Week 10: Sustainability
As a teacher, one the hardest concepts for my students to understand is the term “ sustainability “. It seems like such a simple word and so easu to undstand, but when your are trying to explain the meaning of it and how it relates to ecosystems and environmnets, so students have a difficult time understanding it.
Lets us look at some simple definitions of the term “sustainability”.
- a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged
- Sustainability is most often defined as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs.
- the ability to be sustained, supported, upheld, or confirmed.
- Environmental Science. The quality of not being harmful to the environment or depleting natural resources, and thereby supporting long-term ecological balance:
Resources:
Research:
Where can the word sustainable or sustainability be used? For example, we use the word sustainable quite a lot when talking about ecology, ecosystems and environments.
The Sustainable Ocean
In the past several weeks we have focused on the problems our oceans are facing with garbage and in particular with plastic garbage. What will it take to make our oceans become a sustainable environment? In order to figure this out we need to find what are the real problems and what are some of the solutions to these problems.
Group activity to understand the sustainable ocean
- Use the internet or your own knowledge base from what you have learned over the past several weeks about the problem in the ocean
- Make a list of these problems and what is being done to solve them
- Maybe you can come up with some other problems not yet mentioned or come up with alternate solutions
Ocean sustainability meets economic sustainability
Most of us in BEST don’t live near an ocean or even live near water. Some of you haven’t even been to an ocean. Why are oceans even that important?
- Go ahead and make a list of all the important resources that our oceans provide us with
- Find cities or towns that rely mainly on the oceans for economic sustainability
- There are citieas that rely on water, but there are also cities that are running out of water. Can you list some of those cities.
Listen to this song. How does this make you feel?
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch and the sustainable ocean
Read this news article and you will notice that there is so much plastic in our ocean that is killing our wildlife and polluting our oceans. Do we have a solution for a sustainable ocean or will we be in a position of no return? These topics have already been discussed in previous lessons but lets take a deeper look into how sustainable our oceans really are. Let’s go back to our definitions at the beginning of this lesson. Are our oceans meeting these definitions?
You tell us.
Writing Component:
Write a letter to your local congress representative or your local council or even NOAA letting them know the importance of cleaning up the oceans for a sustainable future.
Last week we learned about watersheds and how the garbage in our own neighborhood can end up in the ocean, so the problem might even start in our own backyard.
Community Connection:
We all have some type of environmental problems in our community. Some of these problems are being addressed, some of them aren’t.
- What issues do you have that would lead to an unsustainable environment.
For example; I visited a small town near Waco today and they never had a recycling program in place. Well their landfill was filled with so many recyclable items.
- What is your community doing to maintain or work towards a sustainable community?
- What are you as an individual doing to help this, or what is your school doing to help these issues?
BEST Connection – A sustainable team
Either you are a coach reading this or a member of a team. How are you going to meet the needs of a sustainable BEST team? If you are a rookie team and you want to continue, then what are some basic needs to keep you going and keeping your team alive.
If you are a veteran team, then what are you doing different to become a better team? Better, doesn’t have to be about winning. It could be about not burning yourself out and enjoying what you do, or asking for help to make your work easier.
Bloom’s Taxonomy: add, create, explore, evaluate, generate, include, identify, list, observe, reflect, review, subdivide, use, and write
Workforce Skills: critical thinking, materials evaluation, reading comprehension, science, writing
My Personal Journal