Science Friday - SciFri Extra: Bringing Environmental Justice To The Classroom

Episode Date: November 30, 2019

Laura Diaz, a Bay Area science teacher, grew up in Pittsburg, California near chemical plants and refineries. That experience, combined with watching her mother’s home go up in flames in last year��s Camp Fire, transformed her into an “environmental justice activist.” Now, she’s bringing those experiences into the classroom to inspire young people to solve the world’s injustices through science. Diaz joined Ira onstage at San Francisco’s Sydney Goldstein Theater, alongside a few former students, to talk about the connections between science education and environmental activism. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato coming to you from the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco. Here in the Bay Area, there are foggy groves of towering redwoods, long stretches of beach, with sand dollars half buried in the sand and picturesque houses stacked atop the hills. But there's another side to this famously scenic part of the country, the part you don't see on the postcards, the chemical plants, the oil refineries, the heavy industry, the airports, and the shipping yards. And even though we all enjoy the benefits of an industrialized society, it's the communities living near those industrial landmarks

that are the hardest hit by industrial byproducts, like air pollution and chemical contamination. My next guest says her experience growing up in one of these communities here in the Bay Area turned her into an environmental justice activist, and she's taking those lessons to the classroom too. Laura Diaz is a science teacher at the Bay School here in San Francisco. She's also a former microbiologist for the California Department of Public Health and one of Science Friday's educator collaborators.

Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you. Laura, explain the idea of environmental justice. What is that? Yeah, so I think all of us here in this theater benefit from products that we consume from polluting industries. However, not all of us here in this theater equally. bear the burden of the pollution that results from those polluting industries. And what we see is communities of color, low-income communities, and first-generation families are disproportionately

burdened with those pollution. You've described yourself as an environmental justice activist, and you say a lot of that has to do with your experience in your own life. Yeah. Tell us your story. Yeah, so I spent the first four years of my life growing up in Pittsburgh, California, here in the East Bay. And I think just a handful of years ago, I met an environmental justice professor who exposed me to these California EPA maps, and I grew up less than two miles away from a chemical plant.

And that chemical plant has been cited or sued in the last two or three decades for toxic releases. That was the air that I breathed during those most formidable years of my lung development. it was the soil I played soccer on, and it was the water that we fished out of. And I didn't realize until I looked at these maps that it probably played a role in the development of my lupus. I have a chronic illness. And I also, two years ago, was diagnosed with respiratory illness, and it actually happened as a result of exposure to the smoke from one of the Santa Rosa

fires a couple years ago. The campfire. You were involved also in the campfire. Yeah, the campfire was last year. My mom. who's here, unfortunately lost her home to the campfire. And I think if there was a doubt in my mind that environmental justice was something that was core and really important to who I am and how I teach, I think that really solidified things for me. So this sort of percolated inside of you for a while and you decided to become an activist. What does that mean? Well, so I think activism has so many different forms. My medium as a classroom teacher is education, and I strongly believe that education

is the driver of social change, and I believe that, like, the moment I realized that I had been exposed to toxic air, I became one angry and two activated. And the moment that I exposed my students to these maps, they become angry and activated. So, like, I'm not here trying to say that I'm, like, going to solve the problem. That's not my role, right? My role is just to provide a foundation of education and awareness to my students. So you helped your students learn about all these things. Yeah, absolutely. And I think the thing, especially when my mom lost her home, so many people wanted to do things. They didn't know what to do. And so many people offered to give us money. And my mom, who has like the utmost integrity of anybody I've ever met in my life,

refused to take any of it. And she was like, use that energy for good. And so, alongside my students, we decided to do a mask drive and donated so many masks to an environmental justice nonprofit here in Oakland called Communities for a Better Environment, and those masks went to, were given out to homeless people, and also kids in a youth program in West Oakland who couldn't afford the masks. Did you turn your students sort of into citizen scientists, that they could track the pollution and the bad air? Yeah, that was always, I'm fascinated with air pollution. I'm fascinated with learning about air, and I think we're really lucky right now, and that air is definitely like a sit-in-science, like open-source data platform.

