Climate Equity Team-Lesson 1

Trafton B.

April 8, 2010 - 9:24 PM

The second week of Spring 2010 has come to a close and I already feel like I've put in more hours of schoolwork than last all term put together! Much of it has to do with the Environmental Leadership Program. We completed our first week of teaching, and it was a long one. Now, I have experience with teaching from the past summer but this week I was reminded that you can never really be prepared for teaching a class full of middle schools no mater how long you've been teaching.

Thankfully, our lesson is awesome! Just to give a refresher of our team's goal. With these lessons, we hope to raise awareness about the connection between climate change, or the greenhouse effect and transportation. So, we're talking about carbon dioxide emissions produced by cars, that fewer emissions are produced when you carpool or take a bus, and walking and bicycling don't produce any emissions at all. The overarching goal for our project is to encourage students to utilize active transportation - i.e. any form of transportation that involves human power to fuel movement rather than gasoline - such as walking, biking or skateboarding - to get to school and also find ways for the students that cannot use active transportation to do so.

Our first lesson, developed by our teammate Ashly, is called "The Great Energy Escape." If I could act it out with you all, I would because it makes so much more sense when you see it live, reference the picture above.

Students playing "The Great Energy Escape."

To begin, there's a circle in the center of the room that represents the earth. In the first round, students are given a nametag that says either Carbon Dioxide (CO2) or Car. Students with a Carbon Dioxide nametag stand on the outside of the circle to represent the atmosphere, and the students with a Car nametag stand on the inside to represent people that drive. Then one teacher stands on the outside, wearing a yellow beanie and headlamp and starts dropping red balloons inside the circle. The teacher represents the sun sending heat energy, the red balloons, towards the earth. The students on the inside try to get all the balloon outside the circle, like heat radiating of the earth, and the students outside try to get all the balloons inside the circle like green house gases trapping heat within the atmosphere.

In the second round, the rules of the games stay the same except we start switching out some Cars with other types of transportation like Carpool and Bus, and we take out some of the Carbon Dioxides because we want to emphasize that less carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere when less people are driving. In the third round, we go further by switching out any remaining Car nametags with forms of active transportation like Walk and Bike and again take away some of the Carbon Dioxides.
In the first round, the majority of the balloons stay on the inside of the circle because there are too many Carbon Dioxides outside. The second round is fairly even, but usually more balloons make their way outside of the circle. And finally, most balloons are outside of the circle in the third round.
The last round is my favorite because there are usually only five students on the outside versus twenty to twenty-five students on the inside, so it's impossible to keep the balloons inside and the kids left outside are always whining and complaining saying, "Hey, this is unfair!" It's really funny because during the activity, the kids are so wrapped in the game. They all want to win so badly, which is great from a teacher's perspective because they are always engaged, and they don't even realize how much they learned.

After the activity, we discuss what everything represented. We'd ask, "why were the balloons all on the outside in the last scenario?" They'll answer by saying, "Because there are more bikers and walkers and not enough carbon dioxides." Why were there less carbon dioxides? "Because you told me to change nametags, remember?" Okay.....but put it into a real world context. What's the connection between inside the circle and outside? "Oh, I get it. Because biking and walking everywhere doesn't pollute the air!"

At Spencer's Butte Middle School, we had one student, Phillip, that asked us at the end of the lesson if he could come back after school to play the game again. At Springfield Middle School, we had a student, Mike, that came back after school because we promised him he could help us pop the balloons at the end of the day. We thought it was great, because we'd made an impression on the kid, but we were worried that he was thinking about that during the day instead of paying attention in class. Drew and I saw him as we were walking out the front doors, and the guy walked right between us to give us a double high five. Awesome! Even better though, the teacher told us that his full name is Michael Jordan. Double awesome!

I love it when one of the kids says something completely out of left field, too. It's hilarious. We asked the students if they could think up any alternative type of transportation, something other than a car. At first, we hear things like motorcycle, long board, or scooter. Then we get some weirder answers like skipping, go-carts, and helicopters. And if you really keep at it, the creative kids start flexing their muscles. Jetpack! Break Dancing! Llama! Parachute! I'm amazed at how well creativity and humor fuels learning.

There are a whole of lot of reasons that I enjoy teaching, and there might be even more reasons why I can't bear teaching. But the moment when a student pulls everything together into a coherent idea, that one moment where you can see a flip switch in their head is without question one of the most satisfying feelings you can have. It's a feeling of excitement for the student and relief because teaching can be so frustrating sometimes.

Frustrating, yet worthwhile. Next week we have two more schools, and I can't wait.