Yolanda U. Trapp
Unit Topic:
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My unit will be teaching students that the environment is all about balance, and requires an awareness of cumulative problems in the use and misuse of Earth's resources such as water, air, trees and plants, animal life, soil and minerals.
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A comprehensive program integrating district wide goals of literacy, using all the areas of the curriculum will capture the students and will provide teachers with a different tool they might need to grab the attention to this particular program. With the design of this unit of study about the Balance in Nature I will be able to help children make sound and responsible choices to keep the world safe for all creatures. We all must become acutely conscious of the way we live.
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What will happen to the Earth? Can we and our students restore the balance of nature?
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Nature Educator Joseph Cornell has written books and conducted outdoor classes to help adults and children to appreciate nature together. He says, "To teach children sensitive respect for the environment, we need to help them develop feelings for nature that are rooted in the higher realities of the heart." (Creative Classroom, Caring for Our Earth, March, April. 1997.)
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My primary goal in this unit I wish to teach to Elementary students is to open children's minds to the wide range of environmental issues, about pollution, animals, water pollution, waste management, and share them with the class. Ideally the students will gain a greater understanding and appreciation of the world around them.
What Can Kids Do?
Statistics: Sharing statistics with the students can be one way to inspire action. It is often useful to have students collect their own statistics and then to analyze them. For example-How many trucks pass by school in an hour? How much pollution came out of the trucks? Or, how many pounds of toxic chemicals are released to New Haven's air each year? How many days each year does New Haven's air exceed the allowable level for various air contaminants? Is the time of year predictable? Is it related to weather conditions? (For Grades 4 to 6, ages 11 to 13).
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Organizations: To be in touch with organizations is another way to orient children in caring about the environment. Student could search the web (in a supervised way) to identify key organizations of children or schools that are attempting to improve environmental quality. City Year members of Boston, Massachusetts, is a good example (For Grades 3 to 4, ages 9 to 11).
Attitudes: As a teacher I will impart environmental ethics that will help children see themselves not as thoughtless conquerors but as citizens and protectors of the land. What are the dominant attitudes that children have toward nature? The students could design a survey and administer it to other students to find this out (For grade 3 and up, ages 9 and up).
Strategies: I will need to develop several strategies. One of them may be investigating positive personal choices like, water-and energy conservation, and recycling. (Activities will follow under the Lesson Plan Section.) Other strategies I might use will be according to their level and interest. We also have to learn from direct experiences and talk later. What we learn from these experiences are far more valuable than lectures, cultivating a sense of joy. The way I will show enthusiasm in this vast theme will be my greatest asset as a teacher and will surely give the children the sensitive respect for the environment and decide if they want to chose the will and the ability to protect, defend, preserve or destroy other living things and our planet itself. The challenge is to become personally committed to maintain the natural balance of the environment.
Who Will Save the Earth?
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When I decided to write this Unit and started to obtain information about our environment I was overwhelmed with the tremendous amount of data I found. But, do we have real basic facts in order to be adequately equipped to save the Earth? Are we absolutely conscious about what is really happening around us? Aren't we just following the "sound of the pipe" and going directly, massively to the abyss, and not listening and stop and think what could we do as teachers to prevent more danger around us? We already are dealing with violence, drugs, alcoholism, poverty, dysfunctional families, poor health, climate changes, enigmatic patterns of earthquakes and volcanoes. Aren't they all puzzles pieces we have to put together and try to see the whole problem and not in isolation? What does Earth mean to us? I think that we never have been able to formulate this question in deep. We know that we were born in a place, that we live in a place, that we die in a place, and that we struggle hard to avoid misfortune, unhappiness, but I m sure that we never have been thinking enough in our common mother: The Earth. How do we treat the Earth who gives us a time to live and to develop a sense of humanity? We are trapped in a so named "civilization" where everything is fiction, fantasy. We do not look around and what is really happening to us. Are we prepared to return the balance of our nature? We lost our sense of what is the best for our children. We teach carefully and methodically Math, Literature, Science (living and not living things), Social Studies (how the Earth was formed, how many countries, names of Continents, Oceans, etc.). A little track of History and names of important people who gave this nation a name, and here we stand hopelessly trying to teach to our precious future, "our stewards of this world", the importance of taking care of our common mother, The Earth, who is giving us a moment to live, a moment to share, a moment to love, a moment to care, and we close our eyes. We do not want to listen to the clamor: Our Earth is in danger to disappear. Yes! That is the tragedy! It is not a fiction, a novel or a commercial on TV. It is the reality, and it gives me the opportunity to develop in my students the initiative and self-motivation as well as a basic knowledge about how could we preserve our Earth, our Planet, and find some way to work it out together, including the community. Only then, I will be able to feel that I have done my job as a teacher, sharing knowledge, reading books and trying to balance nature with activities I will prepare for each grade in this Unit, in a separate section. We must have the tenacity and courage to examine the various disease processes afflicting our planetary home. (1)
The Critical Background.
