Welcome to season two of the POGLE podcast. I'm Matt Targa, producer of the
POGLE podcast for the POGLE Project. POGLE stands for Process-Oriented Guided
Inquiry Learning, a student-centered approach that guides students in
constructing their own understanding of content and helps them develop important
skills such as teamwork, communication, critical thinking, and problem-solving.
The POGLE podcast is an ongoing conversation from the POGLE Project
that celebrates innovative educators both in and out of the classroom. We have a
handful of special episodes to share with you over the next several months in
2022. Today we bring into focus POGLE's upcoming climate justice symposium that
will take place in June of 2022. POGLE practitioner Dr. Kristen Plessel, interim
associate vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Wisconsin
Whitewater, interviews Dr. Deb L. Morrison of the University of Washington. Dr.
Morrison will be one of the main presenters at the upcoming climate
justice symposium. She works at the intersection of justice, climate science,
and learning. She is a climate and anti-oppression activist, scientist,
learning scientist, educator, mother, locally elected official, and many other
things besides. Deb works in research practice policy partnerships from
local community to international scales. She works to iteratively understand
complex socio-ecological systems through design-based and action-oriented
research while at the same time seeking to improve human environment
relationships and sustainability. She draws on an eclectic range of justice
theory to inform her work in the world and to foster her continued journey for
transformative liberation. More information about Dr. Morrison's work can
be found at www.DebMorrison.me. Kristen and Deb, thanks for being here today and
Kristen, I will now pass the baton over to you. Hello everyone, I am Kristen Plessel
from the POGLE project and here with Deb Morrison. Deb and I have been part of a
group who've been crafting the POGLE climate justice symposium along with
Shannon Wojtowski, Carol Fish, Heather Price, and Sonia Remington-Dusette. Deb,
I'm so glad you could join us here today. Can you please just first introduce
yourselves? Who is Deb Morrison and why might I want to be talking to her? Yeah,
it's great to be here, thank you. So I'm actually Deb L. Morrison. There's two
Deb Morsons working in the area of climate justice. There's a Deb K.
Morrison as well. And I'm a learning scientist at the University of
Washington and I work broadly in research practice policy collaborations
across the nation and across the world. I'm here today actually on West Saanich
territory on Pender Island, British Columbia. I live in Canada and work
remotely for the last five years. So yeah, I have my fingers in all sorts of
different collaborations with state science supervisors, with First Nations,
tribal nations, with different organizations, justice-focused
organizations. And can you tell us a little bit about what is climate justice?
You know, I threw this out, the Pogel Climate Justice Symposium, but what does
that term mean? It's different than some of the other things we want to talk
about. Yeah, when we think about climate change education, there's a lot of
different language that's floating around. We hear climate science, climate
change, global warming, and more recently especially we've heard a lot more about
climate justice. Climate justice has a lot of different meanings depending on
what context you're working in. And it stems from really deep long-term work in
histories in communities of color and tribal communities around environmental
justice. Way back, but it was sort of formalized around 1992 with the
principles of environmental justice. And then in the early 2000s, I want to say
2002, internationally they created the 27 principles of climate justice. And they
drew on the American environmental justice principles. And so those are
called the Bali climate justice principles because they were created in
Bali, Indonesia. And they really help us think about, you know, who's at the
table defining what is an issue of justice? What form of justice are we
talking about? Are we talking about racial, economic, gender justice,
intergenerational justice? And so it really is contextual to like what the
specific problem we're dealing with is. And I think the commonality is trying to
understand as we work and as we think and as we understand problems of climate
change, how do we understand their disproportionate impacts and solutions
that are being generated from different communities that may need to be
considered in really critical ways?
I'm thinking about the Pogol communities classrooms. I think climate change and
global warming are more common and understood terms. So how is climate
justice different than those concepts? And why might we want to think about
them?
