Supriya Kotagal reclaimed her time in an airport to send us these beautiful images and update from her fellowship. Supriya used a Fund for Teachers grant to explore the methodology and best practices of community-based efforts in the Maldives and Solomon Islands to mobilize youth in island nations and Brooklyn confronting climate change.

“My hope,” she wrote in her proposal, “hope is that my fellowship experience will enable me to leverage both of these foci as my students engage in their design thinking work. Ultimately, I hope that ideas generated in my classroom around climate change can begin to be applied to the pressing issues that impact the neighborhood our school serves. I hope to mobilize my own students to be natural drivers of change in their community by creating a student advisory board or governing organization with my colleagues where youth weigh in on key problems and solutions that can better their neighborhood and school experience.”

Read more about her learning that will precede student advocacy.

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As I type this, I am at the airport in Abu Dhabi waiting for my connecting flight to take be back to New York City. I think this is probably the perfect time to reflect on the experience and provide you with some closing thoughts and some of my favorite videos from my time abroad:

Through my Fund for Teachers fellowship, I set out to document the impact climate change is having on small island developing states in the Indian Ocean – specifically the Maldives
and Zanzibar. Providing tangible examples of how climate change is impacting ecosystems and people is incredibly important to me as a science educator. We are living in a time when the impacts of climate change are deemed “debatable” by some and my goal was to make this environmental crisis as tangible as possible for my students. I did this by collecting qualitative data in the form of interviews, photographs, and film clips in order to create “Country Kits” that will enable my seventh graders to explore climate change more deeply. As part of my “Country Kits” I am also producing several  mini-documentaries that help explain different environmental issues and innovative solutions I encountered along the way.

Another aspect of my fellowship was to explore sustainable, community-based efforts that empower youth to tackle the very real challenges of climate change and to use this information to engage my students in thinking more globally about the environment. In the Maldives, I partnered with a sea turtle rehabilitation center called Naifaru Juvenile which seeks to spread awareness about the endangered sea turtle population and create sustainable solutions to protecting beaches and improving waste management–both environmental issues that stem from climate change and directly impact the sea turtle population. I met some amazing young activists who helped organize and participate in a festival bringing awareness to their local community. I was able to interview young people who are developing ways to improve environmental outcomes in their community. One young woman I met started a fashion line where she develops bags and purses from the trash she finds on the beach!

Read more about Supriya’s learning on her blog.

In Zanzibar, I explored how the country’s seaweed industry is being impacted by rising ocean temperatures. I met with a seaweed scientist and attended a community festival aimed at promoting the local development of seaweed products as a way of providing supplemental income to seaweed farmers, the majority of whom are women and who have seen recent declines in profit because of climate change. I also met with a collective of female seaweed farmers who are trying to create innovative products from the seaweed they cultivate in order to support their families. Additionally, I formed a valuable partnership with a youth organization called Zanzibar Learning 4 Life that seeks to encourage young people to become environmentally engaged and develop sustainable solutions to the problems that affect their community. I learned of some amazing work and ideas young people are formulating including using discarded plastic water bottles as bricks for water tanks. I hope to develop a deeper partnership with this organization in my classroom and am working on creating a pen-pal partnership between my students and theirs.

I wanted to share with you two mini-documentaries I made. The first [above] explains the seaweed industry in Zanzibar and the changes female farmers are making there in the face of climate change to maintain a profit. The second shares the perspective of youth on the island of Naifaru, the Maldives on the environmental issues impacting sea turtles and what needs to be done.

Thanks again for such an amazing opportunity. I can’t tell you how valuable this experience has been in re-energizing my passion for this work.

Best,
Supriya

(photo below of a group of young girls getting ready to dance at the youth-led “Turtle Festival” in Naifaru, the Maldives)

Supriya, middle school teacher at The School at Columbia University, is a curriculum designer, consultant and educator who has been involved in the field of education for ten+ years. She was a 2007 Teach for America Corps Member, a New York Hall of Science Design Fellow & Master Teacher, a New York Public Library Cullman Fellow in Creative Writing and currently teaches a STEAM* science course in New York City. Through her experiences, she understands education to be a powerful and transformative tool in uplifting individuals and communities.

