's find out what we can save.