Maymester teachers must create an interdisciplinary unit that combines not only
their academic field with the discipline of their field placement, but must also
integrate Albion College’s theme of the year. This year’s comprehensive
Maymester theme, based off the college’s theme of sustainability, was titled
Sustainability: Working Together—Building Relationships through Diversification
and Adaptation for a Peaceful
Coexistence. Cognizant of what
a mouthful the title was, most
of us, at least in the beginning,
stopped after just the first
word: sustainability. But this
shortening limited how we
thought about the topic. Much
intellectual wherewithal in
seminar and collaboration
meetings went into brainstorming ideas about units that could integrate the
environment across disciplines. It took us time as a class to slowing rediscover the
far more profound implications of sustainability.
Much of what we found as a class could be summed up in one of my students’
responses to a DO NOW prompt about what they think of when they come across
the word sustainability:
Several weeks before Maymester began, the Maymester teachers were offered
the opportunity to participate in a day-long Project Wild certification class with
Mr. David Green at Albion College’s Whitehouse Nature Center. Project Wild is an
national program
designed to link “students
and wildlife through its
mission to provide
wildlife-based
conservation and
environmental education
that fosters responsible
actions toward wildlife
and related natural
resources.” In this, Project
Wild is very much linked
to the field of education, prioritizing the development of awareness, knowledge,
skills, and commitment.
Throughout our day going
through the Project Wild
certification class, Mr. Green
led us in several wildlifeoriented activities designed for
students from Kindergarten to
high school. Together we
furthered our knowledge about
sustainability by engaging in a
number of fun activities
designed to get students
excited and thinking about things outside. A favorite of mine was an activity that
illustrated the dynamic between deer population and the availability of resources:
both a great form of exercise and an apt illustration of a sustainable system.
The driving question behind my unit was always how could I use the three weeks I
had with a group of AP Chemistry students post AP exam that would most benefit
them at this time in their
lives. In the end, my unit—
Communicating Science
Through Topics of
Sustainability—focused on
making the students more
aware of and better
equipped to create various
forms of scientific
communications with
different aims for specific
audiences. They already had
a rigorous class’ worth of content knowledge; I wanted teach the students skills
that would help them sustain their success as they moved on to higher education.
And thus my unit developed around the goals. The first was to have the students
produce a formal APA style lab report that framed scientific results in a specific
manner for other scientists. The second was a video PSA with accompanying
brochure that packaged science in a more informative and persuasive manner
meant for the general public. This metadiscourse about what the students had
encountered
all year was
meant to
help them
improve
their overall
scientific
literacy for
college.
Thanks to the funds provided by the Fritz-Shurmur Center for Teacher Development,
I was able to start my unit off with a field trip to the Whitehouse Nature Center at
Albion College so the students could apply the lab skills they developed throughout
their class with some on-site water testing and then relax a bit canoeing the
Kalamazoo River.
In groups of three, the students performed a series of six tests on the river, ranging
from dissolved oxygen to turbidity. More tests
were performed later in the lab. Due to the
Enbridge oil spill several years ago, many of the
students easily contextualized the water testing as
an exercise in sustainability—they were
monitoring the progress and health of
the river, a sentiment that arose in
almost every lab report. While
canoeing, Mr. Green told the students
about how the presence of
certain organisms like
macroinvertabrates can help
indicate
the health
of a river.
Beyond the lab reports the students wrote on the results of our water testing
venture, they were also tasked with working on an informative PSA that linked a
sustainability issue with chemistry. Though several groups elected to work with
subjects concerning renewable energy or environmental cleanliness, more
obvious and very important issues when it comes to environmental sustainability,
many of the groups chose less traditional topics. While one group approached
environmental sustainability through the sustainability of bee populations—
certainly a unique and needed perspective (as their PSA would tell you), other
groups worked on personal health subjects like eye and teeth sustainability, and
another group worked with the more comic issue of pool sustainability. The
students created both pamphlets and video PSAs that were meant to present
their problems, inform us of how they work and how they can be prevented or
stopped, and provide a way or steps people can take to end or mitigate the issue.
As demonstrated by the students’ choices in topics, the terms sustainability is a
dynamic word. While, yes, it applies quite nicely to the environment, there exist
many things in our world that can be sustained,