More storms are coming.
Storm after storm is assaulting our city and all of the West Coast. Record rainfall. Flooding and even some deaths. Kids hear the uncertainty among adults. The climate is changing…
Teaching is transformative.
Some teachers have been helping the kids connect the dots. Extreme weather comes from the excess heating of the atmosphere due to fossil fuel emissions. We know now that we have to transform our society to respect our Earth, not exploit it. And we can.
Read MoreAll 10 Strands Lessons include CA Standards & Environmental Principles, Learning Objectives, and Differential Instruction to reach our increasingly diverse population. There are ideas for discussion,, and questions to ask with answers, glossaries, and planned EEI units that provide various learning structures, books for teachers to use, others to duplicate, maps, charts, pictures and photographs, and role-plays, lead toward students working in pairs or small groups to discuss concepts and ideas to share with the whole class, materials for projects, and activities as well as Traditional and Alternative assessments. More and more lessons are in Spanish, which are invaluable to parents, who often speak English, but never studied it .
Read MoreThese 10 Strands History and Social Studies material are first steps to merging Environmental Issues, Environmental Justice, and Climate Change into California’s K-8 curriculum. Teachers who feel they don’t have enough information to plan environmental lessons will see there is more than enough; many activities and projects, many exciting, fun, and creative ways to learn, easily related to what they're already teaching. This material can be used for short every-day units, an hour or so once a week, in blocs, or week-long “Intensives.” There are choices of worksheets,tests, and activities.
Teachers are encouraged to individualize, incorporate their own material, and use the Alternative Assessments, best suited to students.. Students who work with the amazingly beautiful images and engage in the simulations, art, and creative writing activities will come to love the beauty and diversity of California, perhaps the first step to saving it!
These K-8 level Units provide background.so students can understand what is happening today, and envision a better future. But they are incomplete, and must be built upon. For Students to research local community problems, and work with families and groups to solve them, is a major goal of environmental education. Local media, newspaper articles, and newsletters from communityorganizations are up-to-date sources. There are very important facts and ideas, newly discovered material, and other environmental curricula that are omitted and teachers must fill in.
Read MoreA major goal of curriculum reform is to examine TRUTH. Ten Strands’ K-12 “Education and the Environment Initiative Curriculum” honors the sustainable life-styles of Indigenous Californians with great lessons and activities; but falls short in explaining how Europeans treated them.
Unit 1 On the Move Through Time, describes how diverse groups of indigenous peoples managed very different habitats and ecosystems, gently changing and preserving the land and wildlife that sustained them, for more than 10,000 years.
Unit 3 Calif. Indian* People: Exploring Tribal* Regions teaches how they maintained the variety of nut-producing trees and plants of various ages by careful burning, which prevented forest fires, eliminated pests, and created meadows that produced edible seeds and supported wildlife. Protected watersheds also produced edible roots, medicines, and materials such as reeds and clay, for an amazing variety of household and hunting items, clothing, and art. The original Californians limited their hunting and trapping and used every part of the animals they killed. They saw natural and human life as inextricably connected; and were egalitarian, with no concept of private property or class stratification...
Read MoreIt is true that students will become more engaged and enthusiastic and develop a broader climate literacy when they deal with local issues; but the omissions of the role of coal, oil, and natural gas in Climate Change seems deliberate and political. The fact that there is no mention of Fossil Fuels and the companies that produce them, the fact that they pay little tax, and are subsidized by various levels of Government, though they make billions in profit each quarter is only the beginning. The violation of Indigenous treaties to access oil, new forms of extracting “dirtier” oil and coal, the legality of oil-financed political organizations that control many of our elected officials, both locally and in the U.S. Congress, and Presidents’ Cabinet, the tremendous amount of carbon emitted by manufacture and sale of huge numbers of military vehicles, infrastructure, and weapons and their use, the destructive effects of oil-based plastic, the prevalence of Fake News about the danger of carbon emissions, political advertising that can buy elections for fossil fuel corporations, and fake advertising of products that produce dangerous emissions INSURE THAT OUR STUDENTS WILL NOT UNDERSTAND THE CAUSES OF CLIMATE CHANGE, NOR WILL entwined with THEY LEARN THAT THE SOLUTION IS TO END CARBON-
Read MoreIntro by Lucy: Charlie, you taught for 30 years in LAUSD, heading up at one point two California Technical Education academies, and you brought our faculty, step by faltering and complaining step into the digital age. You headed up Tech at our school. When we yelled help, you sent someone to…reboot so the link would work! You advised and led our Robotics team to winning some competitions. An amazing, energetic, connected, and patient leader in our school.
Q: So with all this techie stuff in your vast experience, why are you so interested in getting kids in LAUSD out into Nature?
CW: You forgot to mention I was a science teacher for at risk students too. I enjoyed taking my students on field trips to outdoor spaces. I went numerous times to Vazquez Rocks that not only has interesting geology and ecology but history of the indigenous Tataviam, and Mexican history (Vazquez). It was an all day outdoor hike and then naturalist animal demo about ecology. I think this kind of experience works on so many levels not just academic. I had another unusual outdoor field trip where I took manufacturing academy students to HAAS machine tool fabrication tour and then to the nearby Chumash museum. On display there were many technologies used by the Chumash for manufacturing canoes, clothes baskets and art. There is a ½ mile walk to a Chumash replica village. This is a great natural environment full of acorns and willows for construction. Willow hut constructions abound.
Read MoreI taught science in a Title I public high school for eighteen years. The best thing I did for those students was to love them. The second best was to teach the process of science.
For climate, I would have my students organize a community conference on climate change, which morphed under their guidance into the annual Green Festival--with 80+ poster presentations by students, science fair style; speakers, tables, and workshops from local agencies and organizations; and best of all, food, games, music, art, contests, etc. All of this, plus conference organization and logistics, was done by students.
I sponsored the Heart of Nature Club who organized with Sierra Club to lobby the City Council to get off coal (successful) and gas (ongoing). They organized presentations by the Alliance for Climate Education. They spoke to every teacher about recycling in the classroom, with Grades of Green, and about lights and AC with PowerSave schools. They started and maintained for years both a native plants with Theodore Payne Foundation, and a food garden with help from master gardeners from UCLA.
Read MorePlease consider being interviewed for this blog about climate reality and equity.
Have you read our materials? Do you have questions, objections, revisions or suggestions? Please, please email or text me at 818-618-3831. Climate justice education must be the result of collaboration across all our movements, or it will continue in the hands of forces that want to minimize and delay.
Read MoreWe all believe that LA’s kids should have 21st century education, which requires a lot of critical thinking about climate solutions and about Equity.
Read MoreThis is the originally submitted version of the proposed Resolution, but upon consultation with a Board member and staff, we were urged to cut it by a lot. So to keep our idea living in the community, we decided to share it here. Please feel free to comment on it in emails to our committee.
Whereas:
Each year more of our students are coughing, wheezing, sweating, nauseated, closed up in homes, even in schools due to heat and fossil fuel smog, often eating food without fresh sweet fruit, crunchy fresh greens and deliciously flavorful veggies, and sometimes even drinking water and playing in places that are polluted. Very possibly linked to all this, many have faced disproportionate COVID burden, caring for and burying family members and friends. On top of it all, families face housing bills and utility cutoffs that further threaten their well-being. The 90.4% of LAUSD students who are people of color, especially those in the schools that are designated Title I and further designated with the SENI 2.0 as high needs schools, live in areas historically redlined, consistently permitted for toxic industries, and neglected for greenspace and parks, which is confirmed by the high Pollution Burden Scores as seen in CalEnviroscreen.
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