- Updated: Aug. 18, 2024, 9:59 a.m.
- Published: Aug. 17, 2024, 8:00 p.m. By Richard Cowen | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
- Source Link: https://www.nj.com/education/2024/08/with-sandcastles-and-spaghetti-nj-teachers-learn-to-teach-climate-change.html
From left, Susan Lewicki, the Senior Educator at the Meadowlands Environment Center, Christine Alia, Lauren Gurda and John Sassi practice flooding measurements to show how high water can rise during a flood at the Meadowlands Environment Center in Lyndhurst on Tuesday, August 13, 2024.John J. LaRosa | For NJ Advance
By Richard Cowen | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
Many N.J. teachers are spending the lazy, hazy days of summer 2024 learning all about global warming – and plan to take those lessons with them into the classroom in September.
At the Meadowlands Environment Center in Lyndhurst, teachers gathered for a weeklong workshop focused on how to deliver meaningful lessons on climate change to students from K to 12 and in nearly every subject across the curriculum – a goal the New Jersey Department of Education set in 2020.
“It’s now or never,” to act on climate change, said Joanne Cavera, a recently-retired science teacher from St. Joseph’s Regional High School in Montvale who was monitoring the Meadowlands workshop. “Over the past few weeks, we’ve had over 400 teachers, so they’re going out to touch the lives of these students and what an amazing ripple effect.”
Although climate change has long been a subject for science class, many teachers in other disciplines said they felt ill-prepared in 2020 when New Jersey became the first state to incorporate global warming in every grade and throughout the curriculum.
Making that lofty goal work is a challenge, and this year, the N.J. Department of Education is providing $5 million in grants to train teachers by establishing Climate Change Learning Collaboratives administered by colleges and universities.
In North Jersey, Ramapo College operates the collaborative at the Meadowlands Education Center for teachers in North Jersey. In the central part of the state, Rutgers and Monmouth universities are in charge of the training and Stockton University handles the southern region.
Science is still the starting point, and at the Meadowlands workshop, teachers learned the classroom experiments that demonstrate the cause and effects of global warming. Leading the group was Dr. Angela Cristini, a professor of biology at Ramapo and the director of the Meadowlands Environment Center.
Cristini recited the “Three R’s” of climate change: reality, risk and responsibility. There’s a difference between weather and climate, she explained, with weather being the conditions on any given day and climate the patterns that we observe over extended period of time.
As for reality, Cristini said science has firmly established that the Earth is heating – and at an accelerating rate – due mainly to carbon dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere.
Susan Lewicki, center right, the Senior Educator at the Meadowlands Environment Center, gives instructions for a flood demonstration at the Meadowlands Environment Center in Lyndhurst on Tuesday, August 13, 2024.John J. LaRosa | For NJ Advance
Cristini noted that some models suggest that by 2050, New Jersey could be as warm as North Carolina. Although some people might prefer the warmer temperatures, with them come rising sea levels that might cover their favorite beach, she said.
To demonstrate the greenhouse effect caused by carbon dioxide, Cristini gave the teachers two jars, each with dirt samples. One jar had a lid of plastic wrap; the other had no lid.
The teachers stuck a thermometer in each jar and put them in the sun. After five minutes, the soil in the open jar rose three degrees and thereafter remained unchanged. But the soil in the jar wrapped in plastic initially rose four degrees, then kept rising.
In another experiment designed to show the impact of flooding, instructor Susan Lewicki showed the teachers how to make a three-dimensional typography model out of concrete poured over a mesh screen in a tin pan. The model was then made into a grid, with evenly sized squares printed onto the slopes and valleys.
Water in varying amounts was poured over the grid to simulate the impacts of a 1-inch, 2-inch and 3-inch rainfall. The teachers jotted down the number of squares consumed by each rainfall and calculated the percentage of the whole. A chart was drawn up to illustrate the data.
Lewicki advised that the model could be built in art class, and the data could be used for discussion of the social consequences of flooding, and who gets hurt the most by poor planning.
Teachers at the Meadowlands Environment Center workshop learned to make this typography model that demonstrates the impact of flooding. John J. LaRosa | For NJ Advance
“Why did the water go where it did?” Lewicki said, looking at the model. In terms of planning, “you can squeeze a lot into an area,” she said. But if you’re not careful, “you start out with waterfront property and now you have underwater property.”
Later in the week, the teachers were scheduled to build sand castles and then flood them with water, to show the damage that rising sea levels do. To demonstrate the power of wind, the workshop also taught teachers to build a cell phone tower out of strands of spaghetti.
Every teacher at the Meadowlands workshop was given a goodie bag stuffed with items to do the experiments in their classrooms. Cristini said teacher training will continue at the Meadowlands Environment Center on Saturdays throughout the school year.
Jim Kennedy, a science teacher at Pascack Valley Regional High School in Bergen County, said the easy-to-make experiments were valuable teaching aids.
“The examples that they’re providing us with are very easy to replicate in the classroom. Now all you have to do is just tailor it to the grade you are teaching.”