Victoria's+Field+Journal

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As a way to continually track back and forth between what we see to be the conceptual challenges created by sustainability problems, and what this calls for in educational programming: ======

__January 28th, 2014 __
As I watched Obama's State of the Union speech tonight, I paid closer attention to the portion of his speech about education than I normally would have. Interestingly, the part that he really focused on the most was raising standards for pre-k education. When I usually think of America's problems, I think of high schools not preparing kids for college- or middle schools not being challenging enough to have them aspire to a successful high school experience. Yet, with what we've been talking about in class, I think that this pre-k education that Obama has been attempting to improve my in fact be the most important. These years are a different type of learning. While schooling in general is based largely in content, the years of pre-k and a little after are years of learning how to think, make decisions, and understand how things work. Even though the science component of sustainability problems is important to understand, the more essential part of raising a generation of kids who can solve sustainability problems is providing them with a solid education in their formative years. Obama hit on these principles of emphasizing problem-solving way more than testing, and I was really surprised that he criticized our test-based system. The text is as follows:

Teachers and principals in schools from Tennessee to Washington, D.C. are making big strides in preparing kids with skills for the new economy – problem solving, critical thinking, science, technology, engineering, and math. Some of this change is hard. It requires everything from more challenging curriculum and more demanding parents to better support for teachers and new ways to measure how well our kids think, not how well they can fill in a bubble on a test.

That being said, I also think that the true habits of mind that we are trying to teach to our children need to be reinforced at home to bring sustainability challenges out of the classroom and into the home. Parents need to take an active role to supplement a curriculum on sustainability by showing their kids at home where the trash goes, how much trash each house makes. When kids see the bags and bags of trash on each street that the garbage man picks up, they take that information and think about it in ways taught in the classroom. In conclusion, I think that we can really make a difference in educating our younger kids to solve the future's sustainability challenges by teaching them very early on how to think about problems and make decisions.

__January 29th, 2014 __
For class yesterday, we read "Political Knowledge, Political Engagement, and Civic Education by William Galston. The ideas presented in this paper really struck me as one of the habits of mind that clearly is not focused on enough in that is absolutely necessary for sustainability problems. The fact that kids' political engagement has dropped by such a huge amount seriously impacts the initiative taken to address sustainability issues at the political level. As Brandon pointed out, politics in the education system may have been dropped because it was believed for a long time that education could do nothing to boost levels of political engagement. But, we can see as politics disappeared from the education system, political engagement dropped off a cliff, disproving that assumption. If young adults are not engaged politically, it makes it that much more difficult to break through the complicated political barriers to bring about change via activism. Thinking this way, we need to not only emphasize the EcoEd literacy outcomes regarding understanding government and political systems, but incorporate history of social change and translate it into how to bring about the same kind of change in the government today. To fully understand sustainability issues, the complicated laws that regulate our industry need to be understood. Sustainability problems in general require more political engagement and knowledge than other societal problems, and therefore a more rigorous curriculum needs to be developed to effectively prepare kids to address them.

__February 1st, 2014 __
Sustainability challenges are so unique because they are so multi-dimensional, and I think this trait is what makes them so difficult to deal with. When I think about other challenges that our national community has faced that required social action for change, they seem to be only concerned with one element of society. For example, same-sex marriage remains only a cultural challenge. I think it can be assumed that it is not classified as a scientific or economical challenge as well. But tackling sustainability issues - they involve overthrowing cultural ideals, designing systems that boost the economy, understanding and agreeing multiple scientific disciplines, and battling international political systems. I think this far-reaching nature of sustainability problems makes them one of the most difficult things to incorporate into the educational system. The educational system does not seem to be very compatible with the huge rang of educational outcomes that need to be thoroughly understood and prioritized in order to teach a generation of children to be prepared to actively pursue solutions to sustainability problems in the future. As I was completing the curriculum review of the DoE module on fossil fuels, I was thinking about how long it took our country to even agree on basic scientific principles due to the overbearing financial interest of both corporations and the government. Even now, the information that I came across on the DoE's website seemed to omit facts that told the whole story about the rippling effects of fossil fuels. These thoughts make me think that the educational outcome of understanding the diverse perspectives, bias, and vested interests in this country particularly is one of the most important skills to be taught in the education system. How can a person hope to move through any of the complications of creating social change without first being able to form a concrete, thoroughly researched and understood factual basis for their movement? I think that this is an absolutely essential first step that discredits many attempted social movements that had potential for the success.

__February 2nd, 2014 __
Watching the Super Bowl tonight, I came to thinking about how America's approach to solving sustainability issues is completely unique to our country in particular, based on our uniquely American behaviors. While other countries also hold massive events like the Super Bowl, it strikes me as an American way of thinking to classify events like the Super Bowl as "an unchangeable way of life." When you think of the NFL, you don't think of it having to do anything with sustainability. You don't think about the massive amount of paper cups to fill drinks, plastic baskets to put chicken fingers and fries in, the tickets, the merchandise, the huge amount of energy to light the fields, the costs to manufacture new jerseys for the players every game, and gear for the fans. It is these kinds of things in the American lifestyle that SHOULD be classified as sustainability challenges,but aren't. The kinds of habits of mind that consider all aspects of American life, particularly large events, as sustainability challenges need to be further enforced in the educational system. While kids may pick up the fact that cars are "bad for the environment", they don't learn that a professional who flies on a plane weekly or monthly is part of a professional system that relies heavily on fossil fuels for mobility. In order for our kids to feel compelled to take action, we need to encourage habits of mind that look at every action (going to a football game) in a system (the football stadium and league) that has some effect on the environment (material and energy usage). Once this kind of thinking has been learned, it becomes that much easier for a kid to view sustainability challenges as real and tangible.

__February 5th, 2014 __
The five-box module that we are developing for the third grade systems curriculum seems excellently designed in the way that it needs to be in order to provoke cultural transformations. As our readings have discussed in detail, logic, reason, and science are not enough for the American public (or the some of the global population as well) to overcome cultural barriers to bring about change. While there are passionate environmentalists and animal lovers, these groups are not enough to motivate a majority of the general public to seek active change. I think this is where the "systems" way of thinking becomes especially powerful as a motivation factor. If a child is trained to think of the complex interaction between facets of our society as a large network of interacting systems, they can more clearly see how a disturbance in one part of the system creates a ripple effect through the rest of connected parts. The threat of the entire system collapse seems like a stronger motivational factor than basing environmental action on emotional attachments that many Americans simply don't sympathize with. Encouraging systems thinking in the educational system also teaches kids to initiate questions and make important observations about each system - it encourages a kind of natural curiosity for a deeper understanding. Instead of simply saying, "This is a bike. You use it to get from one place to another," our curriculum stimulates key thinking patterns that shift far away from informational into decision-making and design. They look at a bike, consider the parts, how it moves, how its strengths and weaknesses depend all on the bike, the human, and the environment around it. I feel like it is these habits that prevent educated adults who look at the climate and think "This is what the climate is. This is how it has always been and how it always will be, and we can't do anything about it."

