[RSCT] Climate Crisis "tea party" teaching activity

[Shanti Elliott]

Thanks, Bill.  What a great activity!
We did a similar activity last year -- when I found out that Oxfam was focusing on climate change, I contacted our local office and we arranged to have students from different schools who were learning about environmental justice come downtown to do a Walk for Climate Justice. We came with buckets (to dramatize how far many people have to walk to access water), homemade banners, and white t-shirts, Oxfam provided bullhorns (the kids loved that!), fliers, and scripts drawn from the stories of people affected by climate change around the world.  The impromptu march and rally (at which students read the stories) took less than an hour- basically the space of a class period!- and enabled students to draw attention to the issue and educate the wider public as well.  Here's Oxfam's climate change link: http://www.oxfamamerica.org/whatwedo/campaigns/climate_change.
Cheers,
Shanti
 
Shanti Elliott
Upper School English Teacher and
Director of Community Action
Francis Parker School
330 W. Webster Ave.
Chicago, IL 60614
(773) 797-5402
 
If you are going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance -- author unknown
 

________________________________

From: rs-bounces at criticalteach.org on behalf of BBPDX at aol.com
Sent: Wed 12/3/2008 6:06 PM
To: rs at criticalteach.org
Subject: [RSCT] Climate Crisis "tea party" teaching activity


Dear Rethinking Schools friends,

As many of you know, the UN climate change conference opened this week in Poznan, Poland. On this morning's "Democracy Now!" Amy Goodman included a quote from Ursula Rakova, an activist from the Carteret Islands in the Pacific. Rakova noted that: "So far, reports have said that the islands will be completely submerged underwater between the next ten to fifteen years ... The message to the leaders in this conference is that they will need to look at smaller communities, especially in the Pacific, who are going underwater. We need help so that we can relocate our people to enable them to live a sustainable life in the future." 

Indigenous rights organizations have been seeking a greater voice in global discussions about climate change because in so many ways, global warming puts their communities at risk. It's obscene that people in poor countries around the world, especially indigenous people, will be the ones to suffer the most from carbon dioxide pollution generated in large part by wealthy countries. 

Last year, I developed a "tea party" activity on climate change that includes a collection of individuals from around the world, including some from communities like Rakova's. The aim is to help students see the how widespread -- and unequal -- the impact of global warming will be, and also to see that some are actually benefiting from climate change. These are all real people in the tea party, and in some instances their roles draw on their actual words. The activity is structured like the Mexican War tea party that we include in the Rethinking Schools books, "The Line Between Us: Teaching About the Border and Mexican Immigration," and "A People's History for the Classroom" -- i.e., 1. students get roles, read these several times, highlight or list key points; 2. students circulate in the classroom meeting each other and trying to find a different individual to answer each question on the question sheet provided; 3. afterwards, students write briefly about any surprises or "aha's" from their conversations, circumstances they weren't familiar with, themes that they noticed from their conversations, etc.; and 4. we discuss the tea party and what they noticed going on in the world. I've used this with high school students and in teacher education classes and it's prompted good discussions in both settings. I've followed it up with a critique of two textbooks adopted here in Portland -- both awful: the global studies text, "Modern World History," (McDougal Littell, 2007; p. 679); and "Physical Science: Concepts in Action," (Pearson, 2006; pp. 781-782). Students look for whose perspectives are missing from the textbook accounts, and how adequate the accounts are.

This activity is still in draft form -- for example, I'm working on a new role now on someone affected by Katrina -- but I thought that with the Poland conference underway, some people on this list might find this useful. If you're doing other activities around climate change, please email me or post to the list. If you have any questions about any of this, let me know.

Thanks for your support of Rethinking Schools.

Bill Bigelow, bbpdx at aol.com
Curriculum Editor
Rethinking Schools
www.rethinkingschools.org


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