Monthly Highlights – April 2022
Environmental History Month
Earth Day falls on April 22 every year. This month, we are highlighting resources that feature environmental history, literacy, justice, and opportunities for civic engagement.
Featured Teaching Resources
Current Context helps students understand today by putting current events in their appropriate historical context. Each report includes a background reading, a primary source activity & links to useful resources. Here are a few issues that particularly center issues of environmental justice:
- Budgeting for the Future, Part I and Part II
- Waste, the Environment, an a Circular Economy
- Redlining
Primary Source Sets, Environmental Literacy
The primary source sets include up to ten sources with teacher and student context, teacher background information, and literacy support. Each is Framework-aligned and incorporates California's Environmental Principles and Concepts.
Current Events-Based Classroom Resources
Since 2017, the CHSSP has produced current events-based classroom resources to orient students to major environmental issues of the day, like climate change and climate justice, wildfires, green technologies, youth environmental activism, and much more, all with direct connections to California regions. Each resource includes secondary background information, primary source investigation, classroom discussion questions, and teaching recommendations.
The Source Magazine, Environmental Literacy in History-Social Science.
This edition of The Source features articles that provide insight into how educators across California are working to integrate environmental literacy and environmental justice into their classrooms and schools. Articles include “Learning In and From the Outdoors,” “Empowering Eco-literate Global Citizens,” and an overview of the intersections between history-social science and environmental justice education.
Environmental Literacy in HSS page:
The CHSSP has a number of materials to support the integration of California’s Environmental Principles and Concepts into your classroom. This page contains resources that reflect our understanding of the importance of using an environmental lens to investigate the past and to build an environmentally-sustainable and just future. These materials include curriculum, webinars, implementation guides, and more.
Blog Post
-Coming soon-
Current Events
CHSSP’s Marchand Public Engagement Initiative worked with the UC Davis History Department and the National Park Service to create a new collection of women’s biographies. This digital history, Women’s History of the West, offers accessible oral histories for teachers and students to connect environmental and women’s history in a new and meaningful way. Take a look at our blog on this exciting new collection for more information!
Picture Books
A River Ran Wild, by Lynne Cherry
The author traces the environmental history of the river into the present, documenting the river's destruction by industrial pollution and its eventual reclamation. Small drawings of animals native to the area, items used by the people who lived along its banks, and relevant historical events border some of the text. The endpapers are illustrated with maps and include a brief chronology. Readers will be moved to consider their personal impact on the environment and what they can do to make a difference. Annotation from Titlewave.
Great way to introduce industrial pollution and climate change to students.
A Stone Sat Still, by Brendan Wenzel
To some creatures it's a pebble, to others a pea, to some a smell. Each animal that encounters the stone knows it to be something unique, but the stone itself is a constant in an ever changing world. Annotation adapted from Titlewave.
Wangari Maathai: The Woman Who Planted Millions of Trees, words by Franck Prevot, pictures by Aurelia Fronty.
This simply told story begins with Green Belt Movement founder Wangari Maathai’s childhood at the foot of Mount Kenya where, as the oldest child in her family, her responsibility was to stay home and help her mother. When the chance to go to school presented itself, she seized it with both hands. She traveled to the US to study, where she saw that even in the land of the free, black people were not welcome. Returning home, Wangari was determined to help her people and her country. She recognized that deforestation and urbanization was at the root of her country’s troubles. Her courage and confidence carried her through adversity to found a movement for peace, reconciliation, and healing. Annotation from publisher.
Wangari Maathai changed the way the world thinks about nature, ecology, freedom, and democracy, inspiring radical efforts that continue to this day. Learn about the Green Belt Movement and Wangari's Nobel Peace Prize Award here.
We are the Water Protectors, words by Carole Lindstrom, pictures by Michaela Goade.
We Are Water Protectors issues an urgent rallying cry to safeguard the Earth’s water from harm and corruption—a bold and lyrical picture book written by Carole Lindstrom and vibrantly illustrated by Michaela Goade. Winner of the 2021 Caldecott Award.
Simply beautiful book with an important message. Written and illustrated by women with Indigenous roots. Additional information about the Dakota Access Pipeline can be found here.
Educator Spotlight
-Coming Soon-
Scholarship
Brooks, Shelley Alden. Big Sur : the Making of a Prized California Landscape. Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2017.
Big Sur's well-preserved vistas and high-end real estate situate this coastline between American ideals of development and the wild. It is a space that challenges the way most Americans think of nature, its relationship to people, and what in fact makes a place "wild." This book highlights today's complex and ambiguous intersections of class, the environment, and economic development through the lens of an iconic California landscape. Annotation from publisher.
Sen, Sudipta. (2019) Ganges: The Many Pasts of an Indian River, New Haven: Yale University Press. Published in India by Penguin Viking as Ganga: the Many Pasts of a River.
Originating in the Himalayas and flowing into the Bay of Bengal, the Ganges is India's most important and sacred river. In this unprecedented work, historian Sudipta Sen tells the story of the Ganges, from the communities that arose on its banks to the merchants that navigated its waters, and the way it came to occupy center stage in the history and culture of the subcontinent. Annotation from publisher.
Warren, Louis S. American Environmental History. Ed. Louis S. Warren. Second edition. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2021.
What is environmental history? At its most fundamental level, environmental historians explore the changing relations between people and nature. Such a broad definition can be more of a hindrance than a help, however. So let's be more specific. Environmental historians study how people have lived in the natural systems of the planet, and how they have perceived nature and reshaped it to suit their own idea of good living. More than this, the field of environmental history encompasses the investigation of how nature, once changed, requires people to reshape their cultures, economies, and politics to meet new realities. Annotation adapted from publisher