And so I worked with the computer science teacher, and we kind of made our own air quality monitor. That was definitely like a lot of his kind of baby, but it was a lot of collaboration between us to do that, yeah. So how do you take these big, heavy, weighty issues and turn them into something that students can relate to? Oh, that's my favorite part of teaching. That is the thing that keeps me in teaching. Teaching is not an easy job. But I think I'm most fascinated by, like, navigating through those crunchy issues that I think adults like to dance around. I think the thing that's really interesting about working with youth is that they are not afraid to tackle those issues.

and that's why there has been this movement of youth voice because they're not afraid to say the truth that we're all kind of traumatized by and afraid to speak. Yeah, a lot of Greta Thornburgs in the world in your classroom. Yeah, I work with them, yeah. Well, let's bring them out. Let's bring out a couple of your students.

We have a couple Laura students here tonight. Let's get them out here to join in the conversation. Leo Alonso graduated from St. Joseph Notre Dame High School in Alameda last June, and he's studying to get his nursing license at Unitech College in Hayward. Welcome, Leo. Good to have you.

Chloe Allen is also a junior at St. Joseph Notre Dame High School and a founding member of the Youth Environmental Activist Club known as Yay, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's called yeah. Called yeah.

Okay, Leo, you took part in Laura's Air Quality Project, looking at the air quality in various cities. Tell us what you were looking at specifically. So my group, we were looking at the Santa Monica Hills, and we also compared that to the Oakland Airport. The differences in air quality there, and we saw in the Santa Monica Hills, it was all, like, all, like, green, you know, just really good, you know, there was, like, nothing bad going on there.

But when we compared that to the Oakland Airport, like, it was completely different. It was all red. There were, like, all the indicators of, like, particulate matter and VOCs and just all those really bad things. They were way, way up, almost close to like 100%. Wow. You must have been very surprised at these results, yeah. Yeah, no, it was really shocking to see those kinds of results, especially since I or the school, St. Joseph of Notre Dame was close, you know, to the Oakland airport.

And you went on to help design an air monitor? Yeah, so it was during, so two years ago, that's when I took my AP Environmental Science class. And the project, we were kind of like working on it throughout the year, but after my AP exam, that's when we really focused on the air quality. And the only thing that we got to there was just a presentation, but we never really took action on it. So over the summer, we met up and we started to brainstorm different ideas of what we could do for our community. And we thought, hey, let's do the air quality monitor, you know, since we kind of already have some information from the project that we did. and Chloe how did you start what was the idea behind yeah I mean how did you get that going I'm not really the one who started it but the club already existed at our school but then

misty as was like we have to actually start doing more important things than just like going on hikes and appreciating the environment because that was like around the time we realized that there was an actual crisis going on and we also realized that like the people who were our age were going to have to deal with it later so we really wanted to get going on it so you actually developed a plan, climate action plan. Yes. Tell us about that. It doesn't really have any specifics in it, but it was pretty much like we were telling our school that it needs to acknowledge the climate crisis and say that it's going to try and be more sustainable and do something about it because a lot of schools and school districts and cities started writing them

after Trump pulled out of the Paris Agreement because we wanted to as a country be more supportive of the environment even though our government wasn't doing it. So that was why we felt like we needed to write it. I understand that you're now working with someone in the city of Alameda on transportation issues. Yes. Tell us about what that is about. Well, okay, he's this guy and he's kind of young and he's super cool.

