by Kate Hayden Our approach for simultaneously engaging students in STEM while addressing gaps in environmental justice along the Gulf Coast is through the creation of a community of practice. Therefore, defining “us” can be tricky. The guiding principle of a community of practice is that we intentionally construct a network of stakeholders that vary in perspective, role, skill, resources, and needs. Our CoP is comprised of academics, community agencies, civic leaders, public school educators and administrators, residents, and students. However, when most people ask “why are you doing this?” they are referring to what I have called the STEMMing The Tide Leadership Team comprised of academics from education, chemistry, urban environmental studies, and political science. While you can learn more about our research expertise in the Leadership Team section of the website.. I thought it might be helpful to define “why us” by letting each person address their reasons (in their own words) for joining the team and what they wish to achieve. Desireé-I was the last of us to join the core grant team. Prior to our August 2021 submission, I had been on a year-long fellowship through the Woodrow Wilson Institute (now named the Institute for Citizens & Scholars), and once having officially returned, Vince approached me with the idea of signing on to the grant. At first, I was a bit intimidated by Vince’s proposal both because the project appeared to encompass a lot of moving parts, and due to its overall significance. To the latter point, this work (that is, addressing issues of environmental injustice/racism, and encouraging and equipping students to become citizen scholars) is important and necessary, and I wanted to be sure that I could contribute meaningfully to the project and to the Africatown community. It did not take me long to say yes, and I am incredibly grateful that I did! There were several reasons I thought it good to commit myself to grant, all of which I won’t inventory here. But what I will say is that, as the Coordinator for Birmingham-Southern College’s relatively new Distinction in Black Studies program, I thought this grant contained the potential for aspects of Black Studies and Black life to come into clearer and different focus for our students. That being said, as we continue in this work, I plan to develop pathways for Black Studies students to get involved, and hope that in their doing so, they come to understand better (among other things) the relationship between race, history, and the environment. Ultimately, though, I was and continue to be excited by the possibility that I might play some role in helping mold a different, more livable future for the Africatown community. Kate – Current data clearly demonstrates that the pipeline for STEM is leaking, and it is systemically leaking at an exponentially higher rate for women and black, indigenous, people of color (BIPOC). The scientific issues currently plaguing our communities now and, in the future, will require a diverse perspective to solve. If we do not address these gaps in our STEM education and workforce, we will find ourselves stagnating and repeating the same old solutions to new challenges without effect. My research with college aged students demonstrates that active and experiential learning can help close the achievement gap for women and BIPOC students, allowing them to continue along the STEM path. However, I do not see students until they are in their junior or senior year in college. Many of the women and BIPOC students who could benefit from my pedagogical approach were lost long before they could have reached my classroom. When Roald reached out to me (3 years ago!) about an idea to work with elementary and middle school aged kids to create a service-learning science curriculum focused on watershed restoration, I jumped at the opportunity. Here was my chance to work with educators and younger students, to hopefully engage them in STEM at an earlier age and help better prepare them for the pipeline ahead so that I may see more diversity in my own courses later. The idea has since evolved and matured (as all innovative ideas should) with much thanks to our expanding team and the variety of expertise on it. While I know this project is currently focused on one school, in one community; I am hopeful that we will be able to demonstrate that this is an adaptable model for developing a locally relevant and effective STEM curriculum for all young people that other communities would be willing to try. Kelly: My area of research and passion is STEM education. In the early months of 2020, I was working with Kate and Roald to write an NSF grant that would involve working with the Birmingham City School System. We wanted to develop a curricular unit that would focus on watersheds. We chose schools that were both near watersheds and in socio-economically disadvantaged areas of the city. We had gotten to the point of meeting with the science coordinators in the school system. If I remember correctly, the grant proposal was due in March of 2020. It’s easy to understand why progress on developing that work ground to a sudden halt. As the 2021 academic year began, Roald and Kate asked me if I was still interested in participating in a grant focused on STEM education. The focus of the granting agency was the gulf coast. Even though the location of the work had moved to Mobile rather than Birmingham, the spirit of the project was still there. Our first trip to Africatown made me see how different this project is. I was aware that students in certain sections of Birmingham live in areas where pollution causes health problems. I understood the industrial players who had caused the pollution. Mobile County Training School was different. While Birmingham is a sprawling metropolitan area, Africatown is one definable area of land with one school – Mobile County Training School. When we visited the area, I didn’t have to search for the sources of pollution. I could see them all as I stood in one spot. As we stood under the Africatown bridge, I could see industry all around me. Some were still active while others had shut their doors leaving dangerous pollution at the back door of the families of the area. I could smell the chemical scent in the air. This project involves another aspect that excites me. We are a multi-disciplinary group. I know science curriculum and best practices in education. I don’t have the knowledge of polluting chemicals that Kate has. I don’t look at the world through the lens of a political scientist. I haven’t planned and implemented community gardens. I had never considered a “Community of Practice” model. I have seen the community grow and multiply as we have worked toward one goal, and I want to be a part of that excitement. Louanne: Kelly and I work together in the Teacher Education department at Birmingham-Southern. When I say “work” together I mean that we are very often in one another’s back pockets - team teaching classes and working on projects together. Though I was not a member of the core team, I vicariously participated through my “hip pocket colleague.” I had mentioned to Kelly that though the grant was STEM focused some consideration of social studies, history, and geography would