Ms Perri Carr
Reflections from the 2008 Toyota International Teacher Program to the Galápagos Islands
Carr wades into the water with a sting ray at Punta Cormorant on Floreana Island.
Before the program I had great difficulty defining sustainability in fewer than four or five sentences. However, I can now define it in a manner that most people can understand in one sentence. To me, sustainability is “living in a manner that slows consumption or degradation of natural resources so that future generations can enjoy those same natural resources and experience quality of life.” Furthermore, I have a better idea of how to cohesively disseminate information about sustainability and hopefully promote a paradigm shift locally.
Education is the cornerstone of a paradigm shift. In order to get people to begin to think about sustainability, they too have to grasp the idea. Early on in the Toyota program, I wondered at inviting teachers of different disciplines. Obviously the goal was to reach students in all classes, not just science. As the trip progressed, the extent to which other subject teachers provided a different perspective became evident. Some questioned the eradication of the feral goats “What about the goats? Don’t they have rights also?.” These are views sometimes expressed by my students and friends. In order to reach them, a teacher must first listen to understand their concerns and then address them. People need to understand that every action has consequences, many of which are unintended. Probably the easiest and safest thing to do as an environmental teacher is to compartmentalize the topic and only teach it in environmental education classes. Yet, as E.O. Wilson said “Perhaps the time has come to cease calling it the "environmentalist" view, as though it were a lobbying effort outside the mainstream of human activity, and to start calling it the real-world view.” This will be the biggest change in my teaching. My efforts will focus on continually reminding all students that they are not disconnected from nature. The idea of living more sustainably is beneficial for everyone.
My school is developing and beginning a sustainability audit. The prevailing attitude has been to hire the experts to do the audit and limit the involvement of the school’s community in the initial phase. After the results are in the experts would hold public forums in which ideas are shared and the community chooses which ideas to focus on. My experience in the Galalpagos reinforces the idea that this approach would be a mistake. The community must be involved from the first, in every manner. Some success has already been accomplished in this direction. The audit instrument itself has already been broadened. I’ll continue to focus on this. However, student involvement can also start now on some of the project. There is some momentum from the improvements in recycling that the students have campaigned for over several years. First, there is much that can be done to upgrade our new mixed recycling program. My ninth graders love to recycle (and not just to get out of class). They’re not so involved in their own world yet that they are still open to new ideas. Second, the school can reinvigorate the calculator battery recharging program and waste battery collection program started several years ago. The student council purchased universal chargers and students were able to drop off regular batteries for recharging and pick up a new set. It worked fairly well for a couple of years. However, students graduated and the new crop was not oriented. The battery chargers wore out and became unreliable. Some students and teachers still do drop off their waste batteries. The program should be updated, using nickel metal hydride batteries and new rechargers. Rechargeable battery recycling programs now exist that collect old rechargeable batteries at nearby participating businesses. Students will also benefit from this education by calculating the cost and benefits of using rechargeable batteries and sharing the information with their parents who often throw away batteries needlessly. If nothing else, they can bring old batteries to school where the batteries can be taken enmasse to the hazardous waste site. Third, we can investigate our paper use now. Simply by working with the staff who purchase paper, students can calculate the cost of paper use. The idea is to focus on “reduce” by changing (if necessary) to suppliers who use post consumer recycled wastepaper in their products. Another aspect of the reducing the paper used is to open discussions with the faculty and students to institute new policies regarding paper use. Allowing students to write on the back of the page, making small quizzes that use less than one page, or even rewriting lab or class activities that are used every year so that new copies are not needed would reduce our overall paper use. Short-term economic gains as well as long-term environmental benefits would be gained.
My impact plan will be modified to include sharing the models of environmental learning provided by several groups in the presentations with the lower school science and social studies teachers. Since Fort Worth Country Day is a a K-12 school teachers should be able to develop environmental curricula for the various levels that builds upon the previous level while following the progression of “awareness, knowledge, skills and citizen action. Social studies was chosen because they are already involved in citizen action programs, some of which have environmental components.
As a result of this trip, I was impressed with the necessity of including the details about every environmental situation. There are no short cuts. In the “Don’t Break the Chain” activity participants were reminded that every organism has a role in an ecosystem. Invasive species can usurp those roles and eliminate other organisms, resulting in unintended consequences for ecosystems. This simple dramatization made the point quite clearly. In the water presentation, the term “piped water to every house” has different meanings in many places. Providing untreated water for two hours a day on San Cristobal is not the same as piped potable water in the U.S to local homes and businesses. In addition, understanding the geology of the island is critical both to water availability and also to waste water treatment.
Teaching all of the details, including the “externalities” is important is people are to sift through the massive information about energy, water and pollution provided daily. Only by grasping which details have been omitted, and being aware of their potential impacts can people make better environmental decisions. Just yesterday I read an opinion piece in our local newspaper from a professor of economics touting the benefits of coal use in the U.S. From his perspective, it does make economic sense. However, in Texas, when you consider some of the other costs, such as shipping the coal from Wyoming, using diesel fuel to power the trains, the costs begin to rise. When the environmental damage of air pollution is also considered, both to human health and to natural habitats, suddenly, the cost of coal is not so cheap. In addition, with the constant threat of economic sanctions due to exceeding air pollution, adding more doesn’t make sense when other possibilities exist.
Hearing the local perspective about water use was very beneficial during the trip. I wish we had been able to obtain the “local perspective” about energy use either at the Balta fueling station or the San Cristobal wind farm. Energy use is a key component of my impact plan so I did research further on the wind farm to see how it had performed over the past year. Performance was slightly lower than predicted (30% rather than 50% of energy provided) due to an entire year of lower than usual winds. The good news was that the system performed well, and there appeared to be no harm to the petrels. The importance of tailoring solutions to the local environment with the assistance and cooperation of the people involved was quite clear. I will continue to research the feasibility of utilizing wind or solar power at my school as a supplementary energy source.
One other change to my impact plan is I will try to persuade a fellow teacher to help write a Toyota Tapestry proposal to help us implement changes in our environmental curriculum and implement some of our plans. Since the proposal is due in late January, we’ll have to work quickly in order to be successful.
In conclusion, the importance of people living sustainably in the Galapagos in order to conserve the natural environment and maintain the quality of life for the population was demonstrated quite clearly. The challenge will be to transfer this concept to my students and colleagues in our own lives.