Teaching Activities
Students will question why is this something they should care about and why does it matter to them or their community? Students will understand the importance by examining case studies, laws, and environmental justice organizations, leaders, and activists. Asking themselves what do I need to know to help me better understand environmental problems that minority or low-income communities face so that I can create a compelling solution? Ultimately based on what the students have learned they will investigate what specific actions need to be taken to have influence. The outcome is for students to play a part in making the world better through environmental justice by researching aspects of this unit and contributing as an environmental justice influencer striving to educate all who will listen.
My entire unit is more of a comprehensive yearlong project. The project end date is on Earth Day. Our success criteria for the entire project are based off an Environmental Zine that will be published unique to each classes’ research and a series of podcasts in which the students will be presenting their topics in a panel discussion. The first three sections will be taught in the three weeks between Thanksgiving Break and Christmas, culminating as their semester final. For their final, the students will send me a video to tell me what they feel like contributing as their written final, an article on a topic for the class Zine. We will pick back up in February as the students begin Access Testing. I will be in and out of the classroom, thus the students will be assigned to create a PowerPoint presentation on their topic that will be available to all the study skills classes in the school to use for the month of April for environmental awareness month and we will be passing out or class zines.
I teach in a WIDA state, meaning that my students are tested and graded in four domains: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. The name WIDA originally stood for the three states on the grant proposal: Wisconsin, Delaware, and Arkansas. Today, the name WIDA has come to represent the entire WIDA Community of states, territories, federal agencies, and international schools. Funded by the grant, WIDA developed the 2004 WIDA English Language Proficiency Standards, which served as the basis for the ACCESS for English Language Learners test of English Language Proficiency that we use today. My goal is to teach academic vocabulary and help further English Language Proficiency. This unit will work towards English Proficiency for Multilingual Learners using academic vocabulary to answer the Guiding Question: How can we ensure that everyone has access to a healthy environment to live, learn, and work in? It consists of three main sections in the fall semester.
Section One will start with a self-reflection assignment, what is your relationship to nature? Followed by a questionnaire about environmental literacy for each class. We will create class graphs to accurately show the quantifiable data of each class’s background knowledge to see where we need to focus. Then a lesson on what is Environmental Justice. This section ends with the focus question…Why is this something I should care about? Why does this matter to me or my community?
This is where I will introduce them to the Climate and Justice Screening Tool (CEJST). The students will look at the percentages of green spaces in their neighborhoods and make comparisons within our Tulsa community and other cities throughout the United States. The Climate and Justice Screening Tool was created by the Biden/Harris administration. CEJST is a geospatial mapping tool that identifies areas across the nation where communities are faced with significant burdens. These burdens are organized into eight categories: climate change, energy, health, housing, legacy pollution, transportation, water and wastewater, and workforce development. Each burden is ranked using percentile thresholds or yes/no indicators and based on this methodology, communities are considered disadvantaged: if they are in census tracts that meet the thresholds for at least one of the tool’s categories of burden, or if they are on land within the boundaries of Federally Recognized Tribes. To respect Tribal sovereignty and self-government and to fulfill Federal trust and treaty responsibilities to Tribal Nations, land within the boundaries of Federally Recognized Tribes is designated as disadvantaged on the map. This decision was made after meaningful and robust consultation with Tribal Nations. This is consistent with CEQ’s Action Plan for Consultation and Coordination with Tribal Nations, President Biden’s Memorandum on Tribal Consultation and Strengthening Nation-to-Nation Consultation, and Executive Order 13175 on Consultation and Coordination with Indian Tribal Governments. Tulsa and most of Oklahoma are considered disadvantaged with many low-income communities.
Section Two will start with the case studies from the African American community taken from Toxic Communities by Dorceta Taylor. In this section we will conduct research using a variety of note catchers to learn about laws, organizations, and activists. Ending with the focus question…What do I need to know to help me (or us) better understand so that I (or we) can create a compelling solution?
Section Three Action. This section is based on what the students learned or want to further their research. We will be discussing what specific actions can they (or we) take to make a difference. Students will create tweets to bring awareness to social media. This is also the conclusion of the first semester so this is when students will send me video proposals of their final written articles. They will conclude with the completed research article ready for print in the class zine.
Second Semester students will create PowerPoint presentations, participate in the panel pod cast, and promote Earth Day by passing out the Zines. To wrap up the experience, students will again make videos explaining what they learned from this experience over the course of the year pared with a writing assignment about their experience of the environmental justice curriculum.
A classroom library will consist of resources for the students. The following list are the books I compiled for the classroom library: How to Connect with Nature by Tristan Gooley, Environmental Literacy from A-Z by Steven Dashefsky, Engage, Connect, Protect by Angelou Ezeilo, As Long as the Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from colonization to Standing Rock by Dina Gilio Whitker, Toxic Communities by Dorceta Taylor, Youth to Power by Jamie Margolin, Climate Change from the Streets by Michael Mendez, One Earth by Anuradha Rao Engage, Connect, Protect by Angelou Ezeilo, and a copies of the article “Environmental Justice” by Paul Mohai, David Pellow, and J. Timmons Roberts.
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