help students to connect the science of environmental justice to Concept of Place – the geography and history of a place, a space, its population, and the systems which impact that place and its people. I was more than thrilled to be invited to join the extended team. During the inaugural workshop many teachers indicated that their students did not simply have trouble with geography and map skills, they weren’t interested in geography and often couldn’t identify where they lived. We got into some amazing conversations about the Concept of Place and the consequences of not understanding one’s grounding in space and time. I mentioned that we could all rest assured that if WE didn’t understand where we live, why we live where we live, and how our social communities are impacted by systems, someone else DID know. As someone at our table remarked, “Yes, it’s like the old saying that if you are not at the table, you are probably on the menu.” I have participated in, planned, organized, or directed hundreds of teacher workshops. I can say that I have never worked with a group of teachers who are more in love with their students, their school, and their community. I look forward to the magic that these teachers will work with their students. I look forward to watching students and teachers connect math, science, social studies, and literacy as tools to identify their place in time and space and use these new connections to address issues of environmental justice in their community. Roald: Southern Environmental Center was established in 1992 with the idea of doing two things. First, open the ‘walls’ that traditionally insulate institutes of higher learning from their surrounding communities, and invite local schools, scout groups and civic organizations to visit our campus facilities. Second, establish partnerships between Birmingham-Southern College departments and organizations with local sustainability initiatives. Since that time, BSC has developed the only Urban Environmental Studies program in the State, and we have become the largest environmental education center of its kind in Alabama, with over 14,000 K-12 students touring our campus and Turkey Creek facilities annually. Most of the visiting schools come from well-funded districts, which is not the case within the neighborhoods zoned for Birmingham’s City Schools. A preponderance of these are Title 1 schools, and a sizable portion were built in former or current industrial zones, like Collegeville & North Birmingham. Over the years our center has written grants to enable these schools to visit our facilities and built outdoor classrooms on or near their campuses. We also developed informal science programs that identified what watershed these schools were in, and got them involved in local cleanups, water quality monitoring, and restoration planning efforts. Birmingham’s watersheds drain into the Mobile Basin, transporting surface litter, heavy metals from old industrial sites, agricultural waste, and tons of sediment from poorly managed construction sites. Our center’s expertise in developing connections with local schools and community partners makes Mobile a perfect location for STEMMing The Tide. Together with Kelly, Vince, Kate, Desiree, Louanne, and other talented BSC faculty, we hope to build communities of practice that will not just benefit Mobile, but Alabama as a whole. Vince: In July, 2021, Roald asked me if I was interested in partnering on the NAS proposal because of my research and teaching experiences. We had partnered on an NOAA environmental literacy grant proposal in 2017, but it was not funded. I saw great potential in this grant proposal effort, so I agreed to participate. I felt we could capitalize on the skills and expertise of my top-notch BSC colleagues to build a great interdisciplinary team. I’ve been working on the politics of disasters since graduate school. I’ve not only researched historical environmental hazards and disasters as an academic but have been directly involved in humanitarian assistance and disaster risk reduction projects in several Latin America and the Caribbean countries. I’ve seen how the poorest, most marginalized communities are the most impacted by disasters. Moreover, I’ve been lucky to capitalize on funding opportunities from the NSF, an internship with USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, various consulting gigs, and team research efforts to produce a solid body of work before applying for full professor. I’ve worked on several projects with colleagues at the Extreme Events Institute at Florida International University. Projects have included disasters and public opinion, disaster corruption, climate change adaptation, and building codes. However, my research productivity waned considerably after becoming department chair in 2014, and the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the submission of several of our articles. We circulated many drafts of the proposal, and I thought the final version was excellent. However, I was not super confident we would win the grant. Probably 75% of the grant proposals I’ve helped to write have been shot down. I knew we’d be facing stiff competition, and $1.25 million for five years is a significant chunk of change for little BSC. So, I was more than a little shocked when we learned we had won it! I think one of the reasons we won the grant was the care and preparation we put into the proposal. It was a genuine team effort. But Kate, Kelly, and Roald bring the much-needed professional environmental educator aspect to it. I haven’t had a lot of professional contact with K-12 educators. Desireé, of course, brings her expertise in black studies and environmental racism to the project. I thought I could contribute to the project with my experience with the “Community of Practice” (CoP) model. I’ve used the CoP model in several Central American communities to facilitate disaster risk reduction projects involving students, teachers, parents, community leaders, and subject matter experts. Another reason I think we won the grant stems from the grant’s voice, which indicates our passion for teaching, service learning, and combatting environmental and social injustices. None of us knew much about Africatown before we started this project, and we soon realized that carefully cultivating relationships would be essential to the project’s success. Since this is our first blog post, I’ll reserve my thoughts and reflections on developing the CoP and the success of our first workshop for another time. Ultimately, we hope to address the significant gaps in environmental justice and education that we see plaguing communities like Africatown. We feel that being “outsiders”, we can objectively help create a framework connecting existing infrastructure, resources, and opportunities of a community to allow the community to have voice in the directionality and use of those resources.
Stay tuned for Part III of Giving Voice to a Wish: Why Africatown. If you missed Part I of Giving Voice to a Wish: Prologue, just click here!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorThis is a collaborative blog with multiple authors from our community of practice focused on the community of Africatown in Mobile, Al. Archives
August 2023
|