Author: neilsnedeker Page 5 of 6

Music is something that plays a significant role in cultures throughout the world. We may not all agree on our preferred style but I don’t think I have ever met anyone who did not appreciate music in some way. Like everything else, live music is something that disappeared as the pandemic disrupted our lives. Then the Roxbury Arts Group brought some light to the darkness of 2020. They organized a performance by Emily Pinkerton, an artist who “explores the musical ties that binds the Americas”. This performance would be limited to just 50 people and was held on the beautiful property of one of the community members. Unfortunately she was not able to perform with the rest of her ensemble.

Throughout the evening, Emily shared many of her life experiences that brought her to where she is today. Some of this was through actual storytelling and the rest was through her choice of songs she played. When asked what her connection is with Chile, it was actually quite simple. She grew up in Valparaiso, Indiana which was named after Valparaiso, Chile. This led to a partnership that had students from the U.S. going to Chile and students from Chile going to the U.S. There is more to it than that, but that is what helped to ignite the spark.

The blending of music from Appalachia and from South America was absolutely beautiful. As we made our way through a musical tour of the Americas I learned what a guitarrón was (a Chilean 24 string guitar) and I learned a little about a woman named Violeta Parra, who was an important figure in South American culture. It seems a lot of Emily’s South American inspiration came from Violeta’s contributions.

Emily’s path in life was influenced by a connection her town had to Chile while growing up. She is doing remarkable things really enjoys what she does. So now the big question is, how could we help our students learn though these partnerships?

Next up is a live performance by Thapelo Masita, a cellist from South Africa.

Follow-up: Thapelo was incredible! It was a beautiful night, in a beautiful setting and there was so much passion in his playing.

According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), “environmental justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation , and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies”.

We live in a society that has needs. We need water, fuel, chemicals, minerals, land, and so much more. It is important that we have space to live as well. As much as we would like to, it is not possible to completely separate our residential areas from the land that we use for industrial purposes. No matter where we place our industry, there will be someone living nearby. This is where the problem lies.

Let’s imagine that there is a need to build a new petrochemical plant within your state. The company has the choice of two different sites: a site in an affluent suburb of a major city or a low-income region of that city. Sadly most of the time the polluting industry will be built in the low-income area. When in cities these industries are often found in areas with a high minority population.

It is a complicated issue. Are these areas low-income because they are heavily polluted? Are the industries placed there because it is cheaper? Unfortunately one study shows that neighborhoods that are low-income and have high percentages of people of color have a consistent pattern of polluting industries moving in.

It might be easier to place industries like this in low-income areas because they don’t have the money and resources residents in more affluent areas have to fight it. For example, people have fought against putting up coastal wind farms because it may negatively affect the views they have. Meanwhile, people in low-income areas are facing serious health effects due to poor air quality and contaminated water.

It doesn’t matter what the reasons for this lack of environmental justice are. This is an issue that needs to be addressed immediately. Access to clean air and water should not be dependent on how much money you have. If we find ourselves saying “not in my backyard” we should work towards making societal changes so it doesn’t end up in anyone’s backyard. Instead of opening another landfill somewhere else, we can reduce our waste. We feel good when we recycle but it has harmful effects for people in other parts of the world. Do we really need to replace our electronics every year? Most importantly we can make the push for cleaner technologies and work towards making companies more accountable for their actions.

Environmental justice ties in closely to so many of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and it fits into my curriculum so this is something that I will be looking at implementing this year. Stay tuned for more information!

Resources

The Love Canal Tragedy – Worth a read if you are unfamiliar with this

Environmental Justice Atlas – Environmental conflicts throughout the world. The link goes to the conflicts in Peru.

New York State Department of Environmental Conservation interactive map

Toxic Sites – an interactive map of polluted sites around the country.

