Ecojustice education

Eco Justice education by Laura Johnson and Rebecca Martusewicz speaks of how the dominant industrial culture in our society has severed human ties with nature. The has created a society that values profit over the affect on the enviornment and even on the people around you.  Competition and profit are not put over everything else. This results in major destruction and violence to the world around us. If humans were to return to nature and see how everything affects  the things around it it would create a much more caring community of people.

To use this research in my classroom I would want to show all of the connections between every living thing. This could be easily made into an ecosystem and food chain lesson but the human species would be included in the web. It's a little elementary schools but creating an ecosystem in the classroom would let student be engaged and feel more connected to results and would allow them to introduce different things into an ecosystem and see the negative or positive affects that they may have. 

The research  in Revolutionary STEM Education  explores the  bridge between cultural  and natural. It brings up ways in which us as teachers can bring up ecological issues in class and really explore them. This involves a lot of teacher preperation and community activism. It has students get out and reallly see the enviorment and experience it for themselves instead of just reading and writing about , It encourages young people to get involved with thier community and  figure out ways and plans to help.

This helped me with how I would want to add in some activities to really get students out in nature. I would try to have as many hand on experience as possible and really get students out there so that they could experience nature and really begin to appreciate it. I feel as though looking at a picture and auctually seeing something creates such a different response. As a biology teacher I feel like it would not be hard to relate my lessons to things that my community would have in the local nature. Then the students would also be able to actually see the effects of pollution and how humans negatively affect the enviornment. 

Urban Ecojustice eduation: Transformative learning outcomes with high school service learners by Andrew Schneller was a case study about EcoJustice education in an urban school setting. It spoke of how they merge ecological justice and education to make an impact learning system. It worked on giving urban schools access to natural sciences that they typically would not get to experience in their urban setting. It also looked to see how "Environmental burdens" affected people of color and those in the lower class and looked at the effect of lack of urban green space.

Urban environment  lack of green space and access to the outdoors in urban environments is such a huge problem that contribute to physical, mental, and educational problems. By nature not being accessible to the general public of an urban environment it takes away so many important experiences and learning opportunities. I think that it would definitely be important to explore how the lack of nature can affect humans in the classroom. It would be easy to bring up statistics on how areas with not easily accessible nature have physical problems as well as mental problems. This would help show the importance of keeping the nature we currently have healthy.

In Teaching Adults EcoJustice Education by  Audrey Dentith and  Onah Thompson talks about the impact of global warming on the earth and how corporation are left unchecked and are negatively impacting the enviorment. It speaks on the environmental impact that politics and large corporations . Consumerism drives these corporations and peoples lack of regard for ecological environment keep them afloat and do not hold them accountable for their actions. The way that the world is operating is not sustainable and is killing of the environment and nobody cares enough to do anything major to help prevent this.

To incorporate this in my classroom would be a little more difficult because the problem is mostly political  and deals with how people care more about making money then they do about the enviorment.  I feel like it would an interesting thing to have taught in a classroom though. It would be a sort of role play  and have a simulation of an and ecosystem with risks and reward but the things that would cause most harm would come with the most reward but the simulation would not last as long, It would sort of be a show of capitalism and consumerism vs. the environment. 

In Developing Teachers' Capacity  for ecojustice education and community based learning by Ethan Lowenstein talks about the different Technics taught at ecojustice education workshops to teachers to help them bring Justice learning into their classrooms. It spoke of the massive ecological problems that the world is currently facing such as over fishing and the acidification of our oceans as well as other ecological issues. It also spoke about the disproportionate way that people of color in our country are suffering from asthma, lead poisoning, obesity, and nutrition related diseases. The lack of clean drinkable water in our country is absolutely shocking. The future of the population depends on how we treat the world right now.

The article  speaks of how an important way to gain ecojustice  is to understand and value differences of the people around you. In order to really want change for the community we have to care about everybody in our community. I don't necessarily think this is a lesson you can teach I believe it's something you lead by example. Making my classroom an open space for everybody that walks in and not just focus on similarities but also see and appreciate the differences of everybody we come in contact with.