Frank Mangan and Brandon Hubbard-Heitz (The Howard School – Chattanooga, TN) are assessing the past and present effects of people’s interaction with the Alaskan wilderness to empower students to embark upon future conservation work in their contexts.

You can follow their learning on Twitter and read more about their adventure below…

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“Late in life, noted naturalist John Muir traveled to Alaska. As he sailed along Alexander Archipelago, he wrote,“To the lover of pure wildness Alaska is one of the most wonderful countries in the world. No excursion that I know of may be made into any other American wilderness where so marvelous an abundance of noble,newborn scenery is so charmingly brought to view…”

Today especially, Alaska stands out for its 54 million acres that have been set aside as national parks, a vast expanse of wilderness that can only be appreciated by the naked eye. Even so, Alaska’s history is also a decidedly human tale of exploitation as much as conservation, abuse as much as preservation. From the migration of humans across the Bering Strait to the gold rush to the ExxonValdez, Alaska is a microcosm of the human-nature relationship within American history. Thus, it offers itself as an excellent starting point for an exploration of this dialectic that has defined the American people’s relationship with their land.

Unfortunately, this relationship often goes unexplored by students at the urban high school in which we teach. The school primarily serves children of color, many of whom lack the resources to explore the local,state, and national parks near their neighborhoods. According to the Outdoor Foundation, only 8% of black adolescents and 12% of Hispanic adolescents participated in outdoor activities in 2015, miniscule numbers compared to 71% of their white peers.As America grows increasingly diverse, this gap portends significant consequences not only for communities of color, but for the earth itself. The damaging effects of human-caused climate change are increasingly manifest and necessitate an “all hands on deck” response – one that is only possible if all people, including our students, become advocates for conservation.

Our self-guided fellowship into Alaska’s wilderness will enable us to report back to our students not only its beauty, but also the imperative to preserve that beauty. As a U.S. history teacher and an English teacher who teach juniors, we will equip our students to step into the wilderness – Alaskan and local, past and present – in order to experience the wonder of the earth and the need to preserve it for future generations. Like Muir, we are documenting our adventure, in writing and digitally, in order to create a meaningful experiential unit that transports students to the Alaskan wilds with the aim of inspiring students to seek out such experiences for themselves while also advocating for the preservation and protection of the natural world.”

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Armed with a 360 degree camera, Frank and Brandon are capturing experiences for their students, including:

• Observing the impact of the ExxonValdez oil slick and climate change on Kenai Fjords National Park;
• Witnessing the human-nature relationship on Reeve’s Field, the airstrip used to support the Pacific Theater during World War II;
• Exploring in Denali National Park and Preserve the Kantishna Mining District;
• Flying above the Arctic Circle to tour Simon Paneak Memorial Museum,
  which documents the natural, geological and cultural history of the Nunamiut people;
• Backpacking in lands preserved by the
  Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act

In addition to incorporating images and experiences into U.S. History and English III classes, the teaching team plans to collaborate with colleagues to create an experiential interdisciplinary unit that promotes outdoor engagement and conservation. They also believe their experiences will help grow the school’s Outdoor Leadership Club, which Brandon founded last year. Lastly, students will visit a local tract of land managed by the National Park Service, interviewing rangers about local issues that interact with what their teachers learned in Alaska. Students’ research will culminate in a joint English – U.S. History research and advocacy project they’ll present to peers, teachers, parents, community members and park rangers.

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Brandon is dedicated to preparing his students for active citizenship in the world by infusing his classes with authentic reading and writing. In 2016, he co-founded the school’s Outdoor Leadership Club in an effort to diversify the outdoors and expose students to the beauty of nature. In addition to being a Fund for Teachers Fellow, Frank has received a Teaching American History grant and studied the Civil Rights Movement at Cambridge University through the Gilder-Lehrman Institute.

2018 Update: Since submitting this story, Diego shared this story:

 

“FFT was transformative, probably the best PD I have done as an educator. My fellowship in South Africa included a visit with Christo Brand, one of Mandela’s former prison wardens who eventually became Mandela’s friend, confidant and served with him when he became president. It worked out beautifully, as Mr. Brand visited my school in Fall of 2015 and FFT allowed me to travel for my fellowship in December of that year, so we stayed in touch and I had the chance to learn first hand about what it was like to be next to Mandela. This picture of Christo and me is right after visiting Robben Island on a beautiful crisp morning in Cape Town.

 

I’ve continued to use what I learned in my fellowship with my classes. All of my students read a chapter from Mandela’s Robben Island: The Dark Years, his memoir of his imprisonment, in a class called LeadServe, where we think about citizenship and civics. 

 

Teaching this class led me to be selected as one of 20 national fellows working with Citizen University, based out of Seattle, to think of new ways of bringing citizens together and engaging the through public “Civic Seminaries.” I trace this work directly to my learning as an FFT Fellow.”

by, Diego Duran-Medina – Estes Park, CO

For most of my social studies students at Eagle Rock High School, social justice is perceived as very US centric, mostly revolving around American historical figures like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks. I designed my Fund for Teachers fellowship to expand students’ knowledge base to an international context by researching social justice in South Africa. For two weeks, I explored the history, impact and legacy of apartheid and Nelson Mandela to gather lessons for students as they begin defining their own path within our progressive, restorative-justice based alternative school. In doing so, I’m facilitating students’ understanding of issues around social justice movements by comparing and contrasting the Civil Rights Movement with apartheid and reconciliation.

My passion for this fellowship comes from having spent over a decade developing my own curricula around issues involving access, social justice, civil rights, definitions of citizenship and exploring what it means to belong and exclude in different contexts. I have never been a traditional teacher relying on textbooks; instead, I prefer to create learning experiences around current events, historical narratives and issues that my students are interested in. This has to do with my own development as a student who always enjoyed history, but found it to be a subject that can often be reduced to static dates, rote memorization and mythology of “great (white) men.” My passion is driven by the fact I want students to know I continue to expand my knowledge and to actively seek new answers with new questions by traveling to a country and culture that I have never visited, but has always fascinated me – South Africa.

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I chose to spend my fellowship observing and researching the Mandela Museum in Mthatha, the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, Mandela Square and the Mandela House in Soweto, because I believe that these places offer a perspective that can only be experienced by visiting and have become part of Nelson Mandela’s myth and legacy. By visiting sites over multiple days, I gathered detailed and thorough information to supplement my teaching and curriculum. I also interacted with educators and museum personnel to connect with those who were able to provide personal insight into Mandela’s life and legacy. As a result, I added an important layer of an international focus with an in-depth study of a historical figure beyond the usual pantheon of Civil Rights figures from the US context. My curricula will deepen with a specific example of social justice and a comparative model with apartheid for looking at slavery, oppression and freedom.

On January 6, I started a class called LeadServe, taking a hard look at what it means to work for democracy in different contexts: the two primary examples we will use are Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela. Students will learn though readings, historical context, connected facts and artifacts collected from my fellowship. They will develop a notion of history that moves beyond facts and moves from the impersonal to the personal (i.e.“What does this history mean for my own life?”) They will also develop skills in comparing and contrasting cultures, movements, societies and historical figures, specifically the U.S. and South Africa.

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Being awarded this fellowship solidified for me that I can be a teacher who focuses on social justice and that my work has real meaning and substance. These stories need to be told to students in a way that goes beyond the classroom or the textbook, and the example I am setting by
traveling to South Africa is much more powerful than just a lecture on apartheid.

There’s a certain inspiration and renewal of the spirit that happens when I pursue these personal passion projects and it helps inject my career with new energy and
focus. Also, as I advance in my career, I am committed to making sure that younger teachers understand the power of experiential learning for their practice and are able to implement similar experiences in their classrooms and curricula.

Learning through travel is the most powerful combination for connecting the classroom and community, the learning with the doing, and the present with the past. Therefore, I am extremely grateful for this opportunity and treasure the days I spent in South Africa, both learning and reflecting on my practice. I consider it an honor to have been selected as a Fund for Teachers Fellow and entrusted with representing myself, my school and my country.

Eagle Rock School is a full-scholarship high school for 72 adolescents who are not thriving in their current situations, for whom few positive options exist and who are interested in taking control of their lives and learning. Eagle Rock is also a Professional Development Center where educators from across the country learn how to re-engage, retain and graduate students. Diego plans to use his fellowship learning in both settings.