From Standing Rock to the March for Science, STEM issues are in the news and on our minds. As curriculum designers for English language learners (ELL) students in Ann Arbor, Michigan, we have found that the prevalent environmental and public health issues of the day have not only puzzled great minds, but they've also tugged at heartstrings and set many of us ablaze with a hunger for justice.
In 2015, our state was hit with the shocking news that the water supply of Flint, Michigan, had been poisoned by lead, due to a governmental decision to shift the community's water source from the Detroit River to the toxic Flint River. There were devastating effects, both short-term and long-term, on the health outcomes of those who had been poisoned.
Hearts and Minds
As educators, countless questions kept us up at night about this crisis. If there was a beacon of light, it was the scientists. Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, a local pediatrician turned "shero," sounded the alarm bell after identifying problematic trends in her young patients' health. As we watched Hanna-Attisha speaking on the news, advocating with politicians, and giving talks in our community, we were mesmerized by the breadth of her scientific knowledge and the depth of her passion. She made us ask ourselves a hard question:
What can we, as educators, do to motivate students to become people who see science, technology, engineering, and math not as content areas to be mastered, but as tools for understanding the world and pursuing positive change in our communities?
This question and examples like Hanna-Attisha inspired us to design a STEM-based curriculum for our community's 4th–8th grade summer English as a second language (ESL) Academy, in collaboration with ESL teachers in the Ann Arbor Public Schools and ESL teacher candidates from the University of Michigan. We knew that to engage young students in this challenging work, we would have to light fires in their hearts and minds. We considered the resources in our city and identified community partners that could help us provide engaging field experiences. We brought in environmental experts and school leaders to frame our curricular content with authenticity and expediency. We armed students with technological tools, such as video editing software and online presentation tools. We also drew from the district's science curricula in our planning, to ensure that the content and language learning our ELL students achieved during the summer would directly support the science work they would do in subsequent school years.
Classroom Week One: Water Is Life
In the first week of the program, students explored questions like, Where does water come from and where does it go? Why is water so important in our lives? Through a series of hands-on demonstrations and literacy work with high-quality, water-themed texts, we sought to capture students' interest, build background knowledge and vocabulary, and set the stage for students' learning about problems related to water systems. We also partnered with a county park for our first field trip to a local lake and marshland, where students practiced scientific observation, learned about the role of marshes within watersheds, and had fun with friends as they played in the park's "splash area."
Week Two: Exploring Problems
In the second week, students delved into questions such as, In what ways do humans create demands and threats on water systems? How do we measure water quality? We partnered with the Huron River Watershed Council (HRWC), a local environmental advocacy group, to lead students in a field experience where they learned how to assess the health of a river ecosystem by gathering scientific data on turbidity, velocity, temperature, erosion, and macroinvertebrate indicator species.
Week Three: Water Advocacy
In the final week of the program, students explored questions such as, What action can we take as global and local citizens to protect our water resources? We introduced the idea of "service learning," and positioned students as agentive citizens who could use technology and engineering as tools to communicate their learning and call for change.
Students in 4th–5th grade built upon their experience with the HRWC to explore flooding issues at the school and the surrounding neighborhood. In fact, they learned that the HRWC had already been advocating for a rain garden to be constructed at the school. As our students' interest in this problem grew, we decided to partner with our local parks and recreation department, with whom we designed a final service-oriented field trip. Our students helped to pull invasive species and transplant plants in two local rain gardens, and in the process learned about the construction of rain gardens. Ultimately, they extended this experience to design and promote rain garden plans for the school.
Sixth and seventh grade students worked with the HRWC to collect the opinions of community members who hadn't been able to attend public meetings about the construction of a rain garden in the neighborhood. They shared their findings with HRWC and presented the data, along with strategies to reduce contamination from neighborhood run-off, to an audience of community members.
Finally, other middle school students broadened their learning globally and investigated water concerns at Rio de Janeiro, the site of the 2016 summer Olympics where reports of unsafe drinking and sporting waters had concerned athletes. Our students prepared information about the conditions, which they then shared with Olympic athletes from the University of Michigan.
STEM Citizenship
The program culminated in an evening event at the school, during which students presented their findings and proposals to a large audience of community members, school personnel, local government officials and environmental advocates. By aligning our content and domain-specific language learning goals with issues of local environmental importance, we aimed to not only developed students' academic abilities during summer school, but also to nurture their sense of citizenship and responsibility—skills and perspectives young people need in this ever-changing and challenging world.
