FEATURE
Photo credit for this page and next page by Stephen Price
The Essential Contradiction that Makes the Flats a Teaching Place for Climate Justice BY STEPHEN PRICE
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n a sunny day in early August 2018, Dr. Michael Markwick of Capilano University’s School of Communication and I sat down at the Harmony Arts Festival before the music began for the day. We were there to try to figure out how to create better connections between the teaching happening in K-12 and the teaching happening at Capilano University. Traditionally, universities interacted with elementary and high school students as an added extracurricular outreach activity, very rarely did this include interaction inside the curriculum: we wondered: could the learning in an elementary class be amplified by connecting them to a university class and vice-versa? There was, quite literally, a cloud hanging over our conversation. With wildfires raging in BC’s Interior at the time, the sunny August day had taken on it’s menacing
orange hue just as it had the summer before. The smoke was palpable. The conversation turned away from the blue sky brainstorming and towards wondering: what impact would this have on the students starting our classes in a few short weeks? Those orange skies created the impetus for what would be our teaching experiment: the Climate Justice Project. Our topic for the year was clear: Wildfires and Climate Change. Dr. Markwick teaches a fourth year course in Crisis Communication at Capilano University. The crisis that would form the basis of their project work was Climate Change and Wildfires. The grade 5 curriculum includes resource economics, the scientific method, and government. The two classes would get a foundational lesson from experts WINGSPAN FALL/WINTER 2019
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