We have a bamboo bike maker. A rapper-percussionist in The Big Drift. A bona fide urban homesteader, with chickens in the garage and fruit trees in the yard.
Each of the GLACIER fellows, like all of us, have unique hobbies, interests, and personal projects. And they all can connect to issues of sustainability and climate change. Where does bamboo grow; how is its growth affected by increased co2? What is the carbon footprint of a bamboo bike vs. a carbon fibre one? How much co2 is saved from riding the bike instead of driving a car? Or chickens: where do our eggs come from? What was up with that egg contamination scare a few weeks ago? What is industrial agriculture? Food miles and carbon footprint. Etc.
Our challenge in GLACIER, and education more broadly, is how to work the things that really motivate us - the things we do on our own for no pay, and not because anyone is trying to 'get us' to do something, and bring that into the classroom. Can we work the volume equation of a bamboo pole into a lesson that fulfills an MCAS requirement to learn geometry? Like Jessica Seinfeld's book Deceptively Delicious, wherein the spinach is furtively integrated into the brownies, can we deliver the education while simply having fun with what already fills us with joy and creativity?
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