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The materials engage students in understanding the earth system as it intertwines with key societal issues.
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Jill Schneiderman: Using Environmental Justice and Freshwater Resources in Earth Science and Environmental Justice at Vassar College
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Provenance: Meg Stewart Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.
This course offers an exploration of the roles that class, gender and race play in contemporary environmental issues and the Earth science that underlies such issues. We also examine the power of science, corporations and governments to influence the physical and human environment. We critique the traditional environmental movement, study cases of environmental injustice, and come to appreciate how basic geological knowledge can assist communities in creating healthful surroundings for all living beings. Examples come from urban and rural settings in the United States and abroad and are informed by feminist analysis.
To expand one's view of the meaning of "environment."
To investigate the interrelated workings of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and geosphere within Earth's critical zone.
To consider environmentalism in the largest sense by examining geologic time frames and non-human beings.
To wrestle with the idea of "justice."
To grapple with the history of the environmental justice movement in the United States and connect it to other human rights struggles across the planet.
Course Content
Every entering first-year student at Vassar College must elect a freshman writing seminar. These courses usually have a maximum enrollment of seventeen first-year students and are offered by a number of departments. The first-year writing seminar introduces students to critical reading and persuasive writing at Vassar and helps them make the transition to college-level writing. These courses from across the curriculum challenge students to enter sophisticated conversations by asserting compelling claims, and by supporting those claims through an organized presentation of evidence. Each seminar is built around a rich topic, giving students a complex set of readings, questions, and debates to consider as they learn to engage with the idea of others and articulate their positions. This course may be counted as one of two introductory-level courses required for an Earth science major. Content includes geologic time, "natural" disasters, and water resources. Students gain experience with geoscientific reasoning, basic calculation skills, and map reading.
A Success Story in Building Student Engagement
The Environmental Justice and Freshwater Resources Module enabled me, for the first time, to focus on and therefore fully integrate the study of surface water resources within the environmental justice framework. Through the use of Google Earth, I was able to capitalize on student interest in technology and visual representation to help them develop enhanced spatial reasoning skills and ground environmental justice issues in geoscience.
Since developing this course in 1997 using a National Science Foundation curriculum grant, I have taught some iteration of "Earth Science and Environmental Justice" nearly a dozen times. In the earliest versions I focused on the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere in order to explore the justice issues that cropped up in these spheres of the Earth system (see Schneiderman & Sharpe 2001(Acrobat (PDF) 1MB Jun30 14)). However, before Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the phrase "environmental justice" was familiar only to a small group of activists, scholars, and policy makers. Thus, the idea that different groups of people were disproportionately impacted by environmental risk was foreign to most students. As a result, in the first few years of teaching the course, I spent considerable time not only on the Earth science but on philosophical arguments about justice. I found it very useful in those early years to co-teach the course with an ethicist. In subsequent years I moved to the model of teaching this course as a writing-intensive first-year seminar that emphasized the Earth science behind environmental justice. By teaching the course to first-year students, I have had the opportunity to enable them to investigate basic Earth science principles in order to remedy environmental injustices.
My Experience Teaching with InTeGrate Materials
Using the Environmental Justice and Freshwater Resources Module in my first-year seminar forced me to think about the degree to which my students were using geoscience to evaluate problems of environmental injustice. It allowed me to assess my effectiveness as a transdisciplinary educator.
I used the module for the last 2 weeks of a 14-week semester. At that point, students had become well-versed in controversies surrounding questions of environmental injustice. They comprehended and fully appreciated geologic time as well as the spatial and temporal scales of Earth processes. By using the module, I was able to integrate the social studies with the physical science. Throughout the semester I reminded the students that the last two weeks of the course would be somewhat different than our usual lecture, in-class writing and discussion format so they were prepared to engage in activities such minute papers, think-pair-share activities and short in-class assessments.
Prepare the students for the day's activities by explaining that their purpose is to explore the terms "environment" and "justice" in the interest of grappling with the phrase "environmental justice" and coming up with their own definition that they will then compare with others' definitions both in the classroom, in the environmental justice movement, and by the US government.
Request that they all participate fully by raising their hands high for the benefit of the entire group when the projected images are shown during the exploration activity. The students found it very interesting to see the varied ideas held by their classmates about what constitutes "environment."
Provide each group a large size "sticky note" on which they can write their pre-Prezi definition of environmental justice and another large size "sticky note" of a different color than the first on which they can write their post-Prezi definition of environmental justice. By doing so, the students will observe how their group definitions have shifted as a result of the presentations and discussion.
Unit 2: The Hydrologic Cycle and Freshwater Resources
Each student should receive the water footprint handout ideally one week before it is to be brought to class completed. By doing this, students will have the opportunity to collect their own data on their water usage rather than having to estimate it. I found that this made the examination of freshwater resources personal and compelling to the students.