Yeah, we know that there's also educational justice. So we know from work
in educational justice that to really engage the interests and foster strong
scientific identities for youth, we actually need to tie into who youth are
and the lived experiences they have. And that has to do with justice. So if
you're a young girl in a chemistry class, if you're a young person of color in a
physics class, like those are things that are not as common as we'd like to be in
terms of like how we're fostering positive roles into the future, we still
have gender inequity, we still have racial inequity in science careers in
those spaces. And so what we really want to do is we want to ensure that what
we're teaching, and how we're teaching it is tying to those youth. And for youth
that are more normative, and the classic is of course, the young white boy,
right. But the there's other ways that you might be more sort of centered in a
classroom. For those that are more normative, we also want them to
experience differences that really reflect the world in front of them so
that they're better to be collaborators to be innovators in their fields. And so
it might look like something like if you're studying water chemistry, for
instance, say you're doing a POGO lab that's looking at water chemistry, that
you're actually trying to understand, okay, well, who is experiencing water
chemistry problems in your community? You know, where are those experiences
coming from? Who's not as impacted by it? And why is that? And that brings in
these socio scientific aspects. Troy Souther talks a lot about that. So
socio scientific issues as being a really important way of engaging youth.
And so that's really what we're getting at with climate justice in the
classroom, is thinking about as we understand different issues of like for
one of the earth system science ones around water is around timing of water,
you know, how much water there is and when. And that type of like timing of
water is really differentially impacts those in socio economic situations,
different socio economic situations, because like maybe you have flood
insurance, maybe you don't, maybe you live in a place that's really heavily
impacted. And then your drinking water is contaminated when it floods. And so
there's a lot of different sort of intersectional issues of justice that we
see in the world, and it makes our science much more meaningful when we
study in the context of real world issues.
So if I'm thinking about why I should engage in climate justice work, it's
going to give my students a better understanding of how the science impacts
the world around them. And I could see students become much more engaged in
the science I'm trying to get them to understand, because they understand how
it could really impact different people in within my community.
Absolutely. And even more so you can start exploring like the solutions, the
different cultures and different communities are finding to these issues.
There's really great work done by a National Geographic Explorer in the
slums of Egypt, where the innovations that were going on for sanitation for
it was all chemistry, it was related to sanitation and water, clean water, which
is it was essentially absent, there was no infrastructure in these slums. And
the local people living there had figured out how to do it. And it was
amazing. And then a National Geographic Explorer went there and studied how
these folks are living in these spaces, and developed a set of small sort of
mobile equipment based on the technology that they were using is really
low, and simple technologies, but like, great adaptive technologies for the
situation. And those things are now used in refugee camps all over the place,
because they're mobile, and they're adaptive for that environment. And so
sometimes the solutions that we're looking for, for our real world problems
are found in the real world applications, science and spaces, and you have to be
able to work and see and learn from people in all different contexts to
understand that.
And getting our students students engaged at that early stage in
absolutely out of the box solutions. So in our very politicized world right now,
as a chemistry instructor, it's just kind of a controversial topic to be engaged
in Europe bringing in you've mentioned somewhat scary words like political and
society that we don't always engage in in the science community. What advice
would you give to someone who's interested in the topic, but maybe
reluctant to engage with their students on this topic?
It's funny that you say those two words, especially because I so I've been
working at the Institute of Science and Math education for five or six years
now, and six years, I guess. And one of the very first so I'm an editor on the
STEM teaching tools, which helps science, technology, engineering,
mathematics teachers address issues that are like coming up in practice. And one
of the very first STEM teaching tools I wrote was how to address controversy in
the classroom, because we I was teaching it a lot in sort of high school biology
context where evolution was coming up a lot. But I also, you know, work on a lot
in climate change. And so you could see all of the controversies that we're
hitting. So that tool is more general, not just climate change specific, but it
provides and I think I'll find that I think it's number 44. And so I would
actually suggest that folks dig into those types of resources because
they're really made to help teachers like find the resources they need to be
able to address issues of controversy. The political one, we have hit that in
our Washington State climate science education collaborative. So I'm working
on the leadership team across it's called climb time. And there are lots of
resources available for folks teaching climate change that are starting to
populate that space. So it's climb time.org. But we wrote a STEM teaching
tool called navigating the political dimensions of climate change teaching
and learning. Just recently, it just came out, it's number 78. And it really
helps people address issues of quote unquote, politics in the classroom. And I
say that with sort of air quotes, because climate change is not a
controversial topic amongst scientists, it's a socially controversial topic. And
so what teachers tend to hit is they tend to hit parents who are or
community members or administrators sometimes who are worried about having
some kind of social conflict related to what's being taught in the classroom.
