Americans Who Tell the Truth

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE IN THE COMMUNITY

 

The following series of lesson plans is a wonderful resource to be used in any study of environmental violence and injustice. What makes it powerful is that the student begins by identifying her own relationship to the earth. This relationship forms the basis for any further work in this realm. Thank you to Marsha Buerger for allowing us to use her work in collaboration with this project. 

      

 

Environmental Justice:  If Not You, Then Who?

Marsha R. Buerger

Based on Lesson Plans from Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Warner & DeCosse

Thinkport, And Justice for All?

 

 

Background:  Where you live can have a significant impact on your health and is often determined by your racial and income status.  

Simmons Buntin defines Environmental Racism as:

Environmental racism is the social injustice represented by the disproportionately large number of health and environmental risks cast upon people of color in the communities in which they live.  These minorities are the most common victims of toxic landfills, waste incinerators, industrial dumping, uranium mining, and other environmentally-detrimental activities.

Environmental justice seeks to remedy environmental racism.  Students are mainly unaware of the history of the environmental justice movement or the impact of the local environment on their health and that of the low income and minority communities.  

 

 

Learning Objectives:

--Students will use inquiry-based and project-based learning and will work in groups to conduct research and present their findings in a multimedia project of their choice.

--Students will reflect on what kind of relationship they have with the earth and how it has been affected by their family history.

--Students will complete an autobiography of their relationship with the earth.

--Students will make a connection between personal ethics and environmental ethics.

--Students will explain the history of the environmental justice movement

--Students will learn how discrimination promotes environmental illness in low income and minority communities.

--Students will describe how and why some environmental health issues are more prevalent in low income and/or minority communities.

--Students will understand and explain why minority and low income groups have less economic and political impact on policy.

--Students will use a decision-making model to focus on a real-life local case of environmental injustice.

Vocabulary:

Justice 

Sufficiency

Sustainability

Stakeholders

Fair treatment

CDC

ATSDR

Environmental racism

EPA

Environmental Justice

Ethics

 

Lesson One:  An Autobiography of your Relationship with the Earth,

Lesson Plan One (Lesson Plan One, Two and Three modified from Markkula Center for Applied Ethics

Background:  To start thinking about Environmental Ethics, it is easiest to start with what a student already knows.  Ethics is a matter of head and heart but often ethical reasoning becomes detached from personal experiences and feelings.  In order for students to make the connection between the environment and themselves, they will write an autobiography of their relationship with the earth.  By telling the story of the history of their relationship with the earth, they can better reflect on why we value the natural world and better refine their ethical reasoning about the environment.

 

Time Frame:  This lesson will take at least two days to write and process information.  If allowing time to write autobiography in class, allow another two days to write and revise.

 

Procedure:  

1.  On the board put the following quote:  We can be ethical only in relationship to something that we can see, feel, understand, love, or otherwise have faith in. Aldo Leopold, The Sand County Almanac.  Ask the students to quickly write in their journals what they think this means.  Discuss answers and list on overhead.

 

2.  Ask what the students think ethics means (a simple definition is a moral system of what is right or wrong).  Again, list on overhead.

 

3.  The teacher invites the students to write their autobiography of their relationship with the Earth.  To get them started, they are to think of the Earth in imaginative, personified terms.  Have the students jot down answers to the following questions and then discuss:

 

1.  Has your relationship with the earth been one of friend or foe?

2.  Is the Earth beautiful or ugly or somewhere in between?

3.  What do you feel about the natural world?

4.  Do you feel joy or sorrow, pain or pleasure about animals or sunsets or trees?

5.  Do you understand the natural world and the way that is works or is it a 

    mystery to you?

6.  Do you love the earth or hate it?

7.  Do you care for its well-being, feel for its suffering, want to heal its wounds?

8.  Does thinking about the Earth in these terms seem inaccurate and far-fetched?

9.  Do you have a religious explanation for the importance or unimportance of the

                 Earth? 

 

 

4.  Now, to gather additional information from which to shape their autobiography, students should answer the following questions:

1. What is your most significant experience of nature?

2. Is it one undertaken in the course of work or recreation or something else?

3. Are there one or two experiences of an encounter with the natural world that                      stand out in memory?

3.  How has your relationship with the Earth been affected by your family

history or by the experience of your parents or grandparents?

4.  Did you family go on camping trips, picnics, boat or hunt?

5.  Has an environmental crisis every affected your or your family?

6.  Has there been a book, movie, song, or course you have taken that has affected deeply how you think about the Earth?

7.  Is there anything else you can think of that affects the way you interact with the Earth?

 

5.  With the raw materials completed from which to complete their autobiography, the students are to look over their notes and reflect on what is most significant, look for patterns and what notes moved them the most.  The overriding question for their autobiography is put up on the board:  Why, more than anything else, have you come to value the earth as you do?  Of course, there is no right or wrong answer for this question.  Explain that how you value the Earth may change in the future but now the goal is simply to tell their story.  

