This video highlights programs and efforts to engage with youth and many disadvantaged groups about the risks of our changing oceans, careers in science, and ways to express their feelings through art.
It covers issues of climate justice for many groups and the need to advocate for action to protect the oceans.
Teaching Tips
Positives
Although the video covers serious topics related to climate change, it presents youth taking action to help the environment, resulting in a positive and hopeful tone.
Advocacy through art is highlighted, and this can serve as an entry point for many students to care and take action for the ocean and the environment.
The video lays out a nice blueprint for ways that youth can organize to engage their community in taking positive steps to combat climate change and threats to the ocean.
Additional Prerequisites
Learners should be familiar with the effects of climate change on the ocean and coastal communities, such as sea level rise, coastal flooding, ocean acidification, and coral bleaching.
Differentiation
This video would be a great source of inspiration for an interdisciplinary project engaging civics and science, or art and science for climate change advocacy.
Consider having students investigate ways they could improve their local watershed or waterways and create an action plan.
Have students write a poem or illustrated essay describing their connection to water and how they could protect this vulnerable resource.
Encourage students to host an action day at school to create art to advocate for the environment or to clean up trash in their watershed.
Scientist Notes
More often than not, the most vulnerable of people are the ones being the most impacted by the negative effects of climate change. This video from the Nature Conservancy explores how people on the coasts are vulnerable to climate change and rising oceans. This resource is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
MS-ESS3-3 Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment.
MS-ESS3-5 Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century.
Common Core English Language Arts Standards (CCSS.ELA)
Speaking & Listening (K-12)
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.7.2 Analyze the main ideas and supporting details presented in diverse media and formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) and explain how the ideas clarify a topic, text, or issue under study.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.11-12.2 Integrate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) in order to make informed decisions and solve problems, evaluating the credibility and accuracy of each source and noting any discrepancies among the data.
College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards
Dimension 2: Economics
D2.Eco.1.9-12 Analyze how incentives influence choices that may result in policies with a range of costs and benefits for different groups.
Dimension 4: Taking Informed Action
D4.7.9-12 Assess options for individual and collective action to address local, regional, and global problems by engaging in self-reflection, strategy identification, and complex causal reasoning.
National Core Arts Standards
Visual Arts: Standard 8 - Interpret intent and meaning in artistic work.
VA:Re8.1.8a Interpret art by analyzing how the interaction of subject matter, characteristics of form and structure, use of media, art-making approaches, and relevant contextual information contributes to understanding messages or ideas and mood conveyed.