And that's real in many places in the country. Like it's a it's a visceral
real challenge, right. And so what teachers need to do in those spaces is
you don't need to hold on to the words climate change to teach climate change,
right? You can engage in things that are climate change adjacent, you know, like
regenerative agricultural practices, like, you know, alternative
transportation pathways, and those types of ideas to explore and get get
students involved with. They're open to you, you just have to use the language
and address the issues that are local to you. And those issues that are important
to local communities are not going to be as full of conflict as straight on saying
I'm going to teach climate justice in my classroom, right? You are teaching it,
you're just not naming it that way. And while I like to be very explicit in the
work that I do is there's a reality that exists for many in the country that they
have to just, you know, work a little bit sideways from the language that we
currently have, because the language to stir up a lot of the political rhetoric.
I think the one other thing I would say on that is, as you engage in those local
topics, it's really important we walk this line as teachers sometimes between
indoctrination and inquiry. And we need to really stay on the inquiry side of
that line. So while I may have particular political opinions, I am a trusted adult
in a teaching setting, and my political opinion should not be what I'm telling
my class. But what I do what I am responsible for in terms of climate
justice, as I am responsible to get kids to inquire into data that's in the world,
get them to see and explore data, the inferences they make from that data
should be logical and rational, like based on the scientific sort of principles
of inference. But I shouldn't necessarily say that's right or wrong. I should just
say that the process by which students are getting to that is right or wrong. And
that's one of the ways to also address controversy and politics in the
classroom is you're not teaching politics, you're teaching the practices
that students need to engage in civic inquiry properly.
And I think that's really comforting, because there are tools, you know, you
mentioned there are tools available to us at our fingertips already. And when I
think about the POGO facilitator, an experienced POGO facilitator already
focuses on the process and is working with their students on inquiry. We're just
putting it in a real world context, where we do have to consider other things
besides just the science of the situation.
POGO is really well suited, like the POGO sort of frame of teaching is really
well suited to this because it is about inquiry. And it's about how we expand the
data sets that we might have students look at. So maybe they look at chemistry
data, and they look at socioeconomic data, and they look at those together to
think about a particular problem.
So one last final question I want to wrap up with, what is the most rewarding
thing that you have experienced with engaging in climate justice work?
So one of the things while it may seem scary to enter this space, one of the
most rewarding things is that students love it. They get so excited about
understanding how the things that they're learning in school matter to
their families and their communities matter to the world. Youth are engaged
in climate change, in climate justice work. They're way more connected than
adults. Social media and all different things. And understanding that as an
educator is very critical if you're really going to engage students deeply
in classroom learning, or not necessarily just class and getting them
outside too, you know, and school based learning. And so I think that is
potentially one of the most exciting things. And for me personally, I work in
a lot of issues of how do we actually support people who are very in
normalized positions. So people who have a lot of power or privilege, how do we
support them in understanding issues of climate justice? And that's also
extremely exciting, is to see youth who think that they understand the world
start to question and like explore more deeply, and then really become humble
learners about the world and about society. And that's going to help us in
the long run. That's going to be what really helps to foster a lot of climate
justice is people who are in privilege, not just understanding their privilege,
but deeply understanding, like their role in society and their responsibility to
community.
So thank you for all the work that you've done in this area and you continue to do
in this area. You're a wonderful leader. I invite everyone to look out for
information for the Pogal Climate Justice Symposium coming in 2022, where
you can come and learn some more from Deb and create a project of your own.
Thank you so much, Deb. It was really great talking to you today.
Thank you.
Thanks to all of you for listening to today's conversation on the Pogal
podcast. For additional details on how you can engage with the Pogal project
or its working groups, contact Associate Director Marcy Dubrov at
marcy.dubrav at pogal.org. That's marcy.dubroff at pogal.org.
The Pogal Project is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. If you would like to make
a donation so we can keep providing podcasts, low-cost workshops, and
classroom materials, please visit www.pogal.org. Backslash donate.
Intro and outro music of our podcast is produced by Pogal practitioner, Wayne
Pearson. Please join us next time when we feature another special episode of the
Pogal podcast this season. A cross collaborative episode where co-host
Dr. Alex Groucho of Rider University interviews Dr. Brad Moser of Hamilton
College and host the podcast, Physics Alive. Until then, enjoy your week.