Studying the Heat Island Effect covers multiple standards and content areas, and is an excellent grounding phenomenon to discuss equity and justice in the classroom. Come to this hands-on workshop to run through this experience and learn about a framework to develop empowering engineering projects.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will leave with a framework for developing engineering projects that integrate social justice, and will also walk through one of our developed projects on the Heat Island Effect.

SPEAKERS:
Emily Berman (Global STEM Challenges Program)

Conduct an activity that can be used to introduce students to the concept of energy justice and receive a scorecard that can be used to evaluate stories that highlight our current and future energy system and its impacts on people and communities.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn about energy justice and use an evaluation scorecard as one strategy to enhance education about clean energy technologies while promoting literacy, systems thinking and critical thinking skills among learners.

SPEAKERS:
Dana Haine (UNC Institute for the Environment: Chapel Hill, NC)

Engage students in learning about extreme heat and the heat island effect through interaction with maps highlighting environmental and demographic indicators. Data interpretation activities will prompt students to identify vulnerable populations and examine strategies for addressing extreme heat.

TAKEAWAYS:
Extreme heat is relevant to everyone and can be used as an anchoring phenomenon to engage all learners. Depending on where they live, people experience extreme heat differently. Attendees will experience how maps can be used to teach about extreme heat through an environmental justice lens.

SPEAKERS:
Emma Refvem (Durham Public Schools: Durham, NC)

What is race? During this session, we will introduce a curriculum for biology educators that explores how racism, the construct of race, the history of science, and human genetic variation intersect.

TAKEAWAYS:
Race is a socio-political construct with deep implications but race is not a good surrogate/proxy for biology. Understanding human genetic variation can disrupt the idea of the existence of genetically meaningful “races” and help emphasize the racist roots of inequities in areas such as health.

SPEAKERS:
Hanako Osuga (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center), Jeanne Chowning (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center: No City, No State)

This new framing of a popular forensics lab connects science topics such as DNA technology to mass incarceration by using real cases of wrongful convictions. The lab and accompanying series were featured in NSTA’s The Science Teacher (July/August 2022).

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will learn how DNA technology can be used not only to identify criminals but also to exonerate the innocent. This can help present science in a social context, connecting it to topics such as mass incarceration and the criminal legal system.

SPEAKERS:
Jeanne Chowning (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center: No City, No State), Hanako Osuga (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center)