__February 6th, 2014 __
As a chemical engineering major, I learn almost every day about how chemicals interact with each other, and how to optimize chemical processes, control the byproducts that they produce, weigh the sosts the energy production, and ensure that the byproducts can be properly disposed of. As I was browsing through the environmental news website, one headline really jumped out at me:"Common Chemical Kills Coral Reefs." The crucial word here is 'common'. In my growing experience with various processes and chemicals, the last thing that an engineer or an industry would want to put into their product is a dangerous chemical. The article went on to discuss how one of the preservative in personal toiletries (bath salts, shampoo, etc.) is not being completely filtered out of waste effluent and is severely inhibiting the growth of young coral. Now, I understand that a companies' first thought about a shampoo product may not be "what will every chemical in this product do to the coral in the ocean?" but it seems that the long-term trend of the structure of industry is really emphasized here. When formulating a product that interacts with the system, the industry tends to give the benefit of the doubt in their ability to treat water completely. Instead of employing the precautionary principle and only including chemicals that are known to be safe and treatable //generally // towards living things, the industry uses the cheapest/most effective chemicals if they haven't previously been explicitly proven as dangerous. We need to change this system and how it functions. There are so, so many different combinations of a number of chemicals that can achieve a task with different side effects for each different chemicals. I think that its about time we stop taking the environment as one of the side effects that doesn't really matter all that much. Because this specific type of pollution cannot be traced directly to one source and no one can be held accountable, the incentive to reduce or remove the use of that chemical really doesn't exist. We produce all of our consumer products with chemicals that we microwave, cook, rub onto our bodies, drink, and eat. Yet, because they haven't been proven in a lab somewhere that they can disrupt our delicate systems, we delude ourselves in assuming that they cannot be dangerous.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The article I referenced can be found at: http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/newscience/2014/Jan/coral-damage/

__<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">February 8th, 2014 __
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Creating a script and layout for the aquaponics module that we will be presenting to the third graders on Wednesday got me to thinking about the difficulty of achieving EcoEd's learning outcomes while working at a level that the kids can understand. The literacy outcomes are so well thought out and deep that it seems hard to connect the dots on how to bring such a high level of learning down into an exercise that the kids will understand and enjoy. I am volunteering to help out with Exploring Engineering Day this Saturday, and the translation struggles there too. We watched and critiqued everyone's activity, similar to how we did in class on Thursday as we ran through our presentations, and it struck me as funny, yet a real problem, how we, as both adults and RPI students, talk and explain concepts at such a high level. Even with the intention of designing an activity for children, we have trouble articulating our thoughts on their level. I think this gap in understanding between the instructor and the students is one of the huge barriers in creating an effective curriculum and really driving home the learning outcomes that we set out to achieve. At its most basic level, we have to be careful of vocabulary words. When explaining aquaponics, we wanted to use terms like metabolic, conversion, microbial, symbiotic to explain what was happening in the system. Vocabulary is something than can be fixed by a matter of mere substitution; the more difficult challenge is to bring our patterns of thinking across to them so that they can replicate it. In everything we do, we make a lot of complicated decision-making connections that these kids have not yet developed enough to understand or been trained to learn. I have previously discussed the uniqueness of sustainability problems as compared to other societal problems, and therefore, we need to specially exercise the exact thinking patterns that we want to develop to solve sustainability challenges through a simple curriculum. I think that is a major challenge that really separates a well-designed and effective curriculum from one that the students will gain no long--term benefits out of.

__<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">February 9th, 2014 __
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">We focus almost all of our attention on designing and evaluating what our kids will learn from us, but I think we also need to spend a significant portion of time thinking and talking about what we have (or will have) learned from our students and from each other. In the process of designing curriculum for the students, we have already used some of the collaborative social skills that we are trying to teach. We are consciously planning how to get a message across that we want an audience to absorb, and train them in our ways of thinking. I think that we take our skills to work in this kind of group for granted, and that we have attained them over many years of working in groups. But, we also need to look to our students and try to sense how effective our messages are to them and if they have picked up a little bit on the message that we are trying to send. From their learning, we can learn more about ourselves and about our power as a group to target a certain audience and effectively convey a message or a set of skills. While our purpose here is to teach children, these same skills can be molded to use for the purpose of addressing sustainability challenges through social change, empowering ourselves with more of an understanding of what we can do now, before the children grow to address them also. I think this is a two-way learning system for all of us, but we don't necessarily think of it that way. If we make sure to be observant of our audience, we can learn what rings true with them, what our strengths are, and what they still need to learn. We can get a better measure of where they stand and what exactly we need to do to bring them to where we want.

__<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">February 11th, 2014 __
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I find it so paradoxical that America simultaneously demands and disregards scientific information based on what they want to believe. After years and years of more and more science pointing towards human causes of climate change, many Americans are still significantly skeptical, despite a scientific consensus of 97%. At the same time, America pushes towards hard data in order to improve and evaluate the education system. Claiming that test scores provide an accurate and necessary evaluation of teachers, America is working towards creating a centralized numerical system to properly rate the effectiveness of teachers. While climate change and education are similar in the aspect that both have a huge number of factors influencing them, the same kind of data analysis cannot be applied to both. Climate change can be broken down into a variety of sciences, traced back into history, and analyzed for a depth of understanding and predictability. Educational analysis is founded on psychology and sociology, and has different effects on every child in every area for every subject even if the method of teaching is the same. Like we discussed in class, no matter what the plans or expectations will be, the outcome may be more or less effective depending on any number of factors. To think that we can simplify education into a rubric that works for every student and every teacher<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> seems ridiculous to me. Why do we suddenly need to have scientific evidence of educational success when we won't listen to irrefutable evidence that the myriad of chemical crap that we are pouring into the environment is affecting it? It's all manipulated for what the government or a particular corporation wants to prove. It's sad, and it's a challenge to think about what we could possibly do about it, or what we should teach our kids to get them to identify these issues as problems and want to change them also.

__<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">February 12th, 2014 __
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I was really excited about how well the sessions with the third graders went today. I'm not sure about the rest of the group, but I was slightly apprehensive that our model wouldn't resonate with them in the way that we wanted it to. Being a kid in college with a sister and brother who are far out of elementary school, I realized that it had been a long time since I was around kids that age. Without that experience, I <span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> found <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> myself struggling to remember at what level the kids could think and understand. It’s important to make it simple enough that they can get engaged, but challenging enough that it stretches their thinking and teaches them something new. I think our curriculum balanced those elements better than I originally anticipated. I think the enthusiasm that the kids showed was directly tied to the fact that our centers had hands-on parts to them - the bike, setting up the aquaponics system, etc. I think our design of filling out the 5-block map first with the entire group was a great way to familiarize them with the format that we were trying to introduce. I was so surprised that they were so eager to participate, and it's good information to use in the future that they will willingly keep giving us ideas. I found that it was pretty interesting during the human body segment that most of the answers that they offered for "strengths and weaknesses" came from within the body itself, and not interaction between the body and the environment. I think that this was the most important point that we were able to drive home to them and really one of our main literacy outcomes - that there are complex interactions between all systems that either strengthen or weaken them. I am hopeful that their interest will remain piqued with the aquaponics system and that it will serve as a reminder of everything they learned so far.

