Earlier this year, I worked with classmates to give a presentation on storytelling pedagogy.  As someone who likes to weave a tale or two, this is an aspect of my teaching that I plan to use widely over the course of my career.  So, when the Teacher Candidates at my school were asked to run the Earth Day assembly, it seems almost inevitable in retrospect that a storytelling format should emerge.

It started when one of our group pointed out that it would be great if we could go beyond the usual calls to recycle and be mindful about pollution.  Her thing was that diet, particularly eating a meat-heavy diet, was the most important thing one could reflect upon to understand how we have come as a species to set ourselves on a path of ecological decline.  But this is political.  You can’t simply tell students ‘meat is bad, kids’.  This is the teaching challenge that led me to write a parable for the assembly.

The parable is simple – it takes the concept of the ecological footprint and, using the results of the footprint calculator on a couple of people – one who is doing everything right and one who is doing the ‘classic’ things we say to do – recycle, compost, etc., but who is enjoying the lifestyle of a well-off westerner: house, car, vacations, etc.  Both characters are presented as sympathetic, good people.  But we see how different their impact on the earth is.

As I was the emcee for the event, I used my time to tell the story, it framed all of the presentations from the classes who had prepared songs and other performances for the assembly.

Because the idea of the ecological footprint is so geographical, I wanted to augment the story with digital illustrations using Prezi.  I had avoided using Prezi for a long time, because I am just so much more efficient with powerpoint.  But Prezi offers a medium that is just so much better for geographic storytelling and a sense of scale and place than a powerpoint can.  Until this point, my presentations never needed that – it was always just a ‘nice-to-have’.  Need-driven learning is a great motivator!

In the end, the parable worked really well and the Prezi made it pop.  I used Google Earth to get satellite photos of my school to make the idea concrete.  After the assembly, I prepared a follow up lesson where students could calculate their own footprints and distributed that to the school team.

Here is the Prezi, if you are curious:

Below is a copy of the story.  I’ve left my transitions in so you can read it with the slides or even present a version yourself at your own Earth Day Assembly. If you’d like to do this, email me at stephen DOT dv DOT price AT gmail DOT com and I can create a copy of the Prezi for you so you only need to change the school photos.

The fable of Ceres and Mammon

Starting Slide: Earth

This is the story of two very good people.

Advance Slide – Two people

Ceres and Mammon lived not too far from here. Both loved their families, were great friends, and tried to help with everything they could. They worked hard in school, grew up and got good jobs that paid enough money that they could buy anything they liked. They cared about their communities just as all good people do.

Ceres and Mammon knew each other from their local community centre, where they were trying to convince the coffee shop that they should stop using paper cups.

Advance Slide – Paper Cups

Because paper cups get thrown away after one use, which is, of course, not good for the environment.

Each of them cared deeply about the earth.

Advance Slide – Earth

But there is one big difference between Ceres and Mammon. When she was younger, Ceres went to an assembly at a school rather like this one.

Advance Slide – McKinney

At that assembly, she heard about an idea called an ecological footprint.

Advance slide – Footprint

The ecological footprint is the idea that, when you put all your choices about how you live together, you could find out how much of the earth you would need to support all those choices.

Advance Slide – Farmland

How much farmland you’d need to produce the food you ate,

Advance Slide – Water

How much area you needed to ensure you’d have the water you use,

Advance Slide – mining.

How much space for mines to extract the metal in your iPhone and your car,

Advance Slide – Car Pollution

How much space for the trees that would need to be planted to pull the pollution your car creates out of the air.

Advance Slide – My Ecological Footprint

It goes on and on and on – all the choices you make add up to your personal environmental footprint.

Advance Slide – Our Ecological Footprint

If you add up all the environmental footprints of all the people in all the countries of the world, you can see how much space we need to keep the world going forever if we changed nothing.

What do you think this number is?

Advance Slide: ½ Earth

½ ;

Advance Slide – ¾ Earth

¾ ;

Advance Slide – 1 Earth

1;

Advance Slide: 1 and ½ earths

1 and ½?

Take a second to think about it and everyone call out your answer on the count of three.

One, two, three.

The answer is 1 and ½.

But how is this possible? The answer is that we are using the earth faster than it can be restored. We are creating pollution faster than nature can clean up after us. We are using more fresh water than is being created each year. We are borrowing from the future.

Advance Slide: Ceres

So Ceres saw this and decided to make the best decisions she could. She decided to refuse, reduce, reuse and recycle.

Advance Slide: Vegetables.

She ate mostly vegetables and grains, because she heard that it took much more of the earth to produce vegetables rather than meat.

Advance Slide: Bus.

To get places, she took the bus, or rode her bicycle.

Advance Slide: Apartment

She lived in an apartment just big enough for her and her family.

Advance slide – Recycle

She always recycled everything she could and only ever bought new things when the old ones couldn’t be fixed. Her family went on vacations nearby and stayed with friends or, they stayed at home and explored their own city. But she still enjoyed life, played games, read books, watched Netflix and went out for dinner with friends.

Advance Slide – Footprint 1.

She just tried to make decisions that made her footprint smaller.

Advance slide – footprint 2.

Advance slide – Mammon

Now Mammon was a little different. He grew up loving the latest and greatest. Of course, he was doing everything he could to recycle more. But he had a really tough time giving things up.

Advance slide – house

He liked having a nice big house to live in,

Advance slide – fashion

He liked fashion and often bought new clothes.

Advance slide – car.

He enjoyed driving his beautiful car to work each day, washing it each week to make sure it stayed as nice as possible.

Mammon worked hard and, when he got his vacation time,

Advance slide – vacation.

he loved to travel, making sure to fly somewhere exciting each year to relax with his family.

Advance slide – buffet

He loved food and made choices based on what he liked best – he didn’t realize that his food choices made any difference. You see, Mammon cared a lot about the environment, and was conscious to turn the lights off, to recycle. But he also loved life’s luxuries.

So, how big was Mammon’s footprint? How many planets would we need if everyone on earth lived a life like Mammon? Take a second to think of an answer in your head. On the count of three, call out your guess.

One, two, three.

Advance slide – 5.5 earths.

(5.5)

And now let’s get back to Ceres.

Advance slide – Ceres

How many earths would it take to live her simple life here in Richmond? Think in your head for a moment. On the count of three, call out your guess.

One, two, three.

Advance slide – 2 earths

And so, McKinney Eagles, you can see that we are faced with a great challenge. We need to make decisions about our own lives that use less of our planet, but we also need to find a way to be inventors and create new technologies that are more environmentally friendly. If we do both, perhaps, we can come back down to only using one earth, as one earth is all we have.

Advance slide – one earth.

We can do it. Humans have an incredible capacity for solving problems. But it will take all of us to make a great effort both in our choices and how we focus our imaginations.

Who thinks they can help? Put up your hands!

Okay – great! Over the rest of this assembly we will see things that help us think about how each one of us can make a difference. At the end, we will have some ideas for how you can help solve this problem.

And now we come back to the story of Ceres and Mammon.

Advance Slide: Ceres and Mammon 2.

We have learned today that there are many choices we can make to help the earth. We all know the saying here at McKinney:

Advance slide – McKinney

Refuse, Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.

Advance slide – 4 Rs.

Every one of you can make a difference. We are already making good choices: we recycle and compost, we have garden beds outside our school to grow food to eat, and outside our bike racks are full because so many children ride their bikes to school. Let’s keep making great decisions at home and at school.

But lets add three more things to our list:

Advance Slide – Reshape, Reimagine, Reinvent.

Re-shape, re-imagine and re-invent.

We need to reshape our thinking and help others reshape theirs. We need to think about how all our decisions work together, how all our footprints add up.

Advance slide: footprints.

We need to re-invent existing technologies and invent new ones that are kind to the environment.

Advance slide – technology

We need to re-imagine how we live by finding ways of meeting our needs in a way that is better for the earth.

Each of you can do these things. You can start today by working on the skills you will need for this:

Advance slide – school subjects

Math skills, social and sharing skills, technology skills, science skills and communication skills. But really, you have already started. Ever since you started here at McKinney, you started building these skills.

Advance slide – McKinney.

If we all keep thinking about how we refuse, reuse, reduce and recycle; if we all focus on our learning so we can re-shape, re-invent and re-imagine, we will find a way of reducing our footprints to only one earth, together.

Advance slide – earth.

 

Thanks for reading!  Do you have ideas or thoughts?  How do you handle tricky political discussions with your learners?