Workshops & gatherings

What makes a city "green"? What should Oakland's priorities be in becoming a more green, more climate resilient and more equitable city? For this 2-part workshop, ECCL teamed up with the City of Oakland's ECAP team so we could learn about the City's 2030 Equitable Climate Action Plan (ECAP) and developing action projects we can take on as an OUSD community and ways we can uplift our youth in the work.

During the first workshop on Dec. 8, we activated our thinking with an activity from EcoRise: My City, Green City? and then discussed "the what", "the why" and "the how" of OUSD and City climate action. We ended by identifying connects we see between our personal and professional worlds and the ECAP. You can watch a recording of that workshop here.

During the second workshop on Jan. 12, we explored the connections and intersections between the City of Oakland and OUSD's climate action work and reviewed the ECAP frameworks. We spent the majority of the time in breakout rooms organized by 4 main ECAP sectors: Buildings & Energy, Material Consumption & Waste, Adaptation, and Carbon Removal & Green Spaces. Lead by a City Staff member, we had the chance to learn more deeply about the specific sector and brainstorm action projects for our community and classrooms.

Stay connected by...

• Reading the ECAP

• Exploring the City's Sustainable Oakland webpage

• Sharing and responding to ideas for action project on our community ECAP Padlet

• Planning and implementing your own action project connected to the ECAP. Example Project: School Campus Tree Inventory

Looking for thought partnership for integrating the ECAP into your classroom?

Come to the OEA EJC's "Office Hours" - 2nd Thursdays of the Month from 4-4:30pm - Zoom Link

Air quality has a profound impact on our lives. At this workshop Katherine Funes (kfunes@rosefdn.org) and New Voices Are Rising fellows, David, Parker and Michelle reviewed the science, health impacts and point sources of air pollution in Oakland. They showed us how to use CalEnviroScreen, discussed AB617 and empowered us with actions we can take to improve our local air quality.

Attendees went into breakouts to discuss how to adapt the presentation for our classrooms, deepen student engagement and agency.

Teachers can email Katherine to host this air quality presentation in their class.

Trees are a powerful tool to protect our community from poor air quality and reduce the impacts of climate change. At this workshop Jada Delaney (jadad2000@gmail.com) shared her work with the Rose Foundation on the West Oakland Tree Planting Project.

Jada shared the scientific research and community need behind tree planting for climate mitigation, air pollution and green infrastructure. She then walked us through how different planting sites in West Oakland were selected and assessed.

After a Q&A with Jada, we went into breakouts to discuss how to adapt the presentation for our classrooms and deepen student engagement.

Teachers can sign up to have Jada present to their class and get students involved in the West Oakland Tree Planting Project.

Addressing COVID-19 in an academic context can be intimidating, especially given the challenges students face as a consequence of the pandemic. This workshop featured Grass Valley Elementary teacher Elizabeth Cooke and her work creating a COVID-19 unit.

Elizabeth lead us through three interactive lessons addressing COVID-19 with her 4th and 5th grade classes. These lessons include (1) Class meeting with guest scientist Dr. Martin Culpepper, (2) Mask making, and (3) “How far can your sneeze go?” science experiment. She shared links to these lessons materials, as well as several others.

Following Elizabeth’s presentation, teachers in grade-level groups discussed how the lessons could be adapted to their grade levels, as well as ways to support students through socio-emotional challenges students are experiencing as a consequence of the pandemic.

The High School breakout (featured in the workshop recording) discussed adapting the “How far can your sneeze go” experiment to high school students as an experimental design challenge in which students improve on the experimental design, present experiment and data to each other in conference format and give each other feedback. We also discussed access to equipment/materials, and challenges in supporting/connecting with students virtually.

In the Elementary Breakout, retired OUSD teacher Janan Apaydin shared how she used systems theory as her 'big idea' for the year with her students. She would talked about 4 characteristics of systems: diversity, inter-relationships, sustainability/continuity, and change. She started the year by introducing ecosystems as communities & compared that to the classroom community. Students would engage in a lesson on ecosystems - eco means home, where they think about their family, draw a picture, say who lives there and what 'jobs' they do to help the community - and how everyone working together makes it all work. Students would frequently use a diversity worksheet that had blank boxes and the words "diversity means different kinds" at the top. The class would go out in the garden looking for different leaf shapes one day, collect, glue down, draw or trace as many in the boxes as they could. This was done with a myriad of items, such as buttons, flowers, rocks, etc. Systems thinking and the characteristics of systems were uplifted throughout the year: a yarn toss as a community builder for inter-relationships, a yarn toss to illustrate inter-relationships for food webs, human body systems, systems & levels of government, etc. The classroom focused a lot around how thinking about problems in a systems way allows us to come up with better solutions that don't cause a different problems somewhere else.

We hosted this event at the beginning of the year to bring together students, teachers, partners, and community members interested in environmental and climate change literacy. The goals were to provide a space for communication and mutual support for environmental climate change education champions and to support the integration of environmental climate change education into existing curriculum.

We began with presentations from students which inspired us all, deepening our commitment and sense of urgency in addressing this topic in our classrooms and schools.

Teachers were guided through an exercise in creating an inventory of environmental assets and challenges for their school sites. This helped teachers to identify what positive programs and physical attributes currently exist at their site, and where there were problems to be addressed. From that, teachers began to form ideas about the focus of possible action projects.

Then teachers were introduced to a variety of partner groups offering resources that could support them in developing and implementing their projects. After that, teachers went to different tables based on broad themes/categories that might bring people working on similar ideas together. Tables were named for the ancient elements of fire, water, earth, & air. Of course all are interrelated, but the idea was that an energy-related project would join the ‘fire’ group, a garden based project might join the earth table, while projects dealing with water quality or conservation or air quality would go to their respective tables to work with other teachers and partners in developing their plans.

We ended with each person having identified next steps, appreciations, and the beginning of an electronic resource list of partner groups and a calendar of upcoming events for teachers. View the student speeches below and check out the Agenda & Slides