If students have earlier in the semester been exposed to the hydrologic cycle and its components and reservoir sizes, and if the amount of time in the class period is shorter than 75 minutes, you might choose to remove the hydrologic cycle exploration activity during discussion of the data.
For the water cycle sustainability role play, I found it helpful to assign a color to each major mechanism of transport and have the students tape to their shirts a colored sheet of paper so that the mechanism they each represented could be readily identified. In a larger class this could be challenging as there will need to be multiple groups for each major mechanism and room enough for them to move about the classroom. You might look into the possibility of moving into a larger space nearby your classroom just for this portion of the module.
Unit 3: Streams and Water Diversion
I found it worth the time and effort, before the think-pair-share activity on the two concept questions, to ask students to turn to their neighbor and discuss the main points of the USGS report on Na Wai Eha ("The Four Streams"). I also asked them to discuss with a neighbor their answers to the Four Streams homework assignment, which they were to have done after reading the USGS report but before coming to class. This took an additional 15 minutes in the beginning of the class.
It is important to leave at least 25 minutes for the drainage basin assessment. While students worked individually, I walked around the room helping some of the students substantially in order to draw a watershed divide. I needed to explain to many of them the "rule of the Vs."
The instructor should make sure that Google Earth is installed on the computer that will be used for the portion of the drainage basin assessment that requires use of the .kmz file. If there is only one computer in the room, this portion of the assessment can be done by projecting the Google Earth image onto a screen in the front of the room; students can answer the four questions that pertain to it on an individual answer sheet given to each of them.
Unit 4: Women and Water
The students responded very positively to this activity, I think because they each arrived in class with a specific geographical area of expertise: Kenya, India, or Trinidad. If instructors find other examples, and there are plenty that can be examined on the United Nations Development Programme website, they may wish to substitute examples they find relevant to local water issues.
This unit works best in a 75-minute session. For shorter sessions, skip the PowerPoint presentation and allot that time to the jigsaw activity.
Unit 5: Hazardous Waste and Love Canal
I recommend having the students watch the video interview with Lois Gibbs together in class. Emphasize the importance of taking notes about events as described by Gibbs so that the students are enabled to create a timeline of events. After the class discussed what events they chose to put on a historical timeline, I used information from Timeline of Events at Love Canal to talk about additional information related to the events at Love Canal. This was necessary because not all important events are covered in the video. Nonetheless, the virtue of the video is the fact that it emphasizes the grassroots nature of the environmental justice movement and how knowledge of science can empower ordinary citizens.
If the class is not too large and a computer classroom is available, I recommend that pairs of students use Google Earth themselves to examine the aerial photograph from 1978, several photographs taken between 1978 and 1980, and current photographs of the region. If a classroom with multiple computers for simultaneous use is not available, then the instructor can project Google Earth from the classroom computer and the images can be discussed with the class as a whole. I found it useful to use Google Street View so that students could evaluate the land uses and conditions in and around Love Canal today.
In order to help students estimate a flow rate for the contaminated groundwater at Love Canal, I had to prompt students by reminding them that we measured (with the Ruler Tool) the distance from the Love Canal dump site to the nearest homes (from 1978).
I used the short answer and multiple choice questions as an assessment in order to determine if they understood the following salient points:
Basic elements of an unconfined (open) groundwater system
Basic elements of the groundwater and geological system
Who led the Love Canal environmental justice movement
What Congressional act resulted from the Love Canal actions
Unit 6: Groundwater Availability and Resources
I tied this unit back to the hydrologic cycle unit in which the students calculated their own water footprint. This caused a discussion about how one might alter one's water footprint if living in a desert environment.
This unit also served as an extension of the Love Canal unit as it provided the opportunity to distinguish between issues of quantity and quality of groundwater.
Assessments
I used all of the assessment questions for each module. Responses to the assessments enabled me to revisit subjects that were not fully grasped upon first encountering them. Although the students were at first disquieted by my use of assessments, as I had not done so earlier in the semester, I eased their anxiety by not counting the answers to the assessments in their final grades. Instead, I simply used the assessments as a way to determine how well the students had processed the concepts encountered in the module.
Outcomes
By using the freshwater and environmental justice module, I hoped that students would become engaged in the hydrologic science relevant to environmental injustices and become convinced that they could use scientific data and spatial visualizations to investigate social issues. Also, as a result of using the varied approaches to teaching such as think-pair-share, jigsaws, concept tests and minute papers, I have since employed these techniques as learning tools in all my other classes because I now see how effective they are in promoting active learning, and because they enable me to gauge the degree to which students comprehend what I am trying to teach them.
These materials are part of a collection of classroom-tested modules and courses developed by InTeGrate.
The materials engage students in understanding the earth system as it intertwines with key societal issues.
The collection is freely available and ready to be adapted by undergraduate educators across a range of courses including:
general education or majors courses in Earth-focused disciplines such as geoscience or environmental science,
social science, engineering, and other sciences, as well as courses for interdisciplinary programs. Explore the Collection »
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