Where does climate fit in the high school curriculum, Part 2

Last week, I wrote about the need to embed more climate across the high school science curriculum and foreshadowed stepping outside the science curriculum in this week's post.  I'd planned to draw some connections to social studies, English, the arts, mathematics and technology.  I'm now planning to do that in more detail in next week's post and will use something I wrote for a contest sponsored by Slate.com for the heart of this week's post.

In the article introducing the contest, "The 21st Century Classroom: American classrooms are outdated.  Slate seeks your great ideas for how to modernize them," Linda Perlstein gives a nice explanation as to why we need to redesign classrooms, and lays out the basic parameters of the contest.  The goal of the contest is to come up with a design for a fifth grade classroom that reshapes education and an explanation of how it does so.

My response for that goes toward how I'd love to see climate science, and, well, I guess most other things, taught.  It's admittedly a fantasy for now, but the winner of the contest stands a chance of getting their proposal made, and it does connect to what I wrote last week, so I figured I could get away with using it for this week's post.

If you like it, cast your vote.  Here's the link, and I've pasted in the text, plus a slightly different version of the graphic below.  Reading the article linked above (and here) will give you some helpful background information.


It's time for something better than schools.

The Wonder Wander Bus

Instead of making schools better, or making better schools, we need to make something better than schools. We're so stuck in the paradigm of schools that we can't see that schooling itself is insane. Putting 2,000 teenagers in one building? Crazy. Asking kids to sit in rows and listen to somebody talk about the Battle of Hastings for 45 minutes and then move down the hall and listen to somebody else talk about parabolas for an exactly equal period of time? Loony. That we expect them to do this hour after hour after hour, day after day after day for years on end is the craziest thing of all.

Schools aren't broken. They just do something fundamentally different than what we pretend they're for. What do you understand most deeply? Chances are you didn't learn it primarily by sitting and listening to someone talk about it. You actively engaged in doing things. What you do is what you learn.

How can we engage kids in doing things that matter? We should realize that such places wouldn't be much like the schools we've had for generations. They also don't need to be homogeneous by age, but I'll use 10 as an average age.

If the classroom is to be a single room, it ought to be a room with wheels; a school bus refurbished by the kids themselves. The image shown is one possible layout. The bus's interior has rows of seats in the front and a lab/studio in the back. Painting the bus will build understanding of art as well as chemistry, craftsmanship, and manufacturing. Use an old diesel bus and engage the kids in the conversion to make it run on waste oil from restaurant fryers. Engage them in the design and construction. Put solar panels on the roof.

The kids will write about everything to educate the community about the hows and whys of the project. Ample storage is needed to haul camping equipment when that's appropriate and supplies for each expedition. Expeditions will initially be day trips, but as the years pass, longer expeditions will be taken. The average age won't go up by much, but it will creep beyond 10. As older kids move on, younger ones will take their place. Older kids will deepen their knowledge of themselves, their world and their bus as they teach the younger kids.

Of course, the bus is equipped with lab equipment, computers, an artist's studio, and Internet connectivity. The kids will be  scientists, journalists, historians, and artists who are teaching their community about themselves, the social and natural environment, and their place in that world. Quantitative analysis will be infused into much of what they do, and they'll write about everything.

With this bus, kids can go into the world and begin to figure out what the world is like, how it came to be that way, and why it matters that the world is the way it is. They will also engage in way to change the things that are out of whack in their community and their world.

So, that's my fantasy setting for teaching kids about the world.  Next week, in Part 3 of this series, I'll return to reality and try to offer some more concrete ideas about how to actually bring climate and climate change education to the current high school curriculum.

The Maldivians are at it Again...

You may recall that in 2009 we posted a couple stories on the blog about the President of the Maldives hosting his cabinet meetings under the sea.  He was doing this to shed awareness on the continued decline of the coral and other inhabitants.  You can check out those posts here and here!

It seems that President Nasheed has continued with his commitment to greening his presidency and has installed solar panels on his official residence.  He's even helped in the installation process.

