A dozen days spent in national parks in Alaska this summer helped high school students from Ohio learn a little bit more about climate change up close. Their experience was part of the first “Climate Change Academy,” an immersive, comprehensive climate change course offered through the National Park Service.
"I am glad that I came to Alaska and learned about the harmful effects of climate change for myself,” said Sydney Young, a sophomore at West Geauga High School in Chesterland, Ohio. “I have the knowledge to define my own opinion. I feel comfortable and confident in my ability to make a change."
The Academy is a partnership between the National Park Service Climate Change Response Program and the non-profit No Barriers Youth.
“This is a model for experiential learning,” said Ray Sauvajot, acting associate director for natural resource stewardship and science in the National Park Service. The partnership began with the successful Night Skies program, which led to the development of the more intensive immersion program. No Barriers Youth solicited applications for the “Climate Change Academy” from middle and high schools across the nation. After several rounds of review, Mike Sustin, a chemistry and environmental science teacher from West Geauga High School, was selected as a group leader, and 10 students were selected to participate in the academy.
Sydney and her fellow students, ages 14 to 18, spent time in Kenai Fjords and Denali national parks following a pre-trip curriculum. The students dedicated time over weekends and summer days to complete the five sessions of extra-curricular lessons in preparation for the trip.
In Alaska, the group hiked the Harding Icefield Trail in Kenai Fjords National Park with park rangers Luke Rosier and Jenna Giddens. They were sworn in as Junior Rangers and took a full-day wildlife and glacier boat tour of the fjords with John Morris, interpretive program manager for the National Park Service’s Alaska Region.
Ricky Greene, a high school senior on the trip, said, “Every animal we saw on the cruise to Holgate Glacier became a story with a ton of interesting facts. The most amazing thing John told us was the idea of 'The Dancing Spheres' that described the relationships between the atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, cryosphere, biosphere and even the heliosphere. It gave me a whole new way to look at the way global warming affects us. Now I can explain it better to people who don't understand.”
In Denali National Park, students participated in a climate change scenario planning activity with Alaska Region Science Advisor Bob Winfree. On their last day in the park the group overcame personal challenges by hiking a strenuous Cathedral Mountain route with Dave Schirokauer, physical and social science program manager in Denali.
Now back in Ohio, the students are developing a project to share their discoveries with their community. Additionally, each student will enter the first No Barriers Youth Climate Change Art Contest, also sponsored by the NPS Climate Change Response Program, in which anyone ages 12-21 can submit an artistic entry responding to: “When thinking about climate change, what is your hope for the future?” The aim of the contest is to inspire conversation around the subject and to encourage youth to approach it from multiple disciplines and value the intersection of arts and sciences.
The National Park Service and No Barriers Youth work together to promote awareness and action on climate change. The National Park Service Climate Change Response Program and No Barriers Youth partnership is a commitment to provide climate change learning opportunities for youth and educators nationwide.
Comments
It's hard to know whether to laugh or cry when reading comments from those who automatically reject any possible value of an educational program simply because the discussion includes the words "climate change." Reminds me of a history lesson about a guy named Galileo, who got into a bit of difficulty with the establishment of his day when he suggested that the earth was not the center of the universe :-)
Well Jim, sums up my view of the issue quite well.
Hopefully these kids paid attention to an engaging and hands-on course, and it peaks their interest in science. It may encourage them to learn more about the world in which they live, and hopefully steers them from a future in which they blurt out blatant ignorance as internet trolls. We already have enough ignorant trolls in congress too.
And yet another thread with comments that blur science with ideological assaults on science as a legitimate division of kowledge. Long live the Science/Culture Wars . . .
It would be wonderful to be one of those folks who are experts on EVERYTHING.
For those of us who aren't, we can just hope that sensible people prevail.
But what a wonderful opportunity for these youngsters. Let's hope there will be more and more who will be able to follow and have similar experiences.
Ron, Thunderbear's account of your pit bull encounter is some fine reading. Are you still hauling the beast around?
I am all for educational programs, would have loved to participate and they should have been establish long ago. But not something with an agenda driven by the criminal fraud called Climate Change. Might as well call it Junk Science Academy.
Not seen the curriculum and I have not been to been to those villages that have severe erosion problems, but I have spent plenty of time on seashores to know how man made shoreline hardening usually doesn't work and exacerbates erosion. A hard lesson learned but blaming it on AGW is fantasy...
Ignorance is bliss. So, let me get this straight - the rest of us should put our blind trust and knowledge with those that have lived all their lives in a warm humid sweltering climate where it rarely if ever snows during winter, and glaciation has never occurred in their backyard for at least 100,000 years? We should put our "faith" with a man that has never seen a glaciated moraine field, let alone studied one, simply because he wants us to find it easier to spout the mantra that "global warming science is a fraud"? We should also disregard the knowledge of those actually looking at the empirical evidence put together by scientists studying climate science? Yep... I think i'll stick with the knoweldge obtained from those that actually study climate change and are up close in the fields of the arctic, and places like Glacier National Park. Thanks for the laugh, Beach. I'll plan this winter to do some snowshoeing in the warm dry sand at Cape Hatteras and pretend i'm actually in Alaska, ok?