The EPA’s Environmental Justice Page

Educator Collective for Environmental Justice

I know how important global education is to help prepare my students to enter the global society in which we live. Do my students feel the same way though? To be effective within the classroom I must take my students’ thoughts, beliefs, interests, and opinions into account. There must be that buy-in and I really want my students to take more ownership over the work that we do. Prior to introducing global education in my regents earth science course (25 students, 9th/10th grade), I had them take a brief survey. So what did I find out?

Is it important to consider the perspectives of other cultures in school?

No other information was provided to the students to frame this question. It looks like approximately 87% of the students believe that it is important. What does this look like? What cultures are we talking about? How do we incorporate this in a meaningful way that respects these cultures? These are all things that will have to considered.

School does an adequate job of including the perspectives of other cultures in the curriculum.

Most students (70%) did not have an opinion regarding the current approach to considering different perspectives. I believe that this indicates that we need to be more transparent in our approaches. The students probably have a lot of the same questions that I do and may not know what this looks like. In my opinion, schools for the most part don’t do an adequate job. I’m guilty of that myself. Instead of teaching these perspectives ourselves we should be looking for primary resources or global citizens from different cultures to help students learn about the world.

My life is closely connected to the lives of people in other parts of the world.

About 27% of my students currently believe that their lives are connected to others throughout the world. Another 40% of my students are unsure. There is nothing wrong with this data as my students are not often encouraged to think outside of our town, our county, or our state. It is difficult to make connections to video clips that don’t affect us. These numbers will surely change as I begin to implement global education into my curriculum.

The problems faced by the world (pollution, climate change, etc.) can be solved by one country.

An overwhelming majority of the students (93%) disagree with this statement. Human impacts are a large part of the new earth science standards so this makes this an excellent starting point for global education. Students believe that we must work together to solve the problems facing humanity today so this could potentially be the foundation for global partnerships. Would students be willing to work with students in another part of the world though?

I would like to learn more about other cultures in school.

About 70% of my students want to learn more about other cultures but are they willing to step outside their comfort zone and work with other students?

I would like to work with students from other cultures in school

Yes! The interest is there! About 70% of my students want to work with students from other cultures. From some follow-up questions I asked my students at the end of the survey the students were able to actually share their thoughts. It turns out that some of my students already have made connections with people from around the world. One student of mine knows people from Russia, France, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Syria, and Australia. I was impressed!

Overall the results were encouraging. There is a need and an interest in global education. I had one student who chose a specific college to attend because he recognized that there was very little diversity within our school and he wanted to go somewhere that was very diverse. It looks like this is definitely going to be a worthy endeavor. This year I didn’t have much time to begin implementation due to time constraints but I did get a start.

For our final I had my students choose one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals that they felt strongly about and they would dig into it in much more detail.

I’ve never had students take so much interest in a final before. Some of my students put in hours upon hours of work doing research and writing about it. They were excited to talk about it with me during our video conferences.

I will leave you with a thought from one of my students who was very passionate about SDG #16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions. This student related current events (police brutality and the Black Lives Matter protests) to our curriculum and did a wonderful job.

“I think it’s very important to complete these goals for a better world. Once people are done fighting for equality and start working as equals, the world will be able to heal. With people not worried about being attacked for their colour, gender, or whatever we will be able to fix what is wrong with our planet.”

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 1 in 3 people globally do not have access to safe drinking water. Somewhere around 2.2 million people die a year from water-borne diseases, most of which are children. By 2025 half the world’s population might live in water-stressed regions. These statistics are alarming and may get worse as the global population increases and climate continues to change. Solving this global issue is possible if the countries of the globe make the decision to come together and work together. A study by various world groups estimated that it would cost about $28.4 billion dollars a year from 2015 – 2030 to extend basic water and sanitation services to the unserved. That is such a small price to pay to improve the lives of countless people around the globe!

Bringing water to remote or desert regions may require innovative solutions. Here are a few new ideas being tried.

Creative Solutions for Clean Water Access

This falls under the UN’s Sustainable Goal #6: Ensure access to water and sanitation for all