On January 9, 2014, several thousand gallons of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol (MCHM) spilled from a ruptured tank a Freedom Industries’ storage facility into the Elk River just 1.5 miles upstream from West Virginia American Water’s regional intake which supplies water to nine counties in the Kanawha Valley area (Kloc). Just ten days later on January 19, government officials lifted the Do-Not-Use order on municipal water use that had been put into effect following the spill claiming the water was safe to use and effectively ending compensatory actions (i.e. supplying clean bottled water free of charge to communities in need). Needless to say the water was far from clean by this point. What, then, should the communities of southern West Virginia do? How did this spill happen and who bears the blame? What is it about this chemical that makes the water toxic and why was it neat the river in the first place? How can a disaster like this be prevented? Who needs to do something and what should they do? Environmental disasters like the contamination of West Virginia’s water often leave more questions than answers, but these questions are not without purpose. Rather, using this one particular disaster as a case study, one can examine the nature of environmental disasters and the subsequent actions and outcomes from a host of different perspectives: the political, the economic, the social, at the community level, at the state level.

Throughout my time in our Eco-Literacy 360, I have grown to have a better understanding of what it means to be thinking and acting ecologically, honoring the ‘environment’ as an intrinsic aspect of our lives as individuals, and of the communities that we are part of. Teaching and learning with the intentions of ecological literacy can have mind-opening effects on how we perceive and interact with the world, its people, and the environment. With this in mind, I want to take my curriculum to where eco-literacy has been most present in my life and the lives of many of my friends and family members. My curriculum is designed in a very location-oriented fashion, as a learning experience for the oldest age group at Camp Galil. Galil is one of many camps that make up the Labor Zionist Youth Movement “Habonim Dror”, and is located in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The ideology of Habonim Dror is based on five pillars: Progressive Labor Zionism, Judaism, Socialism, Social Justice, and Hagshama (actualization of values).  These ideals are rooted in the Hebrew phrase “Tikkun olam”, or “repairing the world”, and are the basis of the unique experience that is Galil. This ideology plays a strong part in generating its eco-centric, environmentally conscious community, but I also see eco-centricity rooted in the camp’s physical location, the style of interaction between peers and between counselors and campers, as well as in the playful, fun-spirited, and non-traditionally educational learning that takes place.

            During the second semester of my freshman year of college, I took a course in Bryn Mawr’s sociology department entitled “Punishment and Social Order”.  Before taking this course, I knew almost nothing about prisons, either in America or elsewhere, and I’d never really questioned the role that prisons play in our society.  Throughout the course, as I learned about how mass incarceration in the US functions as a racialized form of social control analogous to Jim Crow, and how the system results from and perpetuates capitalist inequalities, I became increasingly convinced that, to achieve social justice, prisons need to be abolished.  Because of this class, I am now seriously considering working on prison abolition after graduation.

            For me, this experience is my personal window into a question I have struggled with for this entire semester: Can education be used to create social change?  And if so, how?

ECON 136:  Week 14,  Friday

Effective Communication of Quantitative Information 

Here are the examples I presented in class

Dan Heath on making things stick and the Fishman article on water bottles.

Hans Roling on measuring human progress

Annie Leonard on responding to climate change

RATIONALE

Three years ago, my younger sister Julie began her middle school at REALMS (Rimrock Expeditionary Alternative Learning), a charter school in our hometown Bend, Oregon. The school’s purpose is to

 “foster scholarship, strengthen community, and inspire stewardship through active learning by actively challenging our students to investigate, understand, and become stewards of the human and natural world around us. To do so, we pursue experiences both inside and outside the classroom that help our students develop a core set of academic skills and learning habits; that encourage them to explore and identify their values; and that foster the inspiration that comes through service to others and adventure” (REALMS 1).

During the sixth grade, my sister and her classmates spent a significant amount of time in and out of the classroom exploring sustainable systems and structures in Portland, Oregon. The students learned about sustainable architecture in class for a couple of months leading up to a field trip which offered Julie and her classmates the opportunity to tour sustainable schools and other facilities throughout Portland. Following their trip, the sixth grade students presented their observations to their fellow students, teachers, and families. I had the privilege of attending this culminating presentation a couple of years ago, and was struck by how much the students learned on their trip and the autonomy they had in creating and carrying out the presentation.

I agree with aphorisnt and I also find myself thinking about today's conversation and processing today--and this whole semester. I too feel as if there are times I didn't really allow for absolute and complete porosity of my life, my thoughts, my pursuit of the knowledge and learning we were doing in context to the class and the space that was created with this 360 dynamic.  I was used to compartamentalizing. I was scared to used Serendip, to have my voice and my words being so naked and out there. What if I was wrong? But then, I kept thinking of the progress I felt I had gained in my own experiences. I hesitate even know to bring it back to my own experience. It seems too centric of me, me, me. But that is also the only way I could frame being in this 360. Today, when we were writing, I was at a loss for words. I found myself too facing the tiger, language failing me. But I remembered, I remembered that when all is said and done, when everything has happened, when we plan and go about life, no matter what the end result is, no matter how hard or difficult or twisty and curvy the path may have been to get where you are, my mother always reminded to take a step back to say alhumdullilah. Thanks be to God. Thanks doesn't become to cover the sentiment and connotation of alhumdullilah. In it's purest form it's aknowledging the existence and utter nature of this world as being just the way it is. Sometimes, I think about how our environment shapes us. What does is truly mean to be "eco-literate" ?

resonant words from Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House:

“In the unceasing ebb and flow of justice and oppression we must all dig channels as best we may,
that at the propitious moment somewhat of the swelling tide may be conducted to the barren places
of life.”

[can you tell that i'm still talking w/ you all....? from my couch....?]

still mulling over much of what we said during our shared evaluation this afternoon,
including the report that the dynamic among the three disciplines was a source of tension,
with econ not working very well in concert w/ the other courses (in part because there
were non-360 students in it, and/but/also....?)

When I read sara.gladwin's first sentence to her post "bear with me as I seem to go in circles" it brought me to the relationship between Piya and Fokir, and the full-circledness of their time together. They meet when he saves her from the water, a mysterious sort of water that difracts light every which way. She loses her sense of which way is up, but is Fokir guides her to the surface. In the end they are both trapped in a powerful, uncontrollable water, in which saving Piya from it is the last thing Fokir does. The story is beautiful, but I can't help but feel a bit cheated. I know that Piya and Fokir's language barriers did not cut off their connections with each other, but the language barrier kept me from ever seeing and understanding Fokir. We see how much Piya has gotten from her relationship with Fokir: he saves her life, guides her to her dolphins, saves her again, and again. We never see what Fokir has 'gotten' from their relationship. All it seems is that Piya created trouble in his relationship with his wife and family, promted him to put himself in dangerous situations, and led him to give his own life in order to save her. I try to reach for understanding of Fokir's side of the story, but I find myself going back in circles through the stories of other people. I will never know, but it is all I want to know! But then again, that is what life is. We reach out and make connections with people to try to understand the world, the minds, the thoughts, feelings, and emotions that exist beyond our own minds, but we will never know the story.