His name is Patrick and he really wants to get in on like what the youth are worried about like regarding the climate and stuff because he's like the city environmental person. So he's getting a committee of two people who are kids and they're going to, and they're going and I'm not in this, but one of my friends is. And he's going to try to give feedback on what the youth think the bus system is like and, like, other public transportation. And first of all, try to make the buses more sustainable. And then also try to improve the routes and, like, the functionality of it

so that more people take public transit, because that's a big, that could really reduce emissions. And you're also trying to revolutionize the school lunch program to make it more sustainable. Yeah, we haven't really gotten into that very much, but we want to definitely reduce the waste and maybe get a soda fountain. We're not sure, though. Okay. You two seem to be very successful. And as I said before,

I'm a great believer in the youth movement of being environmentally conscience and actually becoming the activist of the future. Unless both of you, what message can you give to other students who are listening to us across the country about getting involved? I think for me, the big, big thing

is to find, a big source of inspiration. I know that Ms. Diaz, she was an amazing teacher my junior year, and just to see the drive and the motivation that she had to really involve her students and really go up and over and beyond, you know, I just, I saw that and I really wanted to kind of like, you know, follow that. And over my summer of junior year, once I was told, hey, do you want to meet up to do some stuff. I just saw that and I just said, I have to do this. Because it was such a nice thing to be able to see how she was motivated.

And Chloe? Yeah. I totally agree with Leo. But my thing was that I started to be involved with, yeah, when I didn't really know a lot about climate change. And so I think it's important to, no matter how much experience you have or how much you think you're qualified, to just go out and do it. because there's not really time to worry about how qualified you are for the position.

And you don't, like, you don't have to know a lot about it to make a pretty big difference. What do you say to kids, though, who say, you know, I just can't do science. You know, science is not my thing. Yes, it is. Lori, you have some great students here. Well, what do you tell? Let me ask, let me turn it around to you. Let me go from the student to the teacher angle. How do you talk to teachers to get involved like you did?

involved like you did? I guess that's kind of a hard question to answer because I think so many teachers doing such incredible work. And I think the only thing I would urge teachers to do is to grab a mic because I think it's time for teachers to be shaping the narrative around what education looks like. I'm not the only teacher doing incredible work like so many, like my colleagues are, my former colleagues are. Every teacher in a classroom is doing incredible work. And so it's time for us to have that space to share what we're doing because it's not just me. It's everyone. Chloe, give me your perspective on how this country is shaping up tackling the climate crisis. I think that we're not doing enough, but I am not an expert on politics.

I definitely think that globally we need to focus on, you know, throughout the world, decreasing our emissions because that's like, it's not going to become like a country issue. It's going to be the entire Earth is going to be affected. So yeah, we have to focus on that. It shouldn't be about politics. I think it should be about saving ourselves, not saving the earth, because the earth is still going to be here. We're the ones who are going to die. Sorry.

Yeah. I think we should just, like, do damage control right now, because it's an issue, right now. And, Laura, you're designing a project now for Science Friday's educator, collaborative, so other teachers and students can dig into this kind of work. Tell us what you're working on. Yeah, so I'm actively working on a piece and it kind of have like three moving pieces to it. The first is an exploration using Cal EPA data. I love data mining and students do too.

I think maps are a wonderful way to communicate science that's equitable. So they look through these Cal EPA maps that show demographic information and show pollution and also human health impacts. And so teachers don't need to say the words environmental racism for students to put the two and two together. The second part is I walk them through a case study of my own life in Pittsburgh, what I was exposed to, and activism that has taken place to help my community. And then the third piece is what I think is the most important, which is becoming activated. So they get to choose, I give them a bunch of information and maps and data that's already out, open source data, which is wonderful.

and they can choose a location they want to advocate for and then find a way to become an activist. Well, I want to thank all of you for your hard work and your dedication and you're a great model to all of us. Thank you all for taking time to be with us today. Leo Alonso graduated from St. Joseph Notre Dame High School when I will meet the last June. He studied in a kid's nursing license at Unitech College in Hayward.

Chloe Allen, Jr. at St. Joseph Notre Dame High School, founding member of the Youth Environmental Activist Club and Laura Diaz, Science Teacher, the Bay School here in San Francisco. She's also a former microbiologist for the California Department of Public Health and one of our Science Friday's educator collaborators. Again, thank you all for taking time to be with us today. And you can find lots of science teacher resources and more info about Science Friday's

Educator Collaborative program at ScienceFriety.com slash educate.