__<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">February 15th, 2014 __
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Tonight I read an article about President Obama's plan to provide aid for California farmers whose crops and livestock are severely suffering from an extended period of drought from the unusually warm and dry weather. As I read through this article, several things struck me that are inherently flawed with our system of handling problems like this. Firstly, President Obama's solution is to pour millions of dollars into the "relief effort." While I understand the need for a short-term fix to keep the system afloat, this solution does nothing to correct the deeper problem here. It also contributes even more money to our national spending and exponentially rising debt. Second, our entire legislative system really has no priorities in terms of actually looking out for the long-term health of the nation. I think that Obama has good intentions with regards to caring for the climate. The article says that he spent most of his speech focusing on how the legislation regarding environment and <span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> health <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">regulations needs to be passed through Congress - but everyone is well aware that it won't be passed. The House Science Chairman said that Obama is simply using the weather as leverage to pass his legislation with "no scientific support." I can't even grace that with a comment. It's so ridiculous. Anyways, I think that it is more our system that is at fault here rather than President Obama. Throwing money at California while refusing to address the long-term problem of climate change is hurting us in every way. We are going to spend more and more and more in the future in aid trying to accommodate the changing climate because big corporations can't take a hit to their profits to stop ruining the planet. It's a very frustrating cycle, and I think we need to prioritize this frustration in <span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> education <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">systems as a motivating factor for our kids to want to bring about social change.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The article that I referenced can be found at URL: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/02/obama-california-farms-103555.html (linked from environmental health news)

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I think that, in the age of information, the media literacy outcomes that we set in EcoEd become more and more important. After reading the article about the Tea Party being created by big tobacco and billionaires while putting off the image that it was a grassroots movement, I had a small realization about how corrupt the information that we receive every day is. We are living in a time when we are being bombarded by more and more information than ever before, and it is easy not to understand exactly where the information is coming from. Because so much information is flashing by, we do not take every commercial completely accountable or question every story on the news. As children growing up in this time of information, it is crucial for them to be constantly questioning the stakeholders behind the scenes. Important decisions, opinions, and choices are made based on subconscious or conscious messages received from advertising or other sources. I wonder if curriculum is missing a certain element of media literacy because the necessity for it was not as strong as it is now. The amount of information is only going to continue growing as we move forward, and it is absolutely necessary that we stress learning media literacy in our EcoEd curriculum.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I have learned about greenwashing many times before and I was well aware of its existence before this class due to my other sustainability coursework that I have completed. I did not realize, though, how pervasive it is in almost every major company's advertising and a large majority of advertisements that are on tv or other media. There must have a been a lot of focus groups in the PR industry telling companies that "going green" was going to increase their profits substantially. I wonder if, back in the day of limited advertising in newspapers and such, advertising used to be an honest description of a product and its benefits. I think it really says a lot about human nature and the unquenchable thirst for money that creates a multi-billion dollar industry whose purpose is to be as manipulative as possible while still covering their tracks enough that they can't be held accountable for lying. Also, it makes the ability to distinguish truly green products that are honestly trying to make the world better from companies that have tons of money to spend on beautiful advertisements. It's bad enough that companies have no incentive to improve while they pay off regulatory agencies. I think that greenwashing actually inhibits progress even more because it tricks the public into thinking that a company is green, reducing the consumer pressure for them to improve. As environmentalism became more "trendy," companies quickly adapted their advertising techniques while in reality doing nothing at all to improve their practice. Hopefully, the FTC regulations get passed and are actually funded enough to be enforced so that we can move past this new era where every product is falsely "green."

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I saw a commercial tonight that wasn't greenwashing in any way, but it really struck me as something that worked against sustainability ideals. I think the commercial originally aired a long time ago, but I rarely watch telelvision, so I had not seen it. The commercial featured a wealthy white man standing at the foot of his ginormous pool and begins by saying "why do we work so hard?" Struck by the actual depth of this commercial, I really paid attention to it. But my horror grew as I listened to him explain that Americans are more hard-working and crazy than the rest of the countries in the world, giving us the ability to live in luxury and purchase the very expensive Cadillac featured at the end. I don't concern myself with this commercial because it features a car that may be polluting, but more that it drives the characteristically American work-and-spend cycle that inherently creates the massive consumer culture that we live in. In order to fill the void of not having any <span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> free <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">time or personal connection, we buy more and more stuff to somehow convince ourselves that the workload is worth it. The consumer culture has been proven to correlate with the increase in the number of hours worked per week. I think that this consumer culture is a huge reason why Americans have such trouble framing and accepting a sustainable lifestyle that could not accommodate this level of consumer culture. We see this work-spend cycle as something that is inevitable to succeed in the American culture, and I think this construct greatly hinders the development of a mentality that could downsize the way we live to the basics. Perhaps if we weren't entranced by the false promises of working too hard, we could consider relaxing the pace of life and our level of consumption with it.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The commercial and additional commentary can be <span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> found <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">at this link: <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">http://www.syracuse.com/opinion/index.ssf/2014/02/5_reasons_the_guy_in_the_cadillac_commercial_is_wrong_about_workaholic_americans.html

__<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">February 21st, 2014 __
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I feel like I am torn between two ways of educating sustainability challenges to the kids. We discussed in class and from the readings the difference between sticking to the idealism of environmentalism or motivation through the most effective means (aka playing to self interests) even if it does not correlate directly with the communal ideals of environmentalism. This same kind of contrast is seen when figuring out how to address businesses to be more environmentally friendly. Do we motivate them by throwing out regulations and economic incentives? Or do we campaign our idealism until they feel inspired to "do the right thing" and clean up their polluting practices? In this same way, we can also decide how we want to craft our curriculum. We have to decide if our primary goal is to spark political action no matter what, or if we want our goal to be indoctrinating the children with sense of obligation to care for the environment. Maybe we don't have to just go one way or the other. I feel like we can use elements of both strategies to create a message, or lesson, that has a maximum impact. We don't want a new generation who work for the environment just selfishly. What if the benefit that they are working selfishly towards changes in the future? I feel like the environmental movements' approach so far has been only preaching idealism - why would they preach anything other than what's in line with their cause? But I think that we need to cater our strategy more towards what is actually going to work as the crisis gets more and more urgent.

