Be cool, stay in school

As we are now living through the hottest year on record, I wonder how teachers and education leaders across the country are (or aren't) reflecting on what lessons they need to incorporate into their classes. It's all too easy, especially if you don't see the school's electric bill, to just crank on the A/C (assuming you have that option) and just forget about the huge amount of coal burning it requires to power these energy intensive machines.

Stan Cox's recent book Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World confronts the fact that the US now spends more money cooling our homes than heating them. I observe this trend of individual acclimatization to cooler indoor temperatures with dismay it seems many people I know can hardly tolerate sitting in a room during summer time that is warmer that 75%; nary a business would fathom turning up the thermostat above 68%; and public transportation, if the devices are working, blast the A/C so high that my sweat from outside evaporates into a chill.

I'd like to see schools take this issue on, as an opportunity to accomplish a number of goals: keep classrooms cooler without A/C, and explicitly teaching students how it is done; reduce energy costs and thus save money; use energy use within the classroom as a teachable moment that connects the earth science, engineering, economics, and ethics.

How do we do this? Well for starters, I'll share an excerpt from an email I got from a company called "Vivaterra" that I once bought a bamboo floor mat from. It's a great list to help with summer living and who knows? Maybe for lesson planning?

"Chill Outside
- Freeze grapes, blueberries or chunks of juicy watermelon and set them out in a bowl for cooling nibbles.
- Drink lots of chilled beverages like lemonade or sun tea.
- Avoid using the oven or stove: think salads, cold soups, or snack food that can be eaten room temperature.
- Dine alfresco or picnic in the backyard for every meal including breakfast—it feels festive, too.
- Camp in your own backyard for fresh air dreams.
Shady Behavior
- Keep windows & window coverings closed during the day.
- In the evening, create a cross current with open windows and doors to catch the breeze.
- Or, as a more extreme measure, hang wet sheets over your open windows at night to create natural air-conditioning.
- Re-visit the lost art of porch sitting in the evening.
- Plant trees around your house: the shade trees offer reduces the amount of energy needed to cool off your home by as much as 50%.
- Replace incandescent lights with CFLs that emit less heat.
Sweet Siestas
- Take afternoon naps on the weekend and stay up late to enjoy the cooler evening air outdoors.
- Take a cool shower and get into bed on a towel without drying off; the moisture evaporates and cools you down as you drift off to sleep.
- Choose breathable bamboo sheets that wick away moisture and are cool to the touch.
- Mist your bed linens and spritz yourself with a spray bottle filled with soothing lavender water; keep it handy for late night tossing and turning.
Keep Your Inner Cool
- Don’t expend a lot of your personal energy.
- Stay cool when you’re stressed with meditation.
- Keep the peace by avoiding needless “hot air” arguments.

Food in Schools

A coworker of mine, Kate Quarfordt, writes a column for the Huffington Post. She just put out a new piece called "The Kids Who Want Kale"  and it's worth a read to see how one urban school, in this case, mine, is confronting issues of food, nutrition, health and the environment.

In this age we have to continually look at our food choices and consider their impact on our minds, bodies, and environment. Research, experience, and plain common sense teach us that when one eats well, it has an enormous impact on performance and well-being. Now that our kids are asking for better food, will the adults, who should know better, help them get it?

Controversy Over the Historian’s View of Collapse

In the March/April edition of Foreign Affairs, Harvard professor Niall Ferguson attempts a maverick posture in his essay “Decline and Fall: When the American Empire Goes, It is Likely to Go Quickly.” In it, he argues that historians take the “fat tail” view of events, confusing sudden events for cyclical ones particularly when discussing the fall of empires. While accusing many members of social science community of committing the “narrative fallacy,” Ferguson’s essay is riddled with fallacies of its own.

As a teacher of global history at the high school level, I have a keen awareness that the problem of history is not that people tend to overestimate the importance of remote causes of events, rather people tend not to understand the complexity and diversity of the causes of events, and in effect, the interconnectedness of the world. I have found it much more common, not to mention dangerous, that people will oversimplify or overlook causal factors that bring about collapse. With such a limited view of the real complexity and interconnectedness of the world, individuals and groups risk failing to take actions that counter the factors that make likely a future collapse.

From a historian as prominent as Niall Ferguson, it’s shocking to find so many logical fallacies and factual misrepresentations as there are in his Foreign Affairs essay. Ferguson lines up cases that supposedly verify the argument that our current financial crisis is a recent one, and tracing its antecedents to the deregulation of the 1980s is inappropriate. Yet he talks about the fall of Rome occurring in “just 5 decades,” and his causes of the collapse of the Ming dynasty range from “political factionalism, fiscal crisis, famine and epidemic disease” that “opened the door to rebellion from within and incursions from without” (28). His own examples in fact validate the opposite conclusion!

In education, we have to understand the course of history, not just because we need to teach it, but because we also shape it and because it shapes us. Given that our country and world do face so many challenges, our intellectual leaders need to be more responsible about their use of voice and their laying of blame. Based on my study of history, I believe that we could experience another historic “collapse” along the lines of Rome or Copan, but if that is to happen the confluence of factors will be diverse and complex. Our teachers and students should not gloss over these factors, as Ferguson has, for the sake of convenience, gimmickry, or false controversy. 

The Geography of Learning: A Hybrid Model?

Ever since March 16th I've been slowed down significantly with an ankle injury that I recently learned was a non-displaced fracture to the tibia. Though I only have taken off 4 days of work due to the injury, I'm still in cast and walking with a cane, and feel my teaching has suffered by a degree. As I've looked for solutions to personal mobility and energy issues (pushing myself around on the wheeled desk chair is one), I've begun contemplating distance learning.

For a range of reasons, students and teachers, enabled by technology, have taken up distance (e-)learning as an alternative or supplement to traditional classroom learning. I myself have done some webinars and online courses, that, everything considered, have provided a moderately decent education. I would never replace in-person education entirely, however, my recent injury leaves me wondering what possibilities for e-learning might fit into the traditional K-12 public education system. Even and especially as a hybrid model, I can imagine a system that reduces cost and increases flexibility by taking a given percentage of traditional classtime (say, one day a week) and delivers this instruction electronically and remotely. Implementing the system would raise many questions and probably a good number of protests, but I can't help but think that inevitably our society will demand it.

Better to be proactive than reactive. Sometimes putting your feet up (to reduce swelling or otherwise) can be a perfect occasion to confront a problem that otherwise seems to rest on too distant a horizon.

You've heard it here: let's see some experimental programs in public, K-12 schools that incorporate remote e-learning into the standard curriculum. What do you think?

Teacher websites

In the digital/information age, it increasingly makes sense that EVERYTHING has its own website. In my estimation, good teaching and learning will make efficacious use of the internet.

I recently launched a website for my own history classes. You can find it at www.ballouhistory.com. Please check it out and examine it's different capabilities and short-comings. What does it do well? What do you think could be improved? How can this website be used a tool for learning with my students in the classroom?