Read more about it here:
Maldives President Nasheed Installs Solar on Official Residence, Knocks Ignorance of Climate Deniers

Where does climate fit in the high school curriculum?

Here's a lightly modified version of the "Prezi" I presented at last week's North American Association for Environmental Education meeting in Buffalo:

SYNTHESIING EARTH SYSTEM ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES: WHAT EVERY CITIEN NEEDS TO KNOW on Prezi

It was the final presentation in a session about Earth System Literacy Principles.  As the presentation notes, and the presentations leading up to it described, there's a series of initiatives aiming to define what it means to be literate in different Earth system sciences (Oceans, Atmosphere, Climate, Earth Science (which is largely geology), and environmental science).  The session and presentation also reference the NRC's Conceptual Framework for New Science Education Standards.

That Prezi above (which may be better viewed by visiting the link underneath the embedded version) is central to this post.  So, step through it if you haven't yet.

I'll wait.

If we want students to graduate from high school with even basic climate literacy, we need to do things fundamentally differently than we do now.  

Right now, climate is vanishingly small in the high school curriculum.  Though the NRC's Conceptual Framework for New Science Education Standards promises to bump that up some, it will take years (if it succeeds at all).  Most high school students in this country don't take an Earth science class at all, so are unlikely to have a class that focuses on climate for any length of time at all after the eighth grade.  

Grumph.

New York State has about 25% of the high school Earth science teachers in the country.  I suppose that makes us lucky, or at least not as unlucky as most of the rest of the country.  Even in New York, though, the statewide final exam, The Regents Exam, typically has one, two or three questions addressing climate change.

As I hope the Prezi makes clear, I think to be climate literate, you also must be Earth system literate.  Without understanding how Earth systems interact, you can't hope to understand climate in a deep and meaningful way.  That requires at least basic understandings of systems science including the workings of feedback loops and tipping points (for a couple of examples).  

Much as I love Earth science teachers, I don't think they can be our savior here.  Darn it.  The scores of folks I know with that label are a pretty smart and valiant bunch, but even so I think it's beyond their collective reach.

So, what to do?  Well, what does get taught in high school science?  The most common courses are biology (by far the most commonly taught high school science), chemistry and physics.  

What are the purposes of teaching biology, chemistry and physics?  There are lots of reasons, of course, but my bias says most important is that we need these disciplinary understandings to understand the Earth system and humanity's place within it.  

That requires recruitment of those folks to our collective cause, and to think much more about how to infuse systems science and Earth systems science across the curriculum.  Unfortunately, I don't think systems science generally gets taught very well anywhere, though it applies everywhere.  

Hmmm...

It's worth noting that early in my journey to becoming a systems thinker, was a book by a physicist -- Murray Gell-Man's The Quark and the Jaguar.  

And then I gradually became more deeply inclined to learn about ecology, where systems are, well, everything.  

So, this isn't discipline specific.  

But it is, because climate is, well, everything.  It defines just about everything I see out my window as I type this.  Having a climate (pretty much) like the one we have now made us the way we are.  Messing with it stands a very good chance of making us different than we are in unpleasant ways.  

So, what are we going to do?  Let's start by enlisting teachers across the science curriculum, and indeed across the full school curriculum.  (Oops.  Did I introduce a new topic in my closing paragraph?  I guess I've got something to write about next week.)  Will you help enlist?  

Nevermind Oil -- Think Atlantic Wind?

I just read a great blog post on the New York Times website about the 'Atlantic coast having more energy to give via wind than it does from oil or gas, according to a study sponsored by Oceana, an environmental group.'

It was pretty interesting...Read the post here:
Never Mind Oil, Group Says: Think Atlantic Wind

More Things That Make Me Optimistic: The Buffalo Edition

I've revised this post to include a fourth bullet.

Tonight, I (Don Duggan-Haas) attended the opening ceremony of the North American Association for Environmental Education annual meeting in Buffalo, NY.  The nature of the conversations I had with folks there made me optimistic, in largely the same way I wrote about a couple of weeks ago.  In short: smart people working hard on things that matter.  But, I'm not going to write about that as it's revisiting old ground.