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Millennium after millennium our Earth has been covered by debris, snow on ice caps, mud on continents, tiny seashells on ocean floors and flows of lava everywhere. Since the 1960's scientists have drilled cores into these layers to read evidence of changes in climate and sea level, evolution and extensions of living things, the turbulent birth and death of tectonic plates, and the age of continents. Like a living thing, Earth is in constant motion. What will happen to the Earth if we don't know how to take care of nature. Nature is part of all of us. We are nature. We are damaging our heritage. Every year in April, we celebrate Earth Day, an annual event that energizes the environmental movement around the world nearly three decades ago. Did you realize that some of the simple steps you take today in your home and in our classroom may hopefully help solve some of the world's energy and environmental problems? Alone, it can't be done, but our combines effort can make a big difference.
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I remember a time when Earth Day was considered slightly kooky and offbeat but my own children were not even thirteen years old when they started to talk about taking care of nature, and the environment was a matter of special concern. My oldest daughter decided to separate garbage and to make a hole in our backyard where we could throw disposable natural products, and to separate bottles, paper and plastic in special containers. My youngest daughter came one day from her yoga classes talking about how dangerous it was to eat and touch food from other's plate, and that some deodorants and shampoos were not safe in a long term, that the water we were drinking was polluted. My first reaction was thinking about the "strange" ideas they had, but I always tried to respect and support my daughters opinions, and then, as a flashback I remembered my own grandmother's concern about contaminated water and food, and how much she cared for the wonder of nature. We have been aware about nature from the beginning of the so named "civilization". Let's only go back to the Native Americans who were, as we know, very spiritual and lived close to nature, and celebrated three major ceremonies, like a Planting ceremony, a Harvest ceremony, and a Green Corn ceremony. Until the time of the green corn ceremony it was considered a crime against the gods to eat or to touch the corn. (2)
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Going back to the past we can find sizable information concerning the culture and love of trees. Trees were considered as part of nature and the beauty and mysterious chain of life. As an example, the apple tree is often found in the Greek myths. One of these myths relates us the story of Mother Earth, Rhea, who gives the golden apple tree of eternal life to Hera when she marries Zeus. The tree is planted by Hera on an island of paradise at the edge of the world and is protected by Atla's daughters, the Hesperides, and a dragon who never sleeps. They protected this symbol of life-everlasting and only allowed the gods to have access to its fruits. In this story as in many others, the tree represents the passage of time and care of nature.
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Another tale relates the story of Pomona, the Goddess of the Art and Science of fruit culture. She is said to have been so involved with the care of her orchards that she never noticed her admirers. Vertumnus the God of the changing seasons, was the suitor who finally won her affection and married her. Together they were the guardians of the fruit trees.
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In the Old Welsh tales, Avalon ("Aval" meaning apple") is described as a place of eternal happiness where there is no age, sickness, or death. The isle is ruled by the Celtic goddess of death Morgan La Fay and the three ladies who ruled the Earth, the Sea and the Underworld.
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Trees have been always delightful symbols of the coming of new life. They are powerful examples of tenacity and the ability to withstand wind, rain, cold and heat and all that may be encountered on the cyclical journey of seasonal life. (3) Trees are the lung of the Earth. Over the last twenty years, the government has encouraged aggressive deforestation and the land degradation. As we see, in terms of the biology of the planet, development is a euphemism for destruction. In a world where all resources could diminish and extinct like forests, soil, air, minerals, and water-the continued use and abuse of them can have only one end: the depletion and destruction of most life. When a forest is destroyed and took thousand of years to evolve into a very complex biodiversity, it takes hundred of years to regenerate (4). Trees are therefore an organic necessity to our planet. We need to plant trees, (this is one of the activities I prepared for my students) not to destroy them in name of "development".
Planting Tomorrow's Trees.
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This topic is one of my culminating activity for all grades. We need to increase five-fold the number of fuelwood trees planted per year. More people everywhere want more wood, and a large amount of wood is used for paper, also for luxury purposes such as decorative paneling, furniture, and houses. We know that a forest plays a role in the planetary recycling of Carbon, Nitrogen, and Oxygen. They constitute the major gene reservoirs of our planet, but we don't know is if the larger trees have been cut, the smaller ones will stop growing; they will never reach their full height (5). "Rain Forest" has become quite the buzzword up for everywhere. But stop one of my students and ask him/her why we should care about it, and she/he might mumble something about global warming. It's true but it is still only part of an even larger problem, they do the function of the Earth's lungs regulating planetary climate by absorbing huge amounts of deadly Carbon Dioxide. The Rain Forests are also home for 300,000 species of plants some of which are used for pharmaceutical drugs. Gordon Cragg, Chief of Natural Products for the National Cancer Institute (NCL) says: "Nature produces chemicals that no chemist would ever dream of at the Lab Bench.
