I love blogging for The Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers. Katharine shows kids how they can help! While I watch the videos every two weeks, ideas start forming about what I can do in my classroom. And when I watched Katharine Hayhoe, it was no different. In addition to being an elementary teacher, I am the Global Awareness Club advisor. And I immediately thought of sharing her video with my club members. But then I thought about contacting Katharine herself and seeing if she could Skype in to my club.

Not only did Katharine agree to Skype in, she willingly Skyped with two different groups. The fourth grade students Skyped with her to learn about how they can be empowered to help stop the climate changes caused by nonrenewable energies. And the fifth grade went more global, learning about how they can affect children around the world, for both good and bad. Katharine even went so far as to create two different presentations to change the focus for each group.

Ms. Parisi’s students learn what they can do. Katharine spoke to the children in simple-to-understand language, using graphs and pictures to explain how our climate is changing, heating up, and what that heating up is doing to various parts of the world. She answered questions about Long Island (where we live), about how they can change their energy use easily, about the recent tornados in the Midwest, and about her job as a climate scientist. She was gracious, energetic, and exciting to listen to.

Katharine told the children about simple ways to save energy.“If each home in the United States changed one incandescent bulb for one fluorescent bulb, we would save the same energy as taking 1 million cars off the road!”

I am the advisor for our school’s Global Awareness Club. In an elementary school, this means that we get to the basics of what Global Awareness means. We learn about Climate Change; we learn about disasters around the world; and we learn about people in other countries. The goal is to help children understand that we live in one world and need to take care of each other. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: words to live by.

Katharine Hayhoe, Evangelical Climate Scientist, gets right to the heart of this idea. She clearly explains how her science can help us to find ways to help “our global neighbors, the poor and disadvantaged, the people who do not have the resources to adapt.” We need to stop being so concerned about ourselves and start thinking about everyone. “The magnitude of future changes depend on the choices that we make now and in the next decade.”

As an educator, I strongly feel it is my duty to help my students, living in a privileged area, with unlimited food and water, sanitation, and shelter, understand their responsibility in the world. This video of Katharine’s can be extremely beneficial in assisting me to teach my students that changes they make in how they live and use energy, can and will affect children across the world. By taking shorter showers, walking to their friend’s house, riding their bikes to school, and turning off lights when they are not using them, they can be helpful. They might not be old enough to make big changes, such as choosing an electric car, buying and using solar panels, or opting for wind energy, but they can do their part.

Children need to know that they have power now. So that, in 10 years, they will have no problems making those tough decisions we have such difficulty making now. They are our future and we need them to create an amazing world for us all. Thank you, Katharine, for speaking so clearly and honestly, bringing our children this powerful message.

Educators have a great responsibility to help our students learn to be themselves, be open to different experiences, and be accepting of others. This week’s Secret Lifer, Alan Sage, Vegetarian Scientist, shows us that he became who he is today because of these traits.

Alan takes his cue from Bob Dylan. I was incredibly inspired listening to Alan. He seems to have created his life exactly as Bob Dylan believed we should when he said, “All I can do is be me, whoever that is.”

Alan is a man who grew up understanding himself and accepting his…idiosyncrasies. From spending day upon day at the Subway Transit Museum in New York, to befriending the minority students in the other classes in his high school, to becoming a Jewish rapper, Mr. Sage shows us that being yourself can help you find your path in life.

He also spoke quite eloquently of the fact that he had no idea where he was going until a special molecular biology teacher opened his eyes to the possibilities of this field. I believe that his ability to be open to new ideas, such as rapping, allowed him to be open to learning and, consequently, becoming an Intel finalist, forever changing his life.

Listening to Alan reminds me that, as an educator, I can never be sure what might spark the interest of a child, what might change a life forever, what might be the trigger that gets them moving in a different direction. And my ultimate job is to help them stay open to the possibilities. So each new lesson, be it physics, history, writing, or even biology, must be presented with the excitement needed to start a young mind on the path to success. And isn’t that what teaching is all about?

Emily Whiting describes rock climbing as a time she can remove herself from society and just be in nature. As for her skill, she says, “If you can get one move further than you did the last time, that’s its own triumph.”

Lisa’s inspirational poster - full-size version after the cut What a powerful message. As a teacher, I often encounter children who strive to make progress in a difficult area. Perhaps one child struggles with reading. We work to help her get up to grade level, but she is not achieving this goal. It is time to remember that, although she might not have reached the top goal, we can celebrate small triumphs—better fluency, moving up a level or two, finding books more enjoyable. Each of these is a triumph unto itself and deserves celebrating. Maybe organization is a hard skill for a child. He forgets his homework each day, his desk is a mess, and he loses his material around the room. Perhaps he will always struggle with organization, but maybe he can learn to place his completed homework in his folder after completing finishing it so it makes it comes back to school. Maybe he can find a buddy to help him clean his desk once a week. Small triumphs can be celebrated, too.

Listening to Dave Sulzer talk about teaching elephants to play music really hit home for me. He began by finding out that elephant trainers and owners all know that elephants love music. From there, he moves right to, “If they like music, can they learn to play music?”

An elephant never forgets his notes! As an educator, I often try to use what my students love to help them learn. I remember one student, “Joe”, who struggled with reading and writing. But he loved art. He would pore over art books and watch videos about artists. So I used his love of art to help him demonstrate his knowledge. “How would Picasso teach us about this book? What would the main character look like? What would the setting be?” Soon, he was creating a book report in the style of Picasso. He was so excited to have “Picasso” paint about the book, that he didn’t even realize how much he was studying the text to get everything right.

Then there was “Debbie” who hated math. She could never remember her math facts, which made higher level computation quite difficult. But she was an amazing musician, playing both piano and violin quite well. I had her compose songs to help her learn her math facts. She enjoyed the project so much that she kept creating songs to memorize other information, too. At one point, she created a song as a study guide for a social studies test we were having. I posted her song on our website and many other children accessed this tool to assist them, also.

Helping students find what interests them is an important part of being a teacher. We work to expand their horizons, giving them experiences they might never have without us. Once students know what they are passionate about, learning about their passion comes easy. Using that passion to learn more, helps students feel more engaged in school and understand more about the required concepts. Just like the elephants, who learned to play the music they were passionate about hearing, children will learn when they use their passions. Our job? Help them find a way.