Instead, I'll bring attention to a few organizations that are doing interesting work in Western New York.

• PUSH Buffalo is doing exciting work that includes not only performing energy retrofits on low income housing, but also using the the housing stock as an educational laboratory to teach folks how to do that kind of work and construction trades more broadly.  PUSH is an acronym for People United for Sustainable Housing.  They are also in the process of renovating one home to bring it to a net-zero energy use, meaning that over the course of a year it will use no more energy than it generates.  I'll be visiting the Net Zero House tomorrow and expect to write a bit more about it next week.
• Buffalo ReUse also engages in training using Buffalo's aging housing stock as both a teaching opportunity and a rich resource of materials.  Buffalo ReUse deconstructs houses slated for demolition, saving tons of materials from landfills while preserving historical and often beautiful architectural elements.  The picture at the top of the post shows green deconstruction in action.  You can buy beautiful and useful things at their store: The ReSource.  Pieces of my kids' tree fort came from there.
• The Community Foundation of Greater Buffalo is now hosting a web site with information about much of the important work going on in the area.  Check that out at http://growwny.org/.  
• The Massachusetts Avenue Project is another non-profit working in downtown Buffalo.  It's tag line is "Building the local community through food, urban farming and entrepreneurship"and they work toward that goal in a variety of interesting ways, including running a small urban farm that includes aquaponics in a hoop house.  If you don't know what that means, check out their website.

I'm PRI's only telecommuter and I live just barely outside of Buffalo (in a little place I call PRI West).  Ithaca, of course, is famous for the groovy things that go on there -- but you've got some competition out this way...

A Wine Vending Machine?

I often have dinner parties and everyone brings a bottle of wine.  At the end of the night the empty bottles are put in the recycle bin -- making their carbon footprint that much bigger.  Imagine being able to go into a store with your own container and purchasing a nice merlot -- just take the nozzle and put it in your reusable bottle/container and fill!  Sounds great doesn't it?

It seems that some smart folks in France have been pioneering this process at a few grocery stores, and are planning to bring it stateside in the new year.  Not only does this machine cut down on the carbon footprint of your bottle of wine, but it's also a money saver.  A liter of wine is about $2!  That's enough reason for me to say let's go green!

Check out the whole article and a very cool picture here: French Wine Vending Machine .

Container Gardening: The Aftermath

Wow! 2010 was a great year for growing yummy and pretty edibles in containers on a deck! I learned a lot about the whos, whats, wheres, and whens of planting, watering, and harvesting from a deck. Its a lot different than gardening right in your backyard. One nice benefit of container gardening, especially around Ithaca, NY, was the fact that I didn't have deer munching on my hard work. Excellent.

But now that the growing season (for my veggies) is over, I've realized one not-so-nice con to container gardening: ridding myself of the soil. Posting about this is tricky, because I have a pretty reasonable landlord who will let me pile my used soil out in the corner of the land. I know not everyone who container gardens has this freedom, and I also know that I have to cart heavy buckets of dirt through my living room and kitchen to do this, so I've been researching a few alternative options.

If you do some composting, a great idea is to store your used soil in some heavy duty garbage bags and mix in fresh compost with it over the winter. If you have the storage space, this will save you $$ for next season, as you'll have some great soil ready to go. You can also do this outdoors. If you can put your pile of soil in corner somewhere, grab a tarp and some heavy rocks to weigh it down, and add compost to it throughout the winter months. Or just save it and mix in some fertilizer in the spring. The soil will stay relatively moist in both cases. I know I just tried to save a bag of potting mix through the winter in an open bag and it dried out, but I think adding to it throughout the winter and mixing it will help maintain the moisture necessary to keep the soil in tip-top shape for spring.

If you don't compost currently, or don't have the outdoor space to do so, you're in luck. Next week my colleague will tell you about her dream of setting up a kitchen compost in her house. I'll be tuning in so I can revive this year's soil by next spring. I hope you'll check back, too. Together, we can compost, container garden, and maybe even succeed at it...even if we're lazy. :)