Sustainable Youth Project

For my quarter-long project, I have become involved in a UCLA campus group called Sustainable Youth. The purpose of this new organization is to spread awareness about sustainability to grammar school students. I sent in an application to be part of the group, and then had a personal interview with two of the leaders of the club. This group was started during fall 2009 at UCLA, and we currently volunteer at a fourth grade class at Nora Sterry Elementary once a week to teach about environmental awareness. The kids learn about sustainability through fun activities at an early age, and are able to incorporate solutions into their daily lives. I will create specific lesson plans and activities to engage the kids and make sustainability fun! I really hope that my involvement in this organization will continue throughout my time at UCLA and not only during this quarter. I believe that it is extremely important to teach young children about sustainable living because the knowledge will remain with them throughout their lives. I feel like the only way to solve many of Earth’s environmental problems is to educate the future generations—what better way to start than at elementary schools?
On Monday night, April 18th, I met with Sustainable Youth for the first time. There were only 6 of us, and we split into two groups of three—one group teaches on Tuesday, and the other on Wednesday. I teach on Tuesdays from 11:10 to 12:10 to a 5th grade class with two other UCLA students, Tony and Stefania. There is a general structure to each lesson: each time, we review the definition of sustainability, then summarize the previous lesson, teach the day’s lesson, incorporate a fun activity, and end with a reflective writing activity. Our topic for Tuesday, April 20th was “Energy”. On Monday night, we created a lesson plan that defined energy and the various sources, with an activity. I was excited, but kind of nervous because I didn’t really know what to expect.
On Tuesday morning, Tony and I took the bus to Nora Sterry Elementary, near the corner of Corinth and Santa Monica Blvd. We signed in at the front office, and went up to the classroom. Tony introduced me to the class of 21 students and they chorused “Good morning Mr. Tony and Miss Serena”. Tony reviewed from the previous week, and then we began the energy lesson. We introduced energy by asking the kids to “rub their hands together as fast as they could for as long as possible”; this creates energy in the form of heat, but also uses energy because your arms get tired! We talked about various sources of energy and then defined “renewable” and “nonrenewable”, categorizing each energy source. Then, we began our main activity. Each group of three kids was given a plastic bag with a balloon, piece of string, coffee stir stick, small piece of straw and tape. The object was to move the straw across the string using these objects. Each different way represented that there are many ways to get energy and that there is not just one solution to the energy shortage problem, a variety of methods can be used. After this, I presented a slideshow about various sources of energy including coal, solar, nuclear, wind, tidal, and hydro. Then, we connected this information to the kids’ lives and brainstormed ways that they can save energy in different parts of their house. We challenged them to turn off the lights and TV when not in use, and talk to their parents about saving electricity. We also explained why it is a good thing to reduce energy (saves money, lessons pollution, and prevents habitat loss). Finally, we ended with a writing activity where the kids chose one renewable and one nonrenewable energy source, described them, and explained why one was more sustainable than the other. We collected their papers to read later and see what the kids had learned. My favorite was:
“The 2 sources coal and wood are used to start fires and they’re used for the same purpose but there are some differences. First of all let’s say you run out of wood, well then you just take a seed that makes trees and plant it and you wait a year or so and you have a whole bunch of wood but you can’t just bury coal and a coal tree will grow. So coal is nonrenewable and wood is renewable”.
Overall, I really had a great time and felt like the kids learned a lot. They are a very eager class and always ready to participate. Something that I need to work on is getting my mind into “5th grade mode”. We are teaching about big, important concepts, but in order to make them fun and interesting, we have to simplify the information considerably. Next week’s lesson is about water!