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| Newhalen students observing birds and tracking data |
I
have to admit, if you asked me to define “ecojustice” prior to meeting Michael
Mueller, I might have offered something about young men with big beards in
Patagonia gear strapping themselves to Redwood trees to keep loggers at bay. And
although there’s a time and place for people to engage in that manner, it only
takes a few moments in Dr. Mueller’s office at UAA’s College of Education to set
me straight.
“Ecojustice
refers to justice for both humanity and nature. Where ‘social justice’ focuses on
justice for humanity, ecojustice
focuses on larger matters that encompass the natural world, too.” As the ADN described in a piece focusing on Mueller’s work last year, “anthropocentric thinking -- humans as the
most important species -- has been championed at the expense of the planet, for
profit and personal and corporate advancement.” Ecojustice, on the other
hand, strives to teach students about our species’ “relationships and
interconnections” with the natural world.
And
as an instructor tasked each term with training a new generation of educators who
will go into their communities and challenge young people, his dual passions
for ecojustice and the climate-change issues currently impacting Alaska come
with an added measure of responsibility attached.
“In education, this interest carries over into
an exploration of how we can best prepare teachers to engage students in issues
specific to that ‘eco’ piece.”
Referring
to it as only an “interest”, however, risks selling Mueller’s efforts short.
Within the space of a few moments with Dr. Mueller, you’re magnetically drawn
into a shared, deep engagement with his pursuits. His excitement for both ecojustice
and education prove infectious.
It’s
hardly surprising then that five years ago, Ed Lester – the principal of Newhalen
School in Illiamna and then a stranger to Dr. Mueller – walked through the door
of his office unannounced and proposed they work together. Lester, an alumnus of
UAA who had become familiar with Mueller’s work, wanted to create engaging,
science-based projects to help cultivate and foster student awareness of the
environmental issues specific to their region.
“Every
year, all the village schools that comprise the Lake & Penn and Bristol Bay
Borough come together for a week. There are twelve schools represented
in the region with close to 120 students in attendance for that week of
activities together. They participate in Native Olympics and talent shows, and take
all their meals together. And all the teachers and students from all the
schools camp out in school for the week…” he chuckles and then adds, “It’s
madness.”
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| Naknek Mural |
When
Ed approached Michael, the schools were interested in building structured
academic events into their annual gathering. Ed and Michael brainstormed a
variety of ways they could offer learning experiences that would cultivate
learning and foster an awareness of issues critical to their lives in regions
experiencing the effects of climate change, for example.
It
was the beginning of a thriving
and ongoing partnership that continues today.
In that first year, Mueller offered the kids
workshops ranging from forensics (how to read a blood spatter), to writing and
recording a PSA for local radio. That week, the students ended their week of
academic focus with a dance. Mueller named the week of activities the “Science
Prom.”
In the five years since launching his first
Science Prom the topics have remained engaging and far-ranging – students can
take part in activities from cold water survival to building bridges; making
robotic arms to orienteering with a compass; radio-tagging salmon to building
and setting off Estes rockets.
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| Students learning forensics during Science Prom |
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| Lake & Penn students readying to launch Estes rockets with Dr. Mueller |
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| Readying for the big Science Prom end-of-week dance! |
As an added bonus, Mueller now involves his
graduate students in the Lake and Penn and Bristol Bay Borough events. Five years
later, presented with twice annual science-themed intensives – one in September,
and another in April – his students have become a reliable and active mainstay
in the program.
But
how does team-building robotic arms, studying bioluminescence,
and learning how to write PSAs relate to ecojustice?
“We begin
by offering the kids opportunities they don’t normally have in each of their
separate, remote locations,” Mueller offers, “And we’ve worked to motivate them
with memorable experiences, too. Then, by immersing and involving them in
different group projects with a scientific focus, we’re involving them in
group decision-making processes that could lead to further involvement.”
In
the remote regions comprising the Lake and Penn school district,
in which standards of living and the local economy regularly fluctuate with,
for example, the market price of salmon, Mueller knows that kids need to be
thinking about the impacts of local decisions on their lives and their futures.
“Consider
Newhalen,” he offers, the school with which he’s become most involved:
“They’re the headquarters for the Pebble Mine.”
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| Newhalen can learn to write and then air PSAs on their own school's radio station |
The
proposed mine project, of course – as no one seems more aware than Mueller –
continues to prove a controversial and heated topic throughout Alaska. It's widely known, for example, that the mine could potentially impact the
largest migration of sockeye salmon in the entire world.
“We don’t go into Newhalen and tell the
students what they should think about the issue. After all, from where many of
them are situated, Pebble’s brought jobs to the area, they’ve paved the roads –
but there’s also a noticeable tension around the issue throughout the community,
too. So, our first priority is to teach the kids that as legitimate
stakeholders in their communities, it’s critical that they make informed
decisions. No matter what they decide about something like Pebble Mine, they
need to know how to participate more fully in the decision-making process,
right? So, in our work, we’re cultivating learning experiences that will give
them skills to engage with any issues they’re encountering.”
Presently, Mueller and his
students are hard at work work building a bird habitat in Newhalen – an
effort that will allow Newhalen youths to start collecting data on the many
bird varieties local to the area, as well as the diverse migrating species. His
hope is that as Newhalen youths compile data on the birds in their region,
he’ll be able to help other village sites in the Lake and Penn district develop
their own bird habitats. Taken together, as the region’s schools compile and
exchange data over the considerable distances separating them, students will be
able to close those gaps between them by sharing critical information about what birds are
migrating where, how they’re responding to climate changes, and more.
In other words, an exercise in
ecojustice – providing youths with continuing, “real time” opportunities that explore and reveal our undeniable relationship and interconnectedness to the
natural world.
Dr.
Mueller will offer a presentation on his bird habitat project with
Newhalen students at the CCEL's Community Engagement Conference at UAA on Friday, October 27,
2017 at 9:30am, in RH110.
- Jonathan Bower, MSW student, CCEL
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| Newhalen youths observing birds and recording data |