__<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">February 23rd, 2014 __
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">As we go through all of these readings focusing on ideas, I have been trying to brainstorm ways that we can translate these ideals into effective classroom activities. Thinking along the lines of Jane Elliot's discrimination activity, I think our activities should try to simulate various situations that we want to teach about as closely as possible without being traumatic. As I wrote about in my midterm, I think that reenacting some kind of activity base around the tragedy of the commons would stick with the kids enough that they would keep some kinds of those ideals about sharing resources that the tragedy calls for. For example, giving the kids limited resources to use during class, like pencils or paper, and then requesting that they all submit an assignment to be graded. It doesn't even have to be class-related, it could be a more simulated activity that involves resource tokens or a breakdown of what each person has. Classroom activities that submerge the kids into the experience that we are trying to teach them about (resource consumption, or in Jane Elliots' case, discrimination) brings the learning to a more powerful and effective level. If we were teaching to an older group, I'm not sure how effective this method would be. I have been surprised in our recent experiences with how participatory and vocal the younger kids are. I didn't work with the secondary <span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> school <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">group - but I have heard from the people who did that they were less talkative. Maybe we can take the ideals directly from the readings and be able to craft them into activities for the children that will give them a message that really sticks.

__<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">February 24th, 2014 __
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">When I first became interested in environmental causes in my senior year of high <span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> school, <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> I really only based my opinions on my feelings and biased information that my strongly liberal teacher had given me. We were assigned in the class to read books like Silent Spring and Eaarth by Bill McKibben. Because these works were my first exposure to climate change information or opinions, I was immediately swept away by the barrage of information about the injustice, corruption, ecological changes, pollution, and disease. I didn't take any time to question any information that was given to me or argue the radical proposals and predictions that they followed them up with. I bought right into the flawless idealism that "if everyone just cares" then all of the problems will be solved. These opinions first brought me to the sustainability department here at RPI. I'm glad to say, while I still hold strong environmental ideals, that I have a more informed and realistic set of opinions. During the age when I had not questioned anything, I believed instantaneously that regulation was the answer to our pollution problems. While I frequently waiver my opinion on that particular issue, I read an article about the increasing PM-25 regulations that really increased my faith in the ability of regulations. All of the counties around LA have particularly improved based on regulations for new diesel engines. They are so good that it would take 60 new engines to produce the same amount of particulates that one of the old engines would have produced. The article seems slightly disappointed, though, that counties are finally meeting these requirements and they are tightening them so they are no longer within the limit. I think, though, that this is a good thing. It sets a fast pace to get our pollution problems in shape. If we keep issuing mandates in stages like this for every other type of pollution, I think that different counties can make drastic improvements at a much faster rate than if there was a longer incubatio nperiod between each set of new mandates. This also prevents the issues caused by setting mandates that are way too high and seem impossible. Regulation does not, however, address the unsustainable way that we conduct life with rampant consumerism and materialism. While regulation is not the solution to every climate problem, I think that it can be a powerful tool in advancing our technology faster to better adapt to safer levels of pollution.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The article that I referenced can be found at this link: http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/2014/mar/pm2.5-victory

__<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">February 27th, 2014 __
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Interacting with the kids tonight, I was so surprised at how bright and observant they are. Maybe I just haven't interacted with kids for so long that I forgot about their curious nature, but I don't seem to recall being so well-informed and curious about things. I was slightly concerned that our image of being "EcoEd" prompted them to answer in certain ways leaning towards sustainability, though. This thought struck me also during the visit to Tamarac. Unless it is just media pervasiveness advertising renewable energy and hiding fossil fuels - I thought it was just odd that we could barely elicit them to say anything related to coal or oil. I hope with our questions we are not emphasizing that there is a right and wrong answers to some of the critical thinking questions. Perhaps we can introduce ourselves but make our motives a little less clear in the beginning in order for the kids to think and not just try to provide the right answer? Regardless, I think that it is great that they are so engaged and curious. I think we can use their willingness to share as also another good indicator of where they are in terms of knowing about the environment so we can more properly design our curriculum in the future. As long as we are careful that we are not encouraging the kids to think only the way that we do and not think deeply about the problem and come to the same conclusion.

__<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">March 2nd, 2014 __
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I was reading Ken Benfield's article "No Child Left Outside" about the changing way that children interact with the outdoors and each other. I thought it was really interesting how the development of infrastructure has indirectly had a significant effect on the mental health and behaviors of our children. The studies show that kids spend less time outside - something that many may think is simply due to the increased amount of digital entertainment. But the factors are more complex than that. Ken argues that the "school sprawl" placing schools on the fringes of communities that are outside of walking distance has greatly diminished the number of kids who walk to school simply because they can't. This isn't a problem, though, because our automobile culture has deemed it mandatory that families have some access to a personal car. With no kids walking to school and everyone driving a car, pedestrian infrastructure disappears. Now that there is no infrastructure, kids hardly have a choice about whether they want to walk to school because it is deemed unsafe no matter what. Benfield argues that this does not just affect walking to school, but exercising outside as well, contributing to the growing percentage of kids that are heavy. The interesting part to me is how the lack of outdoor activity affects the children's abilities or methods of learning. Many of the people quoted in his article seem to think that the lack of outdoor play time inhibits the children to develop any kind of skills of negotiation, creation, risk assessment, and overcoming fear. None of these skills can be optimized in a classroom or another setting where there is similarly an adult in charge. The disappearance of time for the kids to grow on their own prevents them from ever effectively developing those skills even later in life.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I think the availability of mentors to the children in our Research Program can make all the difference in how much our program impacts the children. While the lectures and memos are great tools that are developed for their learning, I think the larger learning outcomes will come from the mentors. The kids will remember the program when they get older, but I've seen throughout my own years of learning that I often remember the impact that an individual teacher or friend has had on me rather than a lesson. In a personal and small setting, the mentors can explain the intention of some of the parts of the memo, or be able to vocally explain the lesson that they were supposed to be learning if they were confused about the part. Also, the mentor can engage in conversation with the kids and ask them questions that reach beyond the scope of what they directly learned factually. I hope that we have put in place enough structure to be able to reach the children. Because it is up to them to reach out to us if they have questions, I hope that they are brave enough to reach out and learn from us. If utilized correctly, I think that the mentoring part of the Research Program really puts into practice a lot of the outcomes that we are trying to accomplish with the program.

__<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">March 6th 2014 __
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Today we did the sustainability questionnaires with the kids and I thought the results of them were extremely interesting. Regardless of what the results actually are, I think that doing questionnaires provides us invaluable information about the stance from which the kids are coming from in terms of the environmental issues we want to teach them about. It seemed to me that the surveys was kind of advanced for them, but I think that that is necessary for two reasons. First, it's good that they are introduced to ideas that they haven't already thought about and need to evaluate. Second, I think we often underestimate the kids. Having a few easy questions and a few harder ones is a good way to figure out exactly where they are intellectually. From the results of the it seemed to me that they really care a lot about the environment, but don't really know too much about the details of environmental issues. They were unanimous in their agreement that animals and the wilderness should be protected, but when it came down to policies and more complicated issues, there were many more "I don't knows" than any particular opinions either way. They also were diverse in how they thought about who should pay for sustainability issues, with most leaning towards companies. They also had diverse opinions about the credibility of research from biased institutions. From this, I think that they are relatively uninformed about general media literacy, and also about the economic system that governs the balance of what companies pay for and why they pollute. I would expect this considering they are only in elementary <span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> school. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> But these results give us a good indicator of what to focus on - since they have a care for animals and the wilderness, perhaps explaining to them how various practices hurt those things will motivate them to step up and protect them. I think we learn a lot from this survey how to teach them and also how they already think.

