Workshop examining the integration of engineering design challenges and culturally responsive pedagogy into a three-dimensional NGSS ecological justice storyline to support equity.

TAKEAWAYS:
1. Introduce a storyline that addresses an issue of environmental justice using science and engineering practices, culminating in a problem-based design solution; 2. Explore strategies for leveraging the critical connections between cultural and socioeconomic issues, science, and engineering to best support inquiry and investigation in the science classroom; and 3. Support teachers in developing students’ agency to explain, advocate for, and design solutions to environmental justice issues.

SPEAKERS:
Allison Grecco (Mather High School: Chicago, IL), Amber Luczak (John Marshall Metropolitan High School: Chicago, IL)

Using Project Hero’s online Soil Quest and Q-U-E-S-T framework, guide learners to design projects that sequester carbon, restore soil’s health, and slow climate change.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will: 1. work with the online PBL Soil Quest platform (https://herofortheplanet.org/healthysoils) as a model for empowering students to use the understanding of science concepts to design and carry out a solution to a local soil problem; 2. understand how to teach the connection between soil-carbon-climate change concepts through Quest activities and investigations (aligned to the NGSS), and lay the foundation for designing and carrying out this project; and 3. gather ideas for how the soil project, and lessons for supporting concepts, could fit into current NGSS-focused curricula (i.e., concepts around healthy soil ecosystems, carbon cycle and sequestration, climate change, and design of conventional and regenerative farming and gardening practices), and connect to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

SPEAKERS:
Laura Arndt (Global GreenSTEM: Franktown, CO)