“Think Globally, Act Locally” is a a quote attributed to a large number of people. Just Google it. One of the challenges of this year will be to find legitimate connections between global themes and the curriculum I am required to teach. However, I know, too, that connections to local issues makes learning more real for students.
Last week, I attended the Maine TREE Foundation‘s 4 day Teacher Tour. The Maine Tree Foundation is associated with Project Learning Tree, an organization whose aim is to provide teachers with education and usable lesson plans about forests. We participated in demos of some of the lessons in their guides and toured a tree farm, a water district, a logger’s property, an elementary school’s outdoor classroom, a land trust, and a paper mill.
One lesson that interested me was “Forest to Faucets”, along with our visit to the water district, which showed how valuable our forests are in maintaining drinkable water. I can see how this can connect to my visit to South Africa-the Cape Town Water Crisis. I admit I had a moment when I wondered how a coastal city could be running out of water. Water purification is expensive. Surprisingly, it is less expensive to pay landowners to maintain a forest than build a water purification plant. I could connect this to our classification of matter and separation of mixtures in Chemistry class. Locally, we could visit our own water treatment facility and map our own water shed. To expand further, we could research various water collection and treatment methods around the world.
I believe I’ll be responsible for creating 4 lessons, so I’ve already written down some other ideas:
Carbon Risk- design a game of Risk showing build up of CO2 around the world and different countries actions to reduce it, and how countries could team up to reduce CO2 emissions
Researching Policies to Promote Renewable Sources of Energy-I’ve already had students read an article about Brazil and ethanol, but they could choose another country and compare with the US or Maine
Comparing Energy Profiles-what forms of energies do different countries use and why. For example, Iceland-lots of geothermal
Solutions to water shortages
Interdependence of industries- the Maine logging industry relies on equipment from Sweden and sends products to China. We visited the SAPPI mill (SOUTH AFRICAN (I know!) Pulp and Paper Industries) which receives pulp from Canada and has markets in South America and Asia
Furthermore, Project Learning Tree even has a guide called, “Forests of the World“.
Many of these ideas do spark global awareness, however, I need to focus on the local action, both for myself and my students.