=<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 17pt;">Spring Break =

__<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">March 16th, 2014 __
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I am sitting in the Baltimore airport on my way back to RPI and I am amazed by the diversity of the people that walk by. I do not just mean diverse races, but also diversity in age. There are elderly couples travelling together, plenty of college ages kids, families, and many young kids. When I see the little kids with their parents, I think about how this kind of experience is an education outside of school. After the use of the car exploded in America, our culture has grown around the increasing mobility of its citizens. How many of these kids walking by me take it for granted that they can hop on a plane and pop out somewhere else around the world in a matter of hours? In my neighborhood, some of the now young adults that I grew up with had the ability to fly anywhere that they wanted on vacation. And they grew into adults that also expected mobility, no matter what the environmental consequences. The reason that so many people are still flying around despite the gross amount of fossil fuel consumption is the fact that, for a lot of people, mobility is not an option. I see countless business people flying back and forth in one day to attend a meeting in another city. I myself fly on my breaks from school because the drive is too long for me or my parents. We can sacrifice leaving the lights on when we aren't home, but we can't sacrifice getting to the places that we need to go for our professional or personal lives. Nothing is changing in that respect, from what I can tell, and we are teaching our kids that this is simply how life is. If we cant expect the parents or society to teach children to step up and change the need for travel every day, we should incorporate into our education system somehow.

__<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">March 17th, 2014 __
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Paris bravely enacted a new law that mandates that people can only drive on alternate days based on having an even or odd license plate. Because of the temperature changes recently, the pollution has been so bad in Paris that the smog is literally hanging in the air, at levels similar to Beijing. As to be expected, people are not reacting positively and the ruling is causing major transportation problems in regards to people getting to work. My first impression while reading this article was, "this would never get passed in America." But it's not going over well in Paris either. Apparently everyone who has no other alternative transportation to work are just going to break the law and suck up the 22 Euro fine is they get caught. While I support the idea of this law, I think it really connects back to the expectation of mobility that I mentioned in my previous entry. A lot of families or people just don't have any other alternatives than to drive a lot - their jobs expect them to be at work and expect them to be able to travel. I also think this example is one of the instances where regulation really isn't the answer to the problem. It seems to be raising more tensions, anger, and revolt and hateful feelings towards environmentalism even though it is very necessary. This example supports more of the idea of pushing idealism and nurturing the environment instead of regulating it, but again, the idealism doesn't change the fact that they have to get to work. It'll be interesting to see if this standard is maintained or if it gets revoked by popular demand.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Thelink to the article that I referenced is here: <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/16/parisians-driven-revolt-smog-car-ban

__<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">March 20th, 2014 __
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">During the "mentor time" of the Upper Elementary Research session, I had a very positive experience with Dimitri in regards to achieving our learning outcomes through the memos. Both Dimitri and Kaiser both thoroughly enjoyed the "Diagnosing a County" memo and were interested in the data that they discovered on the internet. Dimitri mentioned that, when he first took down the numbers from the website that they were supposed to find, they didn't make sense to him. He took the time to stop and think about why the numbers didn't make sense and what possible explanations there could be for the discrepancy. He came to the conclusion that the city of Rochester was influencing the numbers of his county and that he had not originally incorporated those thoughts into his expectations for his data. As he was explaining this all to me, I was really encouraged that our memos provoked the kind of critical thinking that we keep reading about and discussing. I think one of the essential thing to gain from a lot of our readings and the experiences that we've had so far is that elicitation is key in our activities. Especially with the age group that we are working with, the natural curiosity and energy is there - we just have to direct it properly. The kind of childish approach to problem solving can be really valuable to sustainability challenges, I think, because they simplify them enough to understand the greater issue in a way adults often over think. Additionally, if we can direct their energies and compassion towards solving sustainability problems, then have that many more children growing into adults who are passionate about bringing about social change in regards to sustainability problems.

__<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">March 23rd. 2014 __
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Today I was thinking about how much the opinions of teachers influence the information that they share with their <span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> students <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">. Is it common among teachers to still share information that they disagree with (specifically sustainability information in this case) with the same enthusiasm and objectivity as information that is not controversial or that they do agree with? There are two sides to this argument, of teacher objectivity - in one sense, the teacher is the purveyor of information and it makes sense for them to share their opinions along with the information as long as they clearly distinguish the two. The other side is that children are impressionable and may not develop skills to form opinions of their own if they only listen to the teacher. While this is a topic that could probably be discussed for a long time, I think that the current expectation that teachers remain completely objective is inhibiting to the education system. A teacher should not be a militant, arguing figure who is based only in opinions, but banning topics like politics, religion, and global warming in the classroom takes the information that the kids learn out of the real context of society where opinions conflict and clash and influence people there. In an isolated shell with no debates and no variety of perspectives, it seems that the kids would come out worse-off for dealing with media in their adult lives than if the teacher was able to present and discuss controversial aspects of their curriculum. I think America is almost a little obsessed with standardizing every aspect of education in this fruitless attempt to guarantee equality for all people. While I believe that everyone does deserve the same level of education and we should strive to achieve it, the methods by which we are "gaining ground" are really sending us backwards from the original purpose of education.

__<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">March 25th, 2014 __
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">From the environmental health news website, I found an article that examined the other side of using less coal as an energy source. It was supremely interesting to me because I often think about how there are no downsides to switching to renewable energy if there is an economic benefit to all parties. But, as I should have thought about, especially being from Pittsburgh, are all the workers and companies in the coal industry that will die if the demand decreases substantially. I, myself, have seen sections of Pittsburgh lose vitality and retreat into almost poverty as the steel mills stopped functioning and left people without jobs. This particular article focused on how the citizens of McDowell county are filling their job loss with drug use because they have no hope for the future. In order to combat these losses and not devastate the middle class citizens of America, we need to replace their jobs with ones in the renewable sector of energy. If there is no mechanism to replace the jobs that are lost, then a hastened switch in energy sources may do more damage in the short term than good in the long term. Whenever we present information to the kids, I think we need to keep in mind the downsides and considerations that need to be taken into account for all parties whenever we push for change. We can't provide them with biased information on our side or overly naive information. Preaching naive solutions are never going to gain any ground anywhere beyond our classrooms.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The <span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> link <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> to the article that I referenced is here: <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">http://america.aljazeera.com/features/2014/3/as-coal-fades-inwestvirginiadrugsfillthevoid.html

