by Kiersten Blake and Alexia Leclercq
New York City, our shared city, has a gap in environmental education programming, namely a lack of focus on environmental justice education. We decided to co-author and implement an environmental and climate justice curriculum at the High School for Teaching and the Professions (HSTP) in the Bronx. Our project-based curriculum covers topics such as environmental and climate justice, sustainable and equitable land use, public and climate health, and global effects, and was created with teacher, student, expert, and community-based organizational input to reflect on the multidimensional nature of the climate crisis from an interdisciplinary and social justice viewpoint.
We started the Spring semester eager to work with two science teachers, the vice-principal, and students to implement this curriculum when both NYU and NYC public schools shifted online due to COVID-19. This unprecedented event led to many challenges: student attendance had gone significantly down, all existing curriculums were simplified to accommodate for online teaching and the in-person activities, field trips, and gardening—which students had expressed the most interest for—had to be canceled. Not to mention a lot of people had been impacted by the virus, financially or otherwise, and both students and teachers had many personal issues to take care of. Despite the set-backs, we hosted a weekly class over Zoom where we taught the content of the four-modules and hosted Genisha Metcalf, Head of Campaigns at DoSomething, as a virtual guest speaker. While it was not what we had planned for, we were still able to work with 10 students, who enjoyed the program and engaged in meaningful conversation relating the topics we taught to their personal life experiences.
In the initial survey that we conducted, 25% of students were able to provide a definition for environmental justice, now 85% of students are able to do so. Additionally in our final survey, 71.4% of students consider themselves knowledgeable on topics related to environmental justice as opposed to 44.4% on the initial survey. After the semester students were also able to identify environmental/sustainability/climate issues in their school, community, and city, explain the relationship between public health and the climate crisis, how corporations, banks, capitalism impact the climate crisis, how zoning laws and land use creates environmental racism, how the global south is impacted by the climate crisis and identify ways to make a difference in your community, city, state, country.
Because the teachers from HSTP were eager to incorporate the curriculum into their other classes like AP Environmental Science, we are now converting our slides into an interactive website complete with text, interactive maps, and other multimedia content on Story Maps where teachers can download and share content. This way, we can more rapidly expand the number of schools using and contributing to our content.
If you are interested in working with us please check out our website and reach out to us at al5427@nyu.edu and kab830@nyu.edu.
Kiersten Blake is a recent NYU graduate who studied International Development Management and Evaluation. She has worked on various organizational sustainability, in human rights advocacy, and on educational policy projects and initiatives across five countries on three separate continents. She co-founded Start: Empowerment because she envisions a world where social innovation coupled with rigorous research and community-centric collaboration can be used to reduce poverty and accelerate both local and global development.
Alexia Leclercq is a recent graduate from the Gallatin School of Individualized Studies at NYU. Her concentration, titled ‘The Politics and Economics of Inequality’ combines the traditional fields of politics, environmental studies, and economics to understand the lasting effects of colonialism and perpetuation of structural oppression. Because of her personal experience of the climate crisis, and through her time working at an environmental justice non-profit, she was inspired to create a better world through politics, community organizing, and improving education systems.
NYU Green Grants are awarded to improve the university’s operational environmental performance, foster environmental literacy and community engagement, advance applied research and design, and demonstrate the viability of best practices and technologies for sustainability. The Green Grants Selection Committee awards up to $20,000 for the most feasible, impactful, and innovative projects that have potential for institutionalization on campus or are self-sustaining.