activism

Greta Thunberg: Inspire Your Students to Climate Action

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How can we inspire our students to become engaged and active global citizens? Show them what other people their own age are doing to create social change.
Greta Thunberg, a sixteen year old Swedish climate activist, is someone who can inspire all of us to action, regardless of our age. Last year I wrote a post about her leading the #Fridays4Future movement  a student strike from school each Friday to bring awareness to climate change. At that time, inspired by the high-school students from Parkland, Florida, Thunberg decided to protest her government’s slow response to climate change by sitting outside Parliament with a handmade sign that said: “School Strike For Climate”. She handed out leaflets about climate change and used social media to spread her message. Students worldwide were inspired, and the movement spread.
Now, over a year later, Thunberg’s is a face known around the world and students around the globe hold school strikes each week. Thunberg was even nominated for the Nobel Peace prize for climate activism. Her Ted Talk, The Disarming Case to Act Right Now on Climate Change, has been viewed by over three million people, and she has addressed a UN Climate Change conference in Poland.
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Most recently, Thunberg spent two weeks sailing across the Atlantic in a solar powered boat (she does not fly due to the carbon emission that air travel leaves), to raise awareness to Americans about climate change and to participate at the UN Climate Action Summit.  During her journey, Thunberg posted often on her social media page.
On Friday, Thunberg protested outside the White House.
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On Wednesday, Thunberg will testify before the US Congress and join young Americans who are suing the government over the crisis.
On September 20, three days before the UN Climate Summit in NYC, young people and adults will strike all across the US and the world to demand that change be taken to address the climate crisis. To find a climate strike near you on September 20, go to strikewithUs.org  or #strikewithus. There are over 750 strikes across the nation planned for that day as well as other events.
Two videos that might inspire students, are a nine minute interview with Trevor Noah, and a nine minute video from PBS World News. The PBS video includes a written transcript as well as highlights of quotes that could be discussed with students.
For more information on the climate strike movement using Twitter, try the hashtags #strike4climate  or #Friday4Future or #YouthStrike4Climate or follow some of the youth leaders such as: @sunrisemvmt @climatestrikeUS

 

Who Makes Our Things? Teaching About the Global Economy

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T-Shirts, IPhones and blue jeans–objects most of my grade 7 students own, love and rely on. Thus, after a long New England winter, I could think of a no better way to captivate and re-charge their minds than through exploring the production of these goods in the global economy. As one reluctant learner said to me after class, “I am so into what we are studying.” Another commented, “These are things we never think about but always should.” Studying our things lends itself to high levels of critical thinking, grasping key economic concepts, making connections, and pondering one’s own place and responsibility in the world.

For the t-shirt, I relied on the 5-chapter NPR Planet Money Makes A T Shirt short video clips. The videos start on a Mississippi cotton farm,  introduce us to the workers and factories in Bangladesh and Colombia, explore the measurements and movements of the cargo container, and follow the shipment of goods around the globe. They introduce us to the humans responsible in all levels of production. At only about 6-minutes each, these videos are thought provoking, easy to follow, and cover a myriad of concepts to both engage and challenge students. To keep their minds active while watching, I asked students to take fill-in notes on a worksheet I had prepared which allowed them to capture and recall details to support our discussion.

After the videos, I exercised their listening comprehension muscles by playing two NPR stories:  Two Sisters, A Small Room and the World Behind a T-Shirt which looks at the lives of two sisters who work in a factory in Bangladesh, and The Afterlife of American Clothes which explores the second-hand clothing markets of Sub-Saharan Africa, which receive over a billion pounds of clothing from the US. The students were riveted to the introduction of the story, which mentions how one man donated his t-shirt to a Goodwill in Miami and five months later, when he was working in Sierra Leone, saw an ice cream vendor wearing his shirt. Both of these stories pulled in the attention of my students who thought critically about geography and the role of the global economy on the lives of all involved.

To help us explore the I Phone, we watched and discussed Inside the Apple Factory from ABC News, as well as NYU Student Goes Undercover in Apple Factory as well as looked at what is in an cell itself in Why It Takes 75 Elements to Make Your Cell Phone.

Lastly, to examine our blue jeans, we watched a documentary called China Blue which explores the movement of millions of villagers to factories in cities in China. The film focuses on a young girl named Jasmine who makes the hard journey to support her family and their farm. Viewers are invited into a rare look at a blue jean factory that makes clothes for the global market, and can examine the different points of responsibility from multinational companies, the factory owner, the government and the consumer. I show the film in 3 parts, stopping for discussion, and leaving room at the end of each part for small groups to discuss specific questions. The groups then share out their ideas to the larger class.