 

Assessment:

Students are now to write a 3-4 page autobiography of their relationship with the Earth.

 

Follow-up Discussion:

It is important for students to share what they learned about themselves.  Ask if there was anything that surprised them in their story.  What was their strongest evidence for the value they put on the Earth?  How do they view environmental issues?  Is there anything additional they would like to work on?  Ask them to read aloud to the class or in small groups a central passage from their autobiography.

 

Lesson Two:   Who, When, Where, How, and What: The Distinctiveness of Environmental Ethics, Lesson Plan Two

Background:

In this lesson we build on what the students have previously learned.  It is important for students to understand the difference between personal ethics and environmental ethics and their connection.  Students already think in many ethical ways.  They know about right and wrong, about what it means to be treated fairly, and about having justice done.  This lesson aims to extend such common thinking about personal ethics to the field of environmental ethics.  

 

Procedure:

A.  We are used to thinking of ethics in personal or interpersonal terms.  Ethics is the field of study that pertains to how we ought to act  toward ourselves and others.  The field of Environmental Ethics, however, expands our thinking to consider who, in fact, are the people, places and things that are affected in environmental decisions.

 

In small groups, give the students approximately 5 minutes to discuss each of the following questions and report back to the class.  

 

1.  Explain the difference between personal ethics (how we act towards ourselves and each other) and environmental ethics (how to behave toward ourselves and others in the context of the natural world).  Jot down all answers.  

2. Who do they think is affected (the stakeholders) in any environmental decision.

3.  Explain the difference between the personal good versus the common good (the good of each person is inseparable from the good of all persons). 

4.  What do they think of the statement that the common good includes not only those environmental conditions that enhance the fulfillment of everyones lives but that it includes the well-being of the natural world for its own sake.

5.  Who do you think are all the stakeholders in the issue of endangered species?

 

Before leaving class, each student writes the three most important things they learned today. Were there any new ideas that were discussed?  Did you have any Aha! moments.

 

B.  On the overhead write the following statement from the declaration of the Native American Iroquois Confederacy:  In our every deliberation we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.  Ask the students to write in their journal what they think this means.  Discuss their answers. 

 

Have the students discuss in small groups and share out the following question:

What do you think is the role of the future in the debate over nuclear waste disposal?

 

 

 

C.   Have the students discuss in small groups the following questions:

1.  Do Environmental Ethics and decisions affect only the area around us?

2.  Who are some of the human beings affected by environmental decision?

3.  Are all living creatures involved being treated equally?

2.  When engine oil drains into a bay, what do you think are some of the people, places and ecosystems that could be affected?

 

D.  Have the students write in their journals the following questions:  With the information we have been gathering, what do you think justice means?   How can you connect that to environmental justice?

 

 

Lesson Three:  And Justice for All?:  Thinkport Lesson Plan (modified)

 

Background:  This lesson uses inquiry-based and project based learning approach.  After a brief review of environmental justice and racism, students work collaboratively in groups to research health issues affecting low income and minority people.  Student groups will represent their findings in a multimedia project of their choice.

 

Challenge Question:

What are the environmental health issues often associated with low income and minority communities and why are they more prevalent in these groups?

 

Assessment:  Student groups will be assessed on a multi-media project of their choice using the Environmental Justice Project rubric (attached).

 

Procedure:  

A. Prior to the start of this lesson, show the movie Erin Brockovich.  Students will answer questions on the Student Worksheet (attached) that is divided into three sections:  Part I: Watching the Movie, Part II: What is Environmental Justice?, Part III: Environmental Racism.  Discuss students thoughts and reactions.  Together, complete Part I of the worksheet.

 

B.  Ask: What is Environmental Justice?  Discuss and put ideas on board.  Students will copy these in their journal.  Provide students with the official definition of Environmental Justice:  Fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies (EPA and CDC)

 

C.  Ask what students think is meant by fair treatment.  Discuss how this is connected to Environmental Justice.

D.  Ask what students think is meant by meaningful involvement?  Discuss and answer the questions on Part II of the Environmental Worksheet.

 

E.  Tell students:  Less income often means poorer health and a shorter life.  People with lower socioeconomic status suffer more infant mortality, cancer, asthma and birth defects, and disease.  But why is this?  In many cases it is not simply a lack of medical care, but rather a greater social issue, often referred to as environmental racism.  

 

Distribute the article, Fighting Environmental Racism:  A Selected Bibliography (attached).  Give students about 10 minutes to read the article to themselves. Discuss the article as a class then have student fill in Part III of their worksheet.

 

As a class, come up with a definition of Environmental Racism.

 

F.  Distribute the Student Project worksheet and discuss. (attached)

      Tell students they will have about a week to work on their project.  Suggested websites are given on the project worksheet.  They should complete their research in about two-three days and another two-three days to synthesize their information into a multimedia project.

