Period 6 - Tatiana Ruiz

[CALIS]

Thank you for participating in TIRP service-learning outreach!

Your reports are the basis for academic credit. Whether or not you are seeking a credit option, reports are required as a record of your teaching complex issues in local schools.

1. For each report, select Post Reply. (Do not select New Topic)
2. Copy/paste from your Word file and save a copy until after the semester is over.
3. Before pasting, confirm that you have met the minimum of at least 500 words.
4. Each report must be submitted within 3 days after each session.

Remember:
a. The webboard is public. Do not refer to students by name; instead call them Student A, B or C. If you include names, commentary or observations, you will need to revise your post.
b. Guiding questions for reports are provided in section F of the Requirements & Guidelines.
c. If you include too much focus on the step-by-step process of the lesson rather than content, you may be asked to revise your report.

A CALIS staff member will review your report each week and post a message below of the scoring for your performance evaluation.
We welcome any questions or concerns you have about scoring.
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Session 1
On time: 3/3
Substantive: 6/6
Student Specifics: 6/6
Total: 15/15

Good report, Tatiana! Your students seem to be thinking about the multiple layers of the issues you’ve presented to so far. Keep it up! – RW 3/23

Session 2
On time: 0/3
Substantive: 6/6
Student Specifics: 6/6
Total: 12/15

Great report! I really like how you guys used the continuum and were able to really explain the concepts and answer the students' questions! Awesome job! - RW 4/23

Session 3
On time: 0/3
Substantive: 6/6
Student Specifics: 6/6
Total: 12/15

Awesome third report, Tatiana! I like all the students examples and how they were really critically thinking about the different ways to protect our planet from the adverse affects of climate change! Keep it up! - RW 4/23

Session 4
On time: 1/3
Substantive: 6/6
Student specifics: 6/6
Total: 13/15

Awesome report, Tatiana! I like how you guys are really relating to the students and how they are becoming more passionate about the material that you are teaching! Awesome job! Thank you so much for participating in TIRP! I loved reading your reports! - RW 4/26

[Tatiana Ruiz]

Tatiana Ruiz
Session 1
February 21, 2018

The activities used this week included “Climate Change: Basic Terms & Scope” and “Rising Sea Levels Threaten Egypt’s Ancient Cities”. The objective of this week was to introduce the fundamental concepts of climate change from both an international relations and a geoengineering perspective. We first used the basic terms and scope worksheet as a sort of warm up for the students. Most students at the high school level have the basic answers for causes and effects of climate change. However, we found that they needed a little help on the “responses and solutions” portion. We, first, split them up and made them do think pair shares to fill in the chart before regrouping as a class and going over their answers. We were able to use their examples to introduce and break down some climate change concepts that had yet to be introduced to. For example, student A offered “cars” as one of the causes, to which we broke down further carbon emissions and how pollution leads to the greenhouse effect. In the effects portion, student B offered “drought” which allowed us to segue into how climate change effects communities including the juxtaposing effect of sea-level risings. The students were practically fascinated by this and it seemed like a good time to bring in the debate “who is responsible?” When we presented this political question to the class, they had many contradicting answers. student C suggested “the government” to which we countered “which one?” This exercise, I feel, opened their eyes to how international politics plays a huge, complex role in climate change (something that affects everyone). As a way to get their minds jogging on possible solutions, we brought up the implementation of “carbon tax” and how that could be implemented on a global scale. We kept the flow between the concepts of climate change and its application in international politics.
For our second activity we did a popcorn reading of the article to try and get some of the more quiet students engaged. We would stop and explain topics and terms that they had perhaps not encountered like “environmental refugee” – which was a good callback to the earlier debate – and ocean acidification. We went over as a class the difference between “mitigation” and “adaptation” before doing the reading. This meant that for each of the solutions brought up in the article, in addition to the ones we went over as a class earlier, we stopped and asked the students whether they thought it was an example of mitigation or adaptation and explain why. For example, student D mentioned planting trees (reforestation) as an example of mitigation because it was trying to reduce the amount of carbon in the air. Due to time, we weren’t able to split the students up to work on most of this worksheet so we, instead, opted for discussing as a class some of the political, economic, social, and cultural implications of the article. For example, student E mentioned a cultural consequence of the rise in sea level was the destruction of communities and the culture present there.

[Tatiana Ruiz]

Tatiana Ruiz
Session 2
April 18, 2018

The objective of this week’s session was to introduce more of an International Relations perspective to the climate change topic and possible resolutions. This week included the introduction, breakdown, and application of different types of climate change resolution policies. The first thing we made sure to do is make very clear the four types of policy reform including incentives, penalties, regulations, and moratoriums. The students took a while to grasp these concepts well so we would break these down and then popcorn call on people to offer some kind of example. For example, student A described getting paid at work as an incentive. Student B offered that speed limits applied to driving was a type of governmental regulation. Next we explained as a class how the “I” to “We” Continuum worked. We described the policies on a broad IR scale as opposed to just limiting it to climate change reform. This way, the students could better grasp the difference and can further apply it to other government and IR policy in the future. Student C said that recycling was an example of action that would go on the “I” section of the continuum. To further ensure the students really understood the concepts and to test their ability to apply the concepts, we had the students do a think-pair-share for the continuum activity on the second page, after doing “A” together first. After their think-pair-share, we came together as a class and called on people to say where on the continuum they put the prompts and why. Student D expressed confusion about prompt “D” – which involves a quota – and where that should be placed. After explaining what quotas were and how they worked and some help from their classmates, student D was able to discern it belonged in the regulations category. In order to ensure we had enough time for the Dutch case study, we shortened the next activity to tackle four of the prompts. For each prompt, we would first have a popcorn reading. Then, we would call on someone to give the main idea of the prompt. Finally, we asked them to point out the different types of policy apparent in the readings. As our final activity we included the bigger case study “Dutch Ruling On Climate Change That Could Have A Global Impact.” After doing a popcorn reading, we tested what the kids learned by asking what was the main idea of the article and what kind of policy was the article suggesting. This week would lay the foundation for our last week which would be dedicated to carbon tax and carbon caps. We also used this article as a callback to last week when we sparked the debate of international responsibility. We, thus, asked the students if they thought an international carbon tax was feasable. Student E suggested that countries can’t usually agree on climate change and, thus, any mitigating policy would be difficult to enforce in the international community.

[Tatiana Ruiz]

Tatiana Ruiz
Session 3
April 22, 2018

This session was a little more fun as we got to combine what the students were learning in their class and what they were learning from TIRP. This session was completely devoted to introducing geoengineering ideas that could be implemented into policy that could halt or alleviate the effects of climate change. Before going into the six ideas, we first wanted to introduce and go over the basic concepts we would be using for that day – Carbon Dioxide Removal methods and Solar Radiation Management methods. Next, we introduced another system of analyzing the ideas we wanted the students to participate with, in place of the original graph on page three. The method that we used in place of the graph was much more engaging for the students. We took the four criterions – effectiveness, affordability, safety, and timely – and planned to poll the students for their respective responses based on context clues and debate. For example, the first idea the students read was about planting forests. This gave us an opportunity to revisit a key term that came up in week one – which was reforestation. First we asked the students to identify which of the methods this idea was addressing. Student A identified that this was an example of carbon dioxide removal. Next we asked the students about putting this idea into the four criterions. Student B said that reforestation wouldn’t be a timely project considering how long it takes trees to grow. Student C suggested that this idea is among the safest options because trees are natural to the environment and would help rebalance the ecosystem.
In addition to having the students popcorn read the ideas, we would provide visuals to help breakdown the concepts further. Using the projector and one of the visuals, for example, we were able to show the students what “space mirrors” would look like. Upon reading the article and seeing the provided visual, Student D suggested space mirrors would be one of the most expensive options. This sparked a discussion about the existence, or rather the lack thereof, of technology that can mitigate for climate change. The students debated over who they thought were responsible for funding these ideas – a lot of the responses being the government. In addition, they debated which idea should be funded. Student E suggested none of the ideas were suitable enough and asked why there wasn’t an idea that mitigated for both carbon emissions and solar rays. This was a good opportunity to explain the imperfection of science and technology. We asked the student what their idea for mitigated both would be and they opted out of answering. However, that got some students started on asking what the correct answer was. We had to tell them that there was no right answer, only possible solutions. That was the perfect time to end on a poll, out of all the ideas we discussed in the article, which one seemed the best. The answers were decently mixed between all six ideas.

[Tatiana Ruiz]

Tatiana Ruiz
Session 4
April 24, 2018

The objective for our final session with the students was to finish explaining carbon tax – which we introduced last session – and introduce and explain carbon caps. To do this, we used the worksheet “Elon Musk in Paris: A Carbon tax is Economics 101.” In addition, towards the end of the class we allotted some time for students’ questions about USC, college in general, and the admittance process.

The first thing we wanted to do was explain some of the key terms. We explained what subsidies and taxes were. However, the term that took the most effort to explain was negative externalities. To ensure the students grasped the concept we asked the students to do a think pair share and come up with one example of a man-made negative externality. At the end we regrouped and went over some answers. Student A suggested that littering leads to a negative externality on animals like sea turtles that get caught up in plastic soda can rings.

Next we introduced carbon caps and the difference between them and carbon tax with a video. We used the YouTube video “Carbon Pricing, Explained with Chickens” to give the students a visual representation of the two concepts. After the video we asked the students to explain, in their own words, the difference between carbon tax and carbon caps. Student B offered that carbon tax involved making companies pay money for all the carbon that they emit. However, despite the video, there was still some confusion over how carbon caps differed from carbon tax. So we broke down carbon caps further by explaining the difference of carbon limitation. Student C asked how anyone would know how much carbon an industry uses. Thus, we compared carbon capping on a large scale with industries to the smaller scale smog checks that California implements. By pointing out that the technology exists to monitor carbon emissions, the students understood better that limitations on big industry was possible. Our next question to the students was which of the policies did they think was best. Student D suggested that carbon caps were better than carbon tax because caps try to stop climate change and that big businesses were rich enough to afford another tax.

After making the terms clear, we applied them by having a popcorn reading of the Elon Musk. After every paragraph or so we’d ask the students reading what the main ideas were to ensure none of the students were lost. Lastly, after reading through the article and articulating the main ideas, we answered questions 2 and 3 of the inference and analysis section of the “Inference and Analysis” section.

Then we finished up our last session doing a Q&A with the students. The students had a lot of questions about what college was like versus questions on how to apply which is understandable because they’re freshman. I was honestly more surprised by all the questions we got on sorority and fraternity life. Luckily Kristyn and I are both a part of professional fraternities and could provide some perspective.