6. Teaching in Extreme Weather - Hurricanes, Wild Winds and Heavy Rain

10-05-2023 • 46 minutos

Hurricanes of Increasing Frequency and Intensity

Heather and Cally spoke with educators in Louisiana and Florida about hurricanes in the regions which are more frequent and more intense because of climate change. They learned new things about experiencing hurricanes. For example, all the teachers have a hurricane closet and in April they stock it up with canned goods and toilet paper and flashlights and weather monitors. Then at Thanksgiving, they donate everything that wasn't used during the hurricane season, and then they stock up for the next year because it's just part of their lived experience.

When asked about the impact on students, they were told that students get frustrated with missing school days because of hurricanes. They have to make the days up at the end of the school year. Students are used to the hurricanes and complain that it’s, “...just hard rain! Why won't they let us go to school?”

It's just not that big a deal, except for the fact that they evacuate their classrooms, because schools on the coasts that get hit the hardest are damaged and there are people who need shelter because their homes are gone. The students of teachers that Heather and Cally spoke with do not endure loss of property or life, but their school is now a shelter for the Red Cross. And that's really disruptive for teaching and learning.

Here's a news report about hurricane Ian that struck Florida in September 2022 resulting in 160 fatalities and the loss of power and homes, and 113 billion dollars in damages.

News Report: Hurricane Ian September 2022

Hello, DeSoto. County residents, students, parents, employees. It’s sad to be at DeSoto County High School this morning observing the damage that we're going to see today. Our high school is going to be closed for approximately two months. And we're coming up with an emergency plan to make sure that we continue the education for our high school students, or other schools we're trying to get online. As soon as we can safely do that. We're going to have an industrial hygienist that will go to each school to make sure they're safe. And they're free from the mold that they're going to be good learning environments for students, safe places for employees to work in as soon as we can get them online. We're gonna change from a monthly update to a weekly update. Please look at the district Facebook site, the district website, we will use robocalls to communicate with you. We're gonna send some drone footage up for you to look at. So you can see the damage. At the high school we've got extensive water damage within the building, and to the roofs. We've got a crew that's on site right now that's been working. We had the Industrial Hygienist look at the schools in Charlotte County and DeSoto County. We've got a full time job ahead of us, and we ask you to be with us. We will keep you informed, and we're gonna work hard to get our schools open. We're gonna save this high school. And we look forward to getting our students back in school. Thank you so much for your patience. God bless each and every one of you in DeSoto. County and in the state of Florida. Thank you.

Teaching Hurricanes and Climate Science in Louisiana - or not?

Teachers told Cally and Heather that the expectations for learning are to cover the curriculum. Weather may be a necessary disruption, but teachers are responsible to cover all the material and to get it done even with extreme climate disruptions. So Cally and Heather asked both teachers in Florida and Louisiana if they knew of any curriculum teaching about the climate crisis or human impact on the environment. They both said, “No, not that they are aware of. This is not a big topic in our area.” The science teacher that Cally and Heather spoke with teaches a district mandated curriculum called amplify science, that she supplements with, what she believes to be, good science.

So it's obvious from the news stories, from these interviews, that extreme weather and climate change are impacting learning. However, from these interviews, these teachers are not adapting the curriculum in their classrooms.

Lois Hetland

I am thinking about teachers saying climate change is not a big topic in their area. Florida and Louisiana, are two places where the predictions from the scientists are that they are going to be underwater in a very few years, by 2050. If we would face this and have a plan to retreat, we could get people out of these areas and resettled in areas where they could thrive. But it's not going to happen, because we're turning away from it. My friend, Bob Chen says, “Weather is the clothes you have and that you're wearing today. Climate is the clothes you have in your closet.” So basically, weather is daily-ness and climate is the-over-time. It sounds like these teachers are responding to the weather, but they're not responding to the-over-time. The fact is that looking at climate means more frequent storms, more heavier storms, more events, and more impact. And they're acting as if that doesn't exist. This idea of the scripted or mandated curriculum drives me crazy, because what I've heard is that people do it in the name of equity. Sure - let's make sure that nobody learns anything, because we're just going to parrot things back and forth.

Cally Flox

The science teacher we spoke with described the scripted curriculum, and then two supplemental curriculums. Not one of them introduces climate change in any way in these three science curriculums. I asked the question about climate change in the curriculum, and her answer was, “Well, we must have different points of view on that topic.” I was stunned to realize that she did not accept climate change, and she is the science teacher. I love that her students are achieving really high on the standards, and that her colleagues are not bothering her about bringing in her own teaching ideas because her students are so high achieving. She's in an area where there's a lot of pressure on achievement and the score the school gets. But one thing she pointed out is her school doesn't get any credit for her work, because only math and reading count in the school's grade. That's what they're focused on. That's what they're looking at. That's what the parents value. So the relevance of what's happening to these students is not even part of their learning.

Louise Music

What we're talking about here is the teacher and the curriculum. We are talking about what the teacher cares about and what the teacher is doing. We are talking about the curriculum and how teachers decide, and what parents and school administrators value. But what about the students? If their homes get flooded, if there's mud in their living rooms, this makes an impact on children's lives. There's a lot of stress on families. Children are not in a bubble. If they’re not experiencing extreme weather directly in their own homes, they're hearing about how the hurricanes and the dramatic rains in their cities aren't isolated events. They're hearing about places where people are dying and losing their homes. It has to cause anxiety in our young people. If they're not having a chance to bring the concerns and questions that they have inside them to the fore, then they're not learning what they really need. Students can be learning things that they can regurgitate onto a standardized test, but the trauma to children and all human beings is what gets hidden.