 

G.  Have students present their projects to the class.

 

 

Background:  The first lessons were meant to introduce students to their own ideas of justice, environmental justice and racism, and a background with which to view environmental decisions in their own communities and communities in other areas.  This lesson takes this information one step further where students must synthesize their learning and knowledge to develop a decision-making model in which to evaluate a case involving environmental ethics.  We will use a decision-making model to explore a real-life case that is confronting our neighborhood or city.  The decision-making model has three general steps:  Analysis, Assessment, and Action.  The students should go through each step of the model, take notes as they go in their journal and then choose how they want to present their case and conclusion.  

Step One:  Case History

Through our readings and discussion in class, choose an environmental problem that is currently affecting your community.  Describe this problem and any history involved.  

Step Two:  Analysis

Personal factors:  Is there anything in your personal experience that affects how you view the case.

Power dynamics:  Among all the stakeholders in the case, do all have relatively equal power in terms of making a decision?

Factual information:  What are the key facts in the case?  Is there any dispute about what those facts are?  What is the most plausible account of the facts?

Complicating factors:  Is there anything particularly unusual or complicated about the case?  In terms of science? or of law?

Relationships:  Do any of the key stakeholders have crucial issues of personal relationships that may affect how they view the case?

Ethical issues:  What is the primary ethical issue in the case?  What are one or two secondary ethical issues?

Alternatives and consequences:  What are the key alternatives to address the primary ethical issue in the case?  What are the likely positive and negative consequences of these alternatives?

Step Three:  Assessment

Ethical vision:  What would be a just resolution to these issues?  Remember:  Ethics is not only about what we shouldnt do; it is also about how we imagine things should be.

Moral principles:  What is the relevance to the case of the principles of justice, equality, and value of the people, social groups, plants and animals involved, and the effects on the Earth itself.

Step Four:  Action

Justification:  What alternative is morally preferable and how do you justify it in terms of the relevant moral principles and reasoning common to environmental ethics?

Reflection:  Looking back on the case, are there any aspects of it that were especially enlightening or troubling?  Are there any lessons to be gained for the future?

 

 

 

STANDARDS

 

In my quest for gaining information and skills to teach Environmental Education (Professional Development and Environmental Classes) to my students, I have often been asked how I can justify the slipping in of these lessons to my principal and the science specialists in my district.  My response has been that Environmental Education serves as the local, state, national and world platform that all science fits onto.  It is the practical application of education that connects all middle school curricula to everyday life.  The following are just some of the Learning Goals that this Environmental Justice Unit fulfills:

 

Learning Goals for Science:

 

2.1 Students understand scientific ways of thinking and working and use those methods to solve real-life problems. 

2.2 

Students identify, analyze, and use patterns such as cycles and trends to understand past and present events and predict possible future events. 

2.3 

Students identify and analyze systems and the ways their components work together or affect each other. 

2.6 

Students understand how living and nonliving things change over time and the factors that influence the changes.

 

Kentucky's Learning Goals

 

2. Students shall develop their abilities to apply core concepts and principles from mathematics, the sciences, the arts, the humanities, social studies, practical living studies, and vocational studies to what they will encounter throughout their lives.

 

3. Students shall develop their abilities to become self-sufficient individuals.*

 

4. Students shall develop their abilities to become responsible members of a family, work group, or community, including demonstrating effectiveness in community service.*

 

AE 1.1

Students use reference tools such as dictionaries, almanacs, encyclopedias, and computer reference programs and research tools such as interviews and surveys to find the information they need to meet specific demands, explore interests, or solve specific problems. 

 

AE 1:2

Students make sense of the variety of materials they read. 

AE 1.3

Students make sense of the various things they observe. 

AE 1.4

Students make sense of the various messages to which they listen.

AE 1.16

Students use computers and other kinds of technology to collect, organize, and communicate information and ideas. 

AE 2.1

Students understand scientific ways of thinking and working and use those methods to solve real-life problems. 

AE 2.2

Students identify, analyze, and use patterns such as cycles and trends to understand past and present events and predict possible future events. 

AE 2.3

Students identify and analyze systems and the ways their components work together or affect each other. 

AE 2.31

Students demonstrate the knowledge and skills they need to remain physically healthy and to accept responsibility for their own physical well-being. 

AE 2.33

Students demonstrate the skills to evaluate and use services and Expectation resources available in their community. 

AE 5.1

Students use critical thinking skills such as analyzing, prioritizing, categorizing, evaluating, and comparing to solve a variety of problems in real-life situations. 

AE 5.2

Students use creative thinking skills to develop or invent novel, constructive ideas or products. 

AE 5.3

Students organize information to develop or change their understanding of a concept. 

AE 5.4

Students use a decision-making process to make informed decisions among options. 

AE 5.5

Students use problem-solving processes to develop solutions to relatively complex problems. 

AE 6.1

Students connect knowledge and experiences from different subject areas. 

AE 6.2

Students use what they already know to acquire new knowledge, develop new skills, or interpret new experiences. 

AE 6.3