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Transition Town PDX Blog

By Carter Latendresse posted 12-15-2013 01:22 PM

  
Please check out my students' online blog at http://transitiontownpdx.blogspot.com/. Rob Hopkins, author of The Transition Handbook, just tweeted it this morning. Please encourage your students to visit and leave comments. Our students would love to connect around issues of sustainability.

This blog is the culminating project of a six-week unit that I taught in my sixth grade English class at Catlin Gabel School in Portland, Oregon, between October and December, 2013. We have been studying how to read nonfiction and solve environmental problems, focusing on a host of interrelated environmental issues such as global warming, farming, hunger, topsoil loss, and water shortage. 

Students began the unit by reading dystopian science fiction novels of their choice in small literature circle groups, for which they discussed the fall of these fictional worlds. Novels included Maze Runner, Hunger Games, City of Ember, The Roar, and Shipbreaker. 

In a parallel unit of study in social studies class, students looked at the rise and fall of the great city-states of Sumer, focusing on how the first human civilizations rose to prominence with writing, wheat, irrigation, and specialization of social roles. Students found that monocropping of first wheat and then barley, as the soil became choked with salt, led to the dissolution of the first great Mesopotamian cities. 

We then compared and contrasted the ecological catastrophes in our dystopian science fiction novels and in the ancient Middle East. 

Along the way, students read excerpts from Rob Hopkins's book The Transition Handbook, as well as copies of copies of the Transition Network newletters (https://www.transitionnetwork.org/). 

Finally, in jigsaw reading groups, the students tackled several National Geographic articles on the aforementioned ecological issues, finding connections between seemingly disparate issues such as global warming, fracking, and extreme weather events. National Geographic articles included "7 Billion," "Food Ark," "Fresh Water," and "Our Good Earth."

This blog is the final project, then, in our unit. Students have been asked to imagine themselves living in Portland in 2020, where they are the business, political, and scientific leaders who are developing solutions to the problems that buffet our world today. 

We wanted to end with hope and answers rather than wallow in hopelessness and befuddling questions. We hope this blog can inspire communication between our little Transition Town culture here at Catlin Gabel School and other Transition Towns across the world, from Totnes, to Boulder, to Portland.
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Carter Latendresse
01-06-2014 08:44 AM

Chase,
These PSAs look fantastic. I will have my students comment on them over the next few weeks, and I will let them know to look for your students' responses to our work over the next month.
Thank you for doing such relevant, future-thinking work.
Carter

Chase Mitsuda
01-06-2014 03:02 AM

Carter,
Thanks for being willing to collaborate. I will have my students comment on your blog this month!
Here is our blog:
http://kidblog.org/WhirligigPSA/
Since I realize that 93 students may be a bit overwhelming, and the few on illegal drugs may be intense for sixth graders, here is a sampling of our PSAs:
Global Warming
http://kidblog.org/WhirligigPSA/17f7ab59-b4e3-4a1d-a15a-0262fa44542c/global-warming/
Deforestation
http://kidblog.org/WhirligigPSA/fed22d97-8525-46db-be80-a2c2ae006851/deforestation/
The Digital Divide
http://kidblog.org/WhirligigPSA/7461a0e7-0030-47ee-b99a-5c0ad3209d0a/the-digital-divide/
Water Deficits
http://kidblog.org/WhirligigPSA/5e5bc9af-3bd6-4e57-8c01-af421b1006db/water-deficits/
http://kidblog.org/WhirligigPSA/fa116d61-41b8-4ef7-8a99-414480ab61bc/the-global-water-deficit/
http://kidblog.org/WhirligigPSA/1cb2363b-8d06-42f3-a7a6-d0bea9388eba/water-deficits-2/
Natural Disaster Preparedness
http://kidblog.org/WhirligigPSA/a7848765-a510-4977-ba91-9727145e42c4/natural-disaster-preparedness/
Education for All
http://kidblog.org/WhirligigPSA/8f08c2d2-e005-451f-a51f-2f9cbec3a06f/education-for-all-5/
Fisheries Depletion
http://kidblog.org/WhirligigPSA/8d3b6b2a-9e20-4dea-9b25-d5f1e73d6e73/fishy-fishy-in-the-sea/
Biotechnology Rules
http://kidblog.org/WhirligigPSA/44976a36-1643-4380-b13c-6965e6f7835d/gmos/
BIodiversity and Ecosystem Losses
http://kidblog.org/WhirligigPSA/cf40bde1-ada2-4042-8c0e-91bd2727df9c/extinction/
Ocean Pollution
http://kidblog.org/WhirligigPSA/cd86d08f-18e0-47bf-9973-6da56da89d5c/the-pacific-garbage-patch/
http://kidblog.org/WhirligigPSA/1f6dfcfc-900e-44b1-8644-e42c980d45f7/ocean-pollution/
Intellectual Property Rights
http://kidblog.org/WhirligigPSA/d256c76b-824e-475a-b209-9091e03f729b/intellectual-property-rights/

Carter Latendresse
01-02-2014 08:57 PM

Chase,
Absolutely I would like to have our students give each other feedback about our respective blogs. What is the URL for your blogs?

Chase Mitsuda
01-02-2014 03:55 PM

Truly inspiring work! Would Catlin Gabel and Punahou want to share blogs and have students be authentic audiences for each other? I teach eighth grade, and our students produced PSAs centered on global issues, and we would love to have conversations about our work. The outstanding work that your students have done would be a natural pairing with our class initiatives.