As there are so many products to explore and so many resources available, I invite your  input. How do you teach concepts of globalization? What activities allow for our youth to understand where our goods come from, basic economic principles, and what our role as consumers is to the global economy?

Change the Ref: Manuel Oliver

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I was truly honored to meet Manuel Oliver from Change the Ref on Thursday as I went to support students from @50milesmore who were marching from Worcester to Springfield to protest at Smith & Wesson for gun reform. Oliver lost his son, Joaquin, in the Parkland tragedy, and turned to his art as a form of activism. Founded in the memory of their son Joaquin who was one of the 17 victims, Manuel and Patricia Oliver are committed to making sure that their son’s life and the lives of the other 16 victims are never forgotten and that real change happens to prevent future tragedies like this from happening ever again. Change the Ref uses urban art and nonviolent creative confrontation to expose the disastrous effects of the mass shooting pandemic and to help push for gun reform. IMG_8257

WALLS OF DEMAND is a nationwide art project, and a way for Manuel Oliver’s son, Joaquin, to have a voice. These murals have a very powerful image so it’s hard to look away, and hard to ignore. These walls trigger people to think about gun violence, and the need for change.

Follow their powerful work by visiting their website or on twitter at @changetheref

 

 

The Kids Are Alright

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I have been a middle school Social Studies teacher for almost 20 years, and during that time I have not seen youth galvanized around an issue like that of gun reform. In fact, recently, after viewing Teaching Tolerance’s film A Children’s March with my students, I asked my students what issues they would personally take a stand for. While they held strong opinions on many topics, most of them struggled to find an issue that would propel them to action like the students they watched in the film, marching in the civil rights movement and creating social change where adults could not. They agreed that the issue would have to be really important and really impact their own lives for them to take an active stance.

Then came another school shooting, and now we see the youth of America rising up. And why wouldn’t these students want to become active in this issue? In 2018 alone (and it is only February), there have already been eight school shootings by some reports, and the nation’s youth (and teachers) have been the target. And suddenly, the vast social media communities that youth have created around themselves on twitter, snapchat, Facebook and Instagram, become the perfect fuel to spread this spark of social activism quickly. “How the Survivors of Parkland Began the #NeverAgain Movement” explores how the activism was ignited and has spread rapidly using the technology that the youth have mastered.

When Emma Gonzalez, a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School senior whose face has since become a symbol for this quickly growing youth-led political campaign, screamed “We Call B.S”,  her words resounded like a rallying cry.  And clearly, the Parkland students are not going away. Cameron Kasky, another survivor of the shooting wrote My Generation Will Not Stand for This, and grilled Senator Marco Rubio in a recent CNN Town Hall on Gun Policy.  At the event where CNN hosted survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting along with law enforcement, congressmen, and a representative of the NRA in a town hall on gun policy in America, there were some very emotional moments, including Kasky asking Senator Rubio if he would stop taking donations from the NRA.

“Young people have helped lead all our great movements,” President Obama recently said on Twitter. “How inspiring to see it again in so many smart, fearless students standing up for their right to be safe; marching and organizing to remake the world as it should be.”

 

One of the biggest events these youth activists are planning is the March For Our Lives on March 24th in Washington DC and in cities and towns around the nation. The march’s website states that the mission and focus of March For Our Lives is “to demand that a comprehensive and effective bill be immediately brought before Congress to address these gun issues. No special interest group, no political agenda is more critical than timely passage of legislation to effectively address the gun violence issues that are rampant in our country.”

Perhaps the most powerful aspect of the event is that it is being coordinated by students themselves. The organizers state that the march is being “created by, inspired by, and led by students across the country who will no longer risk their lives waiting for someone else to take action to stop the epidemic of mass school shootings that has become all too familiar. ” Activists Seek to Keep Gun Movement Student-Led explores how a movement started by youth can continue in this way, with adult support and funding, but with the control in the hands of youth activists.

As a classroom teacher, I will be marching behind and alongside these youth to demand that their lives (and my life) and safety become a priority. School safety  should not a political issue, it should be a guarantee. I am inspired by the activism I am witnessing, and also intrigued and excited by the use of social media to help spread their movement. #NeverAgain