Lois Hetland

We have data from NASA with statistics that 97% or 100% of scientists who work on climatology understand that climate change is caused by human beings, the data is so clear. I think there are wonderful teachers out there who have been constrained by the information sources that have the opinions of people they respect, who are not informed.

Is Climate Science Standards Based, or Student Centered?

Cally Flox

I think we have to think about when and how people are teachable. Lois, one time you and I were talking about how to get teachers to be more connected to the world around them today. And your answer was to expose teachers to more contemporary artists to help them be more relevant, more empathetic and understanding of human nature and differences of opinions. The first thing that came to my mind is that these teachers are not using contemporary scientists. They are instead relying on standard curriculum written and scripted and handed to them, and not reading what contemporary scientists are warning us about. What a disconnect!

So I went on our state website after the conversation and reviewed where Utah is on this issue. Utah has had climate change in the core standards in science for a very long time.

Now, recently, there was a whole article on outrageous quotes of school board members talking about evolution and climate change. They absolutely were advocating that children never be taught that climate change is caused by people. Science educators said that there is too much evidence to the contrary and the climate science standards have been retained. But I wonder if in my own state, if I could find science teachers who choose not to present climate science in alignment with our own standards.

Heather Francis

That's what's so interesting. I went to Louisiana's website to see the standards, and I found on the Louisiana State Education website, an entire environmental literacy program. They have a commission for environmental literacy. And then I went and looked at the fifth grade science standards and there are two big key ideas about climate change and human impact on the environment. So the science teacher we spoke with has the standards, and she is making choices not to teach those things. The closest she got was telling us that her class talked about Katrina and how the levees broke, and that they do an activity to save their town from flooding. But it's just an exercise, rather than a deeper understanding of causes or implication for the future.

Cally and I only spoke with this teacher for a half hour, and truly we would need to have more conversation to really understand. There were a lot of things shared that Cally and I were in complete agreement with. We have many shared values. One of them was this teacher’s wish that elementary school teachers be taken more seriously as people who understand content. Now we were having doubts, because well, you're a science teacher and you’re not teaching about climate change. She felt very strongly that elementary education is where you set the foundation for your life. And we believe that too. And there just would need to be a lot more conversations to really understand this teacher.

Lois Hetland

Yeah, I think one of the problems that I've experienced as an elementary teacher, and as you know, working with lots of elementary teachers, is the lack of disciplinary expertise. So many elementary teachers were never experts in any discipline. You know, they weren't science experts. They weren't literature experts. They weren't mathematics experts. We were generalists and so we relied on translations from the experts, through educationists, to us. I think that's a problem with our professional development and our college level teacher preparation. It's not the teachers who dropped the ball. It's the system that dropped the ball in educating those teachers. I think teachers have got to understand what expertise is. They really have to become disciplinary experts in something so that they understand what that is. And then it's like, then you would start to read real science or read real mathematicians.

Louise Music

Except that everything is changing so quickly, all the time. It's about disciplinary knowledge, but also connecting to experts. This is where the internet can be so important as a resource for young people to be researchers. And children, themselves, are resources for knowledge. I think that as we worry about children's learning loss from COVID, we are missing out on mining children's experience to find out what they have experienced through living through a global pandemic. From children at the ages of four and five and six, there is so much important knowledge for all of us. I don't think we can be surprised that people are using scripted curriculum, because I experience it as I volunteer in a second grade classroom here in Oakland, California. I'm shocked by it. But I am also impressed by the dedication, the stability, the love, and the well meaningness that this teacher brings to their students. I think it's about finding better ways to use the internet, I think it's about open education resources. And it's about teachers learning from each other and opening up their classrooms, and also learning from the students.

Climate Change Trauma

Cally Flox

How many researchers in education have shown that the more relevant something is, the better the students learn it, and what's more relevant than the world around you? And certainly, we're missing an educational opportunity when we stick to scripted curriculum that doesn't allow us to follow the news and track what's happening and relevant in the world and in fact, protecting our homes and families? We also must acknowledge the impacts of trauma on learning. There is an important trauma sensitive schools movement, and their conferences are growing every year because teachers need some place to turn to support the shared traumas that everyone is enduring.

One of the things we know is that anything learned with stress is recalled with that same stress, because of the way the neural pathways are laid down, and the emotions you attach to information as it's formed. Those same neural pathways are activated when you access that information. We all shared COVID, and we all learned stressful things. People talk about learning loss, but we fail to learn what children experienced during the pandemic shut down while their families endured stress, trying to make ends meet and maintain their jobs. There are many things that happened and ways that people responded, including racial reckonings and extreme climate events. I really wonder what would happen if we interviewed people ten years from now about how all of this has impacted them. Today’s students might be performing well on tests, but can they describe what happened to them in the world as they were growing up?

Lois Hetland

I think it must have to do with fear when people don't want to face climate change, and describe it as just another day at school, or it's not in my science curriculum.

Heather Francis

Fear or desensitization. My friend in Florida said that overtime extreme weather becomes an everyday thing. It's every year, and people become desensitized to it. She likened it to an abusive relationship. It just is what it is. I think that goes to one of the climate myths that the climate has always been changing. True enough but the rate of change is unlike anything in the past.

Cally Flox

How will the children tell the stories of these hurricanes, and make meaning of them for the future, if we don't let them talk about these hurricanes while they're experiencing them?