__<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">March 27th, 2014 __
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">We may be concerned about the state of sustainability education in the United States, but it keeps shocking me each week how much the kids know about the respective aspects of sustainability. I was torn between whether they kept referencing their eco-friendly knowledge because they thought that is what we wanted to hear, or if they were truly motivated about sustainability causes. Even if they were only mentioning things like renewable resources because we thought they wanted to hear it, they'd still have to have gotten the information from somewhere. I'm curious as to what age this kind of information is placed into the curriculum, or if the kids know the information from their homes or the media. We thought it was our job to teach them about alternatives to the current ways of life - but it seems like they are well versed in the alternatives and are even aware of some complex causality problems such as pollution in bodies of etc. If they would still have gotten this information before our program, we should use what we now know to focus our program on things that they don't know. I think researching counties was a really great idea because they are relatively not well understood and they also capture many sustainability issues by analyzing them. I also like the focus on research because it teaches the kids to always evaluate the sources of their information, and I think it promotes a natural curiosity for information. Maybe we should conduct more research ourselves, whether that is through the kids or some other means, on where all of this information that the kids already know about sustainability is originating from and if we can structure our program to better compliment their knowledge.

__<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">March 30th, 2014 __
I felt really encouraged last Thursday in class when I was talking with my mentees during the mentor time. While I am unsure if their care for the health of the environment is due to our teachings, their own concerns, or their parents concerns, they really showed motivation to uphold values of environmentalism as they grow older. It struck me as I was chatting with them that they didn't know a lot about politics, or the governments role in maintaining the status quo with the oil companies. They weren't aware that oil companies have such a large political influence and "donate" to politicians campaigns so that they do not allow tighter regulations to pass. I certainly did not know those things at such a young age, but I wonder if that knowledge that they will obtain as they grow older will strengthen or diminish their sense of obligation to resisting the corruption. As I first began to learn about the powerful forces that make the oil companies so influential, I lost a lot of hope in the potential for social change - as I understood more and more how deeply rooted sustainability challenges really were. But after I thought about it more and entered more discussions, I realized I was succumbing the to the typical paralysis that accompanies analysis of such huge problems as if they needed to be solved all at once. My hope is that, if we provide the kids, especially the older ones, with digestible amounts of information, we can maintain their drive to bring about social change and guide them with our own endeavors on manageable ways to begin to handle sustainability problems.

__<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">April 1st, 2014 __

I think that one of the most useful bits of information that came from our discussion today was the interminable nature of learning. While I think that us and our particular program is pretty well aware of this fact - I think that the idea of continuous learning is something that needs to be diffused more effectively to our culture in general. Especially when it comes to established adults, the authority with which they present themselves and make decisions is absolute. This kind of thinking is evidenced especially with relatively new concepts like climate change. People, even people who are completely uneducated about the nature of meteorology or climate science, automatically assume that they know, for sure, that climate change cannot be real and cannot be happening. Instead of realizing there may be things they don't know about, or be open to learning about a phenomenon that scientists have began to discover, they shut out new knowledge like its a disease. It's like they have already discovered the "truth" of how things are, and anything new cannot possibly be founded enough to accept into their knowledge bank. The longer that someone is out of the academic environment - I find - strengthens the false mentality that an adult has learned all that there is to know. I think that this kind of mentality is also evidenced in the older generations aversion to technology. While I hold principles that reinforce the idea that technology is becoming slightly invasive in our daily lives, I still acknowledge the advances in technology in the recent years and their implications on the way that they help our society function. Furthermore, adults in educational positions may see themselves as the supreme authority on their particular topics, while, in fact, they can still continue learning from both their students, other adults in their lives, and the world around them.

__April 3rd, 2014__
I read an article today about how the big Texas industries of oil, gas, and chemicals are fighting down a study that ground-level ozone increases risk of premature death by a variety of illnesses such as respiratory and cardiac diseases. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Specific industries such as coal-burning utilities, oil, gas and chemicals, manufacturers and automakers, have urged the EPA’s external scientific advisers to disregard such research. It really confuses me how, even today, industries can still deny such obvious effects after countless examples of denial every time a scientific discovery comes up that threatens their industry. The first example I think of is the tobacco industry. Perhaps at first, it was questionable whether the science behind cigarette smoking and health effects was legitimate. But soon it become obvious to the entire population that smoking was unhealthy for a variety of reasons, yet the tobacco industry made itself look even dumber than it already did by denying that any of the science was real. Climate deniers, to me, now look just as uneducated and greedy. According to this source, the Texas representatives are the ONLY ones that have told the EPA that ozone is not harmful. At that point, why do you consider your power and money over the health of the entire population? It doesn't make any sense to me. Might as well own up to the fact that your industry is destroying the health and wellness of people and the environment and start working on how to keep it going with adjustments to the process. Isn't that what life and progress is all about? In EcoEd, I think we need to advocate for social //change,// not unrealistic abolishment of entire industries.

Link: http://www.dallasnews.com/news/local-news/20140408-industries-tceq-fight-study-linking-death-ozone.ece

__April 6th. 2014__
Watching Homo Toxicus, it strikes me that the issue with all of these toxins being present in our everyday lives is really a violation of the precautionary principle. Multiple times they've mentioned that the European Union has banned a substance that has even a remote chance of being dangerous. Because industry does not want to spend any more money, they will not tighten regulations, or even ban any substances simply because they want to maintain their profit margin. What else is there more important than human health? Why should we have money if we can't continue living in a healthy way? Of all things, the food and water that we ingest should be what is protected. I don't know where the idolization of money came from - it exists in every society both modern and ancient. I wonder if it is built into human genes or mentality the desire for economic success and money, or if it is a cultural phenomenon. Regardless, the ultimate goal of life is happiness in living. How can money compensate for a lack of health and wellness? You would think that the sense of self-preservation would overcome any desire for money or anything else. Apparently it doesn't. And the tough part about this conundrum is that there is barely any way to escape the toxins. They are ubiquitous and everyone always asks, "Well, what else can we do?" And the answer isn't on the individual level. Only so many people can afford organic food - and even if they can - there are so many toxins in every other aspect of life, it almost seems futile to even try to cause change. As they say in the film, "No one knows when we will exceed the breaking point."

