A New Tilt on Art Can Spark Earth Day Conversations

Planning for Earth Day conversations can give educators pause.  In the attempt to create a sense of urgency for climate action, we might decide to subject our students to a parade of dire statistics.  This onslaught of information can have the opposite effect: instead of moving students from inaction to action, we can inadvertently move […]

Syntax Study for Earth Day

Placing Maggie Smith’s “Good Bones” and Craig Santos Perez’s “Good Fossil Fuels” side by side can elicit a wide-ranging classroom conversation about the ways the climate crisis is downplayed.  Through describing points of convergence and divergence, students can ponder how the “recycled” aspects of Smith’s syntax and prosody appearing in Perez’s poem challenge their thinking […]