Field+Work+Day+-+October+22+-+Environmental+Justice

We started out watching [|Erin Brokovich], to get the kids in the mood for soil and water pollution testing. We had to leave 1/2 way through, so we'll continue at next week's Graderoom meeting. We took the new pink line (my current Ledford told me we should have taken the bus lines instead, so we did on the way back and it was much better) down to [|Rudy Lozano Leadership Academy], where we met up with their Junior Advisory, led by two science teachers. The plan is for our groups to partner in our environmental justice project.

They had asked us in advance to bring a variety of soil and water samples, so students had collected samples from North Pond, Lincoln Park, the Chicago River, the school, and their backyards. (Chris Hunter took his climb down to the Chicago River very seriously: he attached the vial to his fishing pole and was quickly apprehended by local loitering police officers. hey let him go when he explained what he was doing.)

At Rudy Lozano, we asked the students to find a partner and learn their name and some important information from them, then introduce them to the group. We had twice their number, and it turned out that the Junior boys at Rudy Lozano are pretty estranged from educational processes; these were challenging factors for us. Then the science teachers went around and got the students set up doing the testing of our samples and samples they had gathered previously. (That's an interesting story: this school has borrowed some of our ideas and has instituted a number of fieldwork days (as well as Morning Ex and student government!), two of which correspond with ours. On their first Fieldwork Day, when different grades headed in different directions, the Juniors handed vials and cameras to all the groups and had them gather samples and pictures along the way.)

The only really interesting data we discovered was that the level of pollution of the Chicago River and of the canal behind the coal-burning power plants is off the charts. Not that surprising, I guess. Then we took our last 15 minutes to brainstorm in small groups what students want to do together over this year. This was very interesting, as two strands emerged: some wanted to learn more (gather and test more soil and water and focus also on air testing; hear speakers, etc.), and some wanted to jump right into action: directly contacting polluters and legislators and launching protests. The Rudy Lozano teachers are good scientists, and like the information-gathering angle, while I of course lean towards the immediate action approach. However, the first thing I did when I got back to the school was to contact the keynote speaker of the environmental justice rally we held several years ago, to ask him to speak at the school. [|Dr. Pierrehumbert] is a geologist who helped draft the [|Kyoto protocol] and is on the Mayor's Climate Change commission -- my vision is to have him speak at a MX here AND there at Rudy Lozano. He said yes, but wanted to make sure all the students had seen [|Inconvenient Truth.] So I'm thinking maybe we could do that for an MX, and have students lead discussions and actions following that.