__April 8th, 2014__
Reading and discussing Spivak in class today challenged me a lot intellectually. But as I was thinking about the definition of the subaltern (which I'm still not sure if I've quite pinpointed) and I was trying to identify a group of kids in the classroom who would fit into the category of the subaltern. Which kids do our educational framework leave out in its consideration? We have framework to deal with students that are far behind, and students that are far ahead. Perhaps the subaltern in our modern classrooms are the students that are slightly behind, not enough to be diagnosed with a learning disability, but that ones that get relatively consistent low grades but somehow still get by. These students are the ones that feel the most pressured and exploited by the school environment, but can't find a lot of support or safety nets. They see the praise that high-achieving students recieve and immediately take to self-blame for not being able to keep up. As I've come to college, I firmly believe that school isn't everyone's "thing." While kids should make it through high school at the basic level, the glamour that comes along with going to an Ivy League school or being in a STM career often makes a lot of kids feel like they are coming up short. If everyone was an engineer, who would be a mechanic or a cosmetologist? For our society to function, each role is as necessary as the other. I think that our kids morale would be much higher if we acknowledged that fact.

__April 10th, 2014__
I think today I got a small sense of the challenge of dealing with diverse students in the classroom. Even though students in a classroom are typically the same age (unlike my mentees), their different levels of accomplishment may make it seem like they are at different intellectual ages. Because my mentees are different ages by three grades, I have to handle them with varying approaches because they read, write, and discuss at two different levels. At the same time, though, they can learn a lot from each other and from me (and me from them) because we are in three separate stages of life - middle school, elementary school, and college. It also gave me a lot more respect for teachers because you want to make sure that each child gets the most out of the education that you're offering, but you also have to keep moving at an acceptable pace. If I struggle with two kids, I can imagine the entire spectrum of intelligence found in a class of 20-30 kids. I think this observation reinforces even more how it would be an unreasonable undertaking to completely standardize education. Just because kids are the same age does not mean that they can all perform at the same level. If any system to improve education needs to be developed, it would be one that provides instructors with a mechanism to tailor their curriculum to higher and lower achieving students. I also don't think that this variety is a bad thing. Each student has their own strengths - it's completely misleading to require every student to excel (beyond reasonable competency) in every area of functioning. If this kind of pressure and pace is removed, I think that education can be a lot more valuable.

__April 13th, 2014__
The latest IPCC report seems to me to be a really good example of how we lack the frames to properly address climate issues. The article that I was reading pointed out that the IPCC released a pretty dire message in its report. But hasn't it (and many, many other sources) released dire reports previously? The crisis is so imminent, and now agreed upon, yet very few things are changing. The article I read focused on this idea of "what's the backup plan?" and I thought that just because this idea occurred to this person that something isn't working. The authors explain that one of the main things hindering countries from actively pursuing goals is that "uncertainty" that is the inherent nature of these sustainability crises. While professionals have done major number-crunching, it is still impossible to predict the full costs of actions or inaction. Because we have no solid ground to go off of (or deniers reject what is solid ground, making it unsolid) everyone hesitates and gets caught up in the already too difficult process of trying to create legal policies that do not raise budgets or cost extra money. Thinking of the simple idea of a backup plan if the climate crisis takes a drastic turn for the worst is actually a very frightening thought. We have nowhere to go and our societal structure would completely fall apart. I'm not sure what other framework is needed.

Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-backup-plan-for-climate-change/2014/04/15/6894b8c0-c41c-11e3-b195-dd0c1174052c_story.html

__April 16th, 2014__
In class yesterday, I thought our discussion was incredibly thought provoking. I thought that it was really valuable for us to come together and discuss the things that we've been learning and how they can be applied to the larger system of education. It was amazing to me the sheer complexity of education issues - and they almost mirror the complexity of sustainability issues, except with different disciplines and sectors of life and industry involved. I think that we can actually draw a lot of parallels between them in our methods of addressing them and also just our analysis. One thing that I think really inhibits society (and us) from solving many of these multidimensional problems is that we feel the necessity to find the perfect solution. When we were suggesting things in class, sometimes I thought I had an insight that addressed a problem particularly well, but then someone else in the class would identify a drawback. I think we need to realize that we can fix problems not by solving them absolutely and perfectly, but choosing a different path of action that has less drawbacks. Everything is a trade-off, it is the nature of life and it cannot be denied. In our strive for perfection, we elude it more than ever. I think if leaders in solving problems in the education system, or in a country's sustainability policy, they would be more effective at brainstorming effective solutions rather than reaching up into ideals for being able to standardize everything.

__April 17th, 2014__
I was really encouraged today by the work ethic of the kids. My mentees were very engaged in creating their PowerPoint slides, and I thought it was a really constructive exercise for them to leaf through and recall the information that they had spent time researching. I think that it was good for them to understand that the most important part of doing your research is being able to articulate your ideas and present them. They also were much more focused and engaged in making their PowerPoints - both kids mentioned that the two hours went very quickly for them. Even though we have strongly facilitated their learning and construction of their reports/presentations, I hope that they come away with a sense of accomplishment. I think that even just the exposure to this kind of rigor and also the ways of thinking is an invaluable experience. They are doing high-level work, and when it comes to how they will stand up against their peers, hopefully their communication skills will be enhanced. Involving them in these kind of causes at this age also sparks a longstanding interest and education that they can hopefully carry into the future to help work on the challenging sustainability problems that will undoubtedly face them.

__April 20th, 2014__
Although we seem to constantly be draped in morbidity while assessing sustainability problems, this article presented me with some hope in the drive for social movements in America regarding environmental causes. Even in a mostly Republican state with many well-funded groups against regulations, the population is still fighting back against proposals to roll back mandates. Although we still have a long way to go, at least we are able to put up a bit of a fight (or at least want to put up a fight) against letting the fossil fuel industry dominate. According to the article, <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">“Clean energy is beginning to become mainstream,” said Gabe Elsner, executive director of the Energy and Policy Institute, a clean-energy think tank in Washington. “Renewable energy is popular and has increased political power now,” but, he added, “that power is still eclipsed by the resources of the fossil fuel industry.” <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Even the slightest bit of encouragement can go a long way. Despite all of the factors that make Kansas a prime ground for rolling back mandates (Koch brothers, conservative think tanks, heavy fossil fuel economy), there are enough special interest groups looking to continue developing wind power to keep renewables on the map. Kansas currently provides 20% of electricity by wind, and many rural landowners are able to get royalties from having wind on their land. Apparently, these ideas resonate well with the people of Kansas. I think this example shows that targeted application of renewables can be beneficial for the economic and social standing of alternative energy sources.

Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/a-battle-is-looming-over-renewable-energy-and-fossil-fuel-interests-are-losing/2014/04/25/24ed78e2-cb23-11e3-a75e-463587891b57_story.html

__April 22nd, 2014__
I thought that the discussion on intergenerational ethics today was really fascinating. It was so incredible to see such a variety of perspectives crossing multiple generations all talking about education. Education is a facet of life that influences many generations - teachers, students, administrators are all part of different generations. It is also very generation specific, as the setup and functioning of the system is fluid and changes with the changes in culture over the years. While I worry that many older people look at the way that they were educated as the "right" way, I think it is important to preserve older traditions and methods of education that were effective. Some of those things may have been eliminated due to "political correctness" or other newer barriers like the common core, but we also need to tailor our education system to resonate with the culture and behavior of the kids in this generation. The discussion was so neat because older people probably don't often get to speak to kids, and kids aren't often asked their opinion on what they think should be changed about their school system. The only question that kept resonating with me was the mechanism to bring the ideas that we were discussing to fruition. We can gather and talk all we want - but how do we start to make small changes? Protests? Letters to administrators? I think that closing the session with concrete conclusions and a plan for the future would have enhanced the impact of the discussion.

