Module VII blog

Essential Question:

How is Earth's climate connected to its geological, biological and cultural systems?

There seems to be a pretty deep misunderstanding of weather vs. climate for many Americans. We have one unseasonable snowstorm (photo by Kelly Auer) or cold snap and people are ready to dismiss climate change as a myth. I get SO tired of telling otherwise intelligent people to examine the data vs. making their decision on what they heard on a Fox News blurb last night. I loved the Information is Beautiful links in this module, and will definitely use them both with students and grown-ups.

I think that the first priority for me when teaching a unit on climate to my students would be to differentiate carefully between climate and weather. Some of the excellent resources on Teachers' Domain and NASA (as well as a really cool interactive Carbon Cycle game) can help kids build an understanding of the long-term nature of climate, as well as the importance of carbon. Once students are sure of what the word climate actually means, we can look at our current climate situation and intelligently compare it to past situations to see 1) if there have been changes, and 2) possible causes for any changes we do see.

I initially thought that only geological and biological processes could directly affect Earth's climate, but a moment of reflection showed me how foolish that was. After all, American culture has lead us to use our natural resources in one way while the culture of Switzerland, for example, has lead them to use their natural resources in very different ways. Culture and climate are interactive, each one having an effect on the other.

The question I like to address with my students is: what do we do now? Recognizing that there is a problem is important, but it's equally important to try to find solutions. Teachers' Domain has some great resources showing Alaskan kids taking steps to take action in their communities. There are examples of small and large projects. As part of the unit, I would like to have a capstone project where students identified an environmental concern in their community, and then planned and carried out a project to correct or at least mitigate it. (Photo by Kelly Auer)

In Anchorage, we're fortunate to have several programs that allow students to be involved in projects that result in real data collection and real change in our community. At minimum, the Anchorage Waterways Council sponsors a Creek Clean-up day every spring that students can participate in. At a more involved level, students can Adopt-A-Stream and be directly involved in collecting data. I myself have worked with my Biology classes to collect macroinvertebrate data for local streams for the Alaska Stream Team database (Photo by Kelly Auer). I really liked the "Alaska Native Teens" article on Teachers' Domain. It's an excellent example of kids being involved with both the Native and the western science sides of an issue.

I feel like this week's module was a gold mine of good resources for teaching climate change. I hereby notify all and sundry that I am going to profit by Clay's hard work and pirate most of the resources for my own lessons.