Poison Problems.
Students need to know that we are surrounded by natural poisons but that they exist to protect plants and animals, and that there are also other kind of poison. Those which people produce and discard into nature producing harm to the environment.
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We as teacher have to educate children about why people produced chemicals discarded to the environment are harmful to all living things. Urban areas are after the rural ones one of the largest affected by poisons, not only agricultural areas. A huge amount of pesticides are used by urban homeowners; with the use of them on lawns, trees and gardens, also inside their homes when using pesticides to control insects.
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These hazardous chemicals have been examined by subcommittees around thirty years ago, and specially after the publication of Silent Spring in 1962 (by Rachel Carson) about the use of pesticides in America containing Dioxin, (TCDD) one of the deadliest manmade chemicals known. They found that this chemical product when used affects a whole chain contaminating water-food-animals-plants and people. So, in some way, as Lewis G. Regenstein wrote in his book, Cleaning Up America the Poisoned: "Pesticides are poisoning the people instead of the insects." According to laboratory experiments the use of pesticides in our garden and house has frequently been demonstrated as a powerful poison. People exposed, especially children can develop Leukemia and other disorders.
What Can We Do.
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Instead of spraying pesticides and herbicides over farms, forests, the government could hire people to remove weeds, undesirable trees and other unwanted vegetation by hand. It provides employment and in a long term, saves the ecosystem (all creatures). Inside homes we are exposing ourselves to toxic substances but specially our children, and in other buildings too, like schools-theaters, churches, when using pesticides or other toxic substances for cleaning. The principal ingredients we consume for cleaning are chlorinated compounds known as a danger of there own. It has been studied that these products produce hormone disruptions and are potentially harmful.
What Can We Do.
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Reading and following the label of the cleaning products would not eliminate the risks to us or our children but it will reduce them. Using pesticides only if it is absolutely necessary and following the label instructions very carefully. Also many inert ingredients are not listed. The law does not require it. So in some way we will not be able to know the exact harm that will affect us. Cleaning the house often with water-mops and vacuum cleaner will reduce the exposure of toxic ingredients.
Researching Recycling.
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Recycling means thinking ahead. Before you buy or use something, you think about the environment. Recycling happens after you have used something once. Then you try to use it again. What kind of trash do we toss out? Paper, plastic, glass, metal, food and yard waste, clothing, batteries. Today in America, someone you know will throw out four to six pounds of garbage. In one year, our nation trashes 70 million tons of packaging-from plastic toys to glass bottles. Where does this garbage go? We know that big trucks come once a week and toss the garbage we put in trash cans into the garbage truck and then they take it to a dump or in other cases some barges take it far away. But the dumps are almost full. We also throw lots of garbage on the streets: empty cans-bottles, etc. With these habits the natural balance is already drastically altered. The list of facts below (from the Green Bay, Wisconsin Science Museum) illustrates the length of time necessary for everyday objects to decompose in our landfill.
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Tin Can
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100 years
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Glass Bottle
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Thousands of years
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Apple Core
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4 weeks
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Cantaloupe Peel
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4 weeks
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Aluminum Can
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200 to 500 years
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Soda Bottle Cap
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400 years
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Styrofoam Cup
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Thousands of years
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Paper Napkin
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4 weeks
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People throw always much too much. Here are some examples found about how much trash is throwing away.
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In one year, people in the United States throw away enough trash to fill a bumper-to bumper line of garbage trucks reaching halfway to the moon. (6)
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In just two weeks, people in the US. will throw away enough glass bottles and jars to fill up the twin towers of the World Trade Center. (7)
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The United States throws away more than twenty-five billion Styrofoam cups each year. If all these cups were placed end to end, they would circle around the Earth 436 times. (8)
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If just one state in the United States recycled all its cans for one day, there would be enough aluminum to build more than fifteen jet airplanes. (9)
Clean Up Connection or What We Can Do.
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Note: (The State of Connecticut has a mandatory Recycling Act.) Exactly how does cleaning up the environment help our Earth? Recycling is good for all of us. It would help to balance the environment. We need to recycle garbage from schools and homes. The landfill is not big enough to hold all the garbage we make. There may not be enough room to make new landfills, so we need to teach everyone about recycling and do it. Other ways to stop the waste is calling the City Government and remind them that some people do not recycle, suggesting if the workers at the landfill would recycle everything that is recyclable. Then there will be more space in the landfill, and it will last longer. Other suggestion could be to ask about building fences around the landfill, to confine paper and plastics that would blow away. Promptly convering daily deposits also minimizes odors and protects landfills from scavenging animals.