__April 24th, 2014__
Shale gas is the perfect sustainability issue. It embodies the interdisciplinary nature and the pervasiveness of these challenges. Just think about how many different areas of expertise are needed to fully assess the effects of the shale gas boom: engineering, sociology, economics, law, hydrology, government.. and the list goes on. This industry literally affects almost everyone and everything, from the landowners who host the drills to the people consuming the energy. Shale gas presents the epitome of the history of resource extraction, but this time, we know the consequences and we know that there are "unknowns" that will negatively affect a lot of people. I really think that it also serves as a sort of indicator of American's views on switching to renewable energy. Do people stand up to the industry or let it continue for the economic benefits and inconvenience of fighting a powerful industry? Shale gas is finally being met with a large negative response - the question of whether it will be enough to stop it remains unanswered. But the important part is that this occurrence has motivated people to step up and protect themselves and the environment. As sad as it may seem, it is crucial to bring the crisis home to people before they will realize that they need to stop it. Oil drilling in the middle east is a lot more difficult to motivate people about. But when one of our most basic necessities is threatened - water - it is easier to begin to understand how there really is not an option for survival while we continue to destroy the Earth.

__April 27th, 2014__
It was so great to see the kids present today. The thing that I was thinking about was that there are so many family members and other people there to support the kids, and that alone gets the word out about our program, and sustainability issues in general. The project provided such a medium for the kids' personal and professional growth, but also a way for parents to learn more about environmental health indicators and support their child's involvement in researching those issues. I think we also provided a new level of rigor that they had not yet experienced in their schools that can help them develop skills that will put them ahead of their classmates. It's surprising how much they are really capable of that we don't give the credit for. But I hope they've developed good feelings associated with research and sustainability issues in general that will motivate them to continue studying and caring about them in the future. Judging by the multiple times that the kids mentioned that they wanted to visit their counties, I think they feel a strong sense of concern and ownership over their particular counties. Being invested in the issue is the first step to wanting to solve it.

__April 29th, 2014__
I was reflecting on the entirety of this class today since we didn't have to go to class. While I gained many skills and a lot of information, I think that the most valuable thing that this class provides me with is a break from technical classes to sit back and remember what is really important in life. When I am wrapped up in equations and homework, I tend to lose sight of the bigger picture and the world that is moving around me. This class returned to me perspective and a greater purpose than simply holing up and attempting to finish all of my work. It's difficult sometimes for me to snap out of my zone that I get into whenever I am studying and trying to complete large technical assignments that do not extend beyond the context of a few equations. Working on assignments for this class as well as attending class and doing the readings kept reminding me to keep in mind the larger purpose and stay focused on what I want to use my skill set to achieve in society. Ultimately, my skill set that I develop here will have a greater social and environmental impact whenever I am doing whatever job I have, and I am thankful that I've taken this and other sustainability classes to develop that global perspective that other engineers from this school may not have due to the lack of requirements. This class has moved me beyond finding out information about sustainability issues to approaching complex and global issues that don't have an easy solution.

__May 1st, 2014__
The article that I read today regarding a spill from a tanker truck of 4500 gallons of oil presented a two-sided kind of argument that I wasn't expecting. It really brought up the idea of risk management and how you can quantify risks statistically, and if that's really a way to measure the true impact of accidents. According to the article, only 0.0005 percent of oil that is transported is spilled. This presents an interesting side to the argument that, statistically, the amount of oil spilled compared to the amount that is transported is exceedingly small. Yet, another statistic says that it only takes one gallon of oil to contaminate almost a million gallons of water. Can we rely on statistics and percentages to really measure the impact of these accidents? Yet, we cannot continue living our lives how they are if we do not keep up energy generation and use of oil, so should we be happy with the minimal number of spills that already happen? We can also wonder if that very small number that was reported by the industry itself is actually true. Many spills and leaks are due to the incredibly aged infrastructure that the industry just can't seem to get up the funds to replace. It seems almost as if they've adopted a permanent policy of the common phrase "Ask for forgiveness, not permission". I wonder if the whole idea of risk management and analysis through statistics and numbers is really the right way to approach the system at all. But, so many companies swear by it, and it would take a lot to change it.

Link: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865602091/Health-department-concerned-about-culinary-water-after-semi-accident.html

Going to school at a Polytechnic Institute, we already have slimmer humanities requirements than a lot of other schools, and I think the well-roundedness of our education does suffer a little bit from that. Furthermore, many of the humanities classes are easy to do minimal work and still earn an acceptable grade. Because of the wealth of technical talent here, I feel like this absence of global perspective is a huge waste of some very creative and talented thinkers who have a large potential to solve problems. We are trained to take our varying expertise, work together, and figure something out. But, I feel like we often lack a drive or greater purpose in what kind of positive change that we want to bring about with our skills. I know that this class really helped center myself on what's actually important in life. Sure, my technical skills need attention and development. But, what is the use of having these skills if I'm going to use them to further the contamination and consumer culture of our country? If I can provide science and credibility to the movement to bring things back to respecting the earth and manufacturing things in a safer way, then ultimately, isn't that in my own and everyone else's long-term interests? If we required one of our humanities courses here to be a sustainability class, I think that many more people would be more educated about sustainability issues and motivated to contribute their technical skills to solving such interdisciplinary challenges. I'm not sure what bureaucratic obstacles lie in the way of a change like that, but it's something to think about.

__May 6th, 2014__
It's difficult to think about all of the things that are wrong with our world and not get discouraged. We just focused mainly on the education system in this class, but so many other parts of society are broken and there are so many things wrong that its paralyzing to try to think about all of them at once. I think, though, that this class also gave me a good set of tools to, as the literacy goals state, analyze complex causation and identify points of intervention without causing paralysis. I think that one solution or general approach to sustainability problems that is often overlooked is the idea that locality can play a huge role in developing a practical and permanent resolution to a sustainability problem. I think climate change and solutions to it get so much critique because they cannot be effectively universally applied. For example, the memo that the kids had to do regarding renewable energy potential showed that wind power was really effective in some regions, and solar had a high potential in others. If we tried to switch to just one of those, it would never work. Yet America treats any one solution to climate change as one that has to solve all of the world's problems flawlessly. Also, we can't fix everything. Society has never been or ever will be perfect, despite our tendencies to glamorize the future or the past. I think so many people get so wrapped up in the volume of problems that they channel their energy into depression and cynicism instead of trying to take a small step to make one part of life just a little bit better. Then, if everyone found their own little niche, we could slowly improve the way we live, step by step.