Piecing Together Environmental Injustice: Anchor Experience (May 2023)

This set of activities is designed to launch a curriculum consisting of 20 45-minute lessons in which students will actively explore the elements and dynamics of environmental injustice in different places. Read more about the curriculum here.

In this anchoring experience, students will:

(1) Explore three cases of environmental action in three places in California to understand knowledge-to-action pathways. 

(2) Be introduced to a sample case study of environmental injustice around a school and hear from an undergraduate student about their experience developing a case study. 

(3) Create an initial model of a case study that builds on their knowledge of the three introductory cases and the undergraduate student’s experience. 

(4) Begin their own case study by selecting a school to focus on, guided by two mapping tools. 

(5) Generate a driving questions board that clusters questions to help them build their case study, “piecing it together”, as suggested in the title. 

This anchor experience will initiate an inquiry cycle in which students will build different sections of their case studies by investigating different components that will help them to characterize environmental injustice in schools. Students will learn to be interdisciplinary researchers, a highly valuable skill across many workplaces; and to identify and envision environmental careers that advance environmental and climate change knowledge and governance.