Category Archives: project

Saving The World

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 “So many climate and health calamities are colliding at once. It’s not just the pandemic that keeps people inside. It’s poor air quality,” Biden said of one of the many effects of climate change. “Folks, we’re in a crisis. Just like we need a unified national response to covid-19, we need a unified national response to climate change.” (Washington Post)

Now that our government is on board, what better time to begin a school wide capstone project focused on saving the world?

For the past several years my capstone project in Economics has been “Saving The World.” Economics, specifically consumer capitalism, has been destroying the world since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Humans have the ability to make endless amounts of stuff. For example, last year humans made 23 billion pairs of shoes. That’s three pairs of shoes for every living human on earth. Who needs three new pairs of shoes every year? This is just one example of how our insatiable desire for stuff is gobbling up all the resources our earth has to offer.

Another example of how rich a saving the world topic can be; a group of my students decided that moving to electric cars would greatly reduce the amount of air pollution. But then they began looking into how much energy it takes to make batteries, and the environmental cost of making batteries. It also takes quite a bit of energy and raw materials to make any car. Are electric cars really that much better? Maybe people should use fewer cars. Mass transportation is a possible solution. So is working at home instead of going to the office. Students were spinning off with ideas in all directions. One student even presented a report on the possibility of piezoelectric cars. Where did that come from? It’s real. Experiments are being done. Look it up.

More and more my students tell me they are studying similar topics in science classes, in religion classes in HPERD classes and in English classes. I don’t know about math class, but there are plenty of numbers to crunch in finding ways to save the world. So, why don’t we all get together and make saving the world our CHS capstone project?

Every department at CHS can find a way to get students seriously involved in saving the world projects. Students are really into it. They have been for years. To quote one student, “It’s totally drip.” And saving the world is a real thing. Our president elect said it is real. We know that presidents always tell us the truth. So it must be a real thing. Maybe we should save that last idea about truthful presidents for a different blog. But, about saving the world, what do you think? It’s going to be a problem of survival for future generations. What could be more important than the survival of future generations?


Cross-Curricular Projects: How??

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I always want to show the students how math is connected to other subjects and the real world.  Frankly, one of my big dreams for our math program is not to get more girls to calculus (but YAY! if that happens).  Rather my dream is that it starts to blow up the idea of “time” and “school day” enough that we can start to incorporate cross-curricular time in the day.  How cool would it be if instead of teaching dimensional analysis in physics and again in algebra, we taught it concurrently in the context of a bigger problem?  But how do we inch towards this?

This year I have tried two cross-curricular projects:

  1. Math (Financial Algebra) + College and Career: Ginger helped me design a unit about the realities of paying for college.  She taught the introductory lessons (on block periods) and popped in as I continued this mini unit through the following week.  The feedback was very positive and many thought that all of their junior classmates should have access to this unit too.
  2. Math (Algebra Readiness) + Religion: Adam and I got our classes together in the Innovation Center to explore examples of the Fibonacci Sequence in nature and discuss the implications.  Is this mathematical pattern proof of a common creator?  This was really fun, but the feedback that I got from my freshmen students was that it was awkward to work with a different class of students (in this case a mixed-gender class of seniors), especially for just one class period.  My personal feedback is that the lesson we designed should’ve been spread out over a week or more — it was really dense.
Moving forward I have questions:
  1. What is the most logistically efficient way to do a unit/project with another teacher/department?  Working with Ginger was easier than with Adam (no offense Adam!) simply because she did not have a classroom full of students that were expected to collaborate with mine.  I know my colleagues all have prep periods (which would eliminate the concern of having to join classes) but that’s a big ask and I’m just not there yet.
  2. Does a cross-curricular course make more sense than a cross-curricular lesson or project?  Yes, if the only concern is finding overlapping time and a similar student population.  No, because creating a new course feels like a huge barrier to cross-curricular work.  Also, if we keep increasing our course offerings do they eventually get watered down?  
  3. Anyone want to try another cross-curricular project/unit with me?

Carondelet News Channel (en français!)

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I had originally planned to begin a new unit in my French 3 classes this past week and a half leading up to Spring Break, but everyone was showing signs of exhaustion after the completion of our last chapter, projects, and oral quizzes (on a light topic such as environmental issues and endangered animals in Francophone countries). They did a great job, so I wanted to reward them with something different than usual as we transitioned into Spring Break. I wanted a creative challenge that we could successfully complete in a week, and the pressure was on–I honestly had no idea how it would turn out, but I was excited to tap into my journalism background and do a journalism mini-project-based unit.
Over the past week, I taught my students all they might want to know about the news and media in French. I helped them expand their vocabulary in French after reading recent headlines, listening to topical news podcasts, watching daily news broadcasts, and parsing through satirical news sites in French to see if students could figure out what headlines were real and what were parodies (ask me if you want to see the presentation–the headlines are hilarious). We even debated current events and students defended their opinions about the news and journalistic integrity.
During our final long block period (today’s class), I charged the students with creating a class-wide 15-minute news broadcast. Running through some modified design thinking exercises, students in my 5th period (sole Carondelet-only) class pitched and then voted on their ideas for the show, concept, title, and logo and came up with the following:

In groups of 2-3, the girls were responsible for the following 2-minute segments: 

  • Introduction and Carondelet-local news (including Mr. Cushing’s departure from the school as he prepares to go on tour with the Spice Girls)
  • San Francisco Bay Area news about a local scammer and Anne Hathaway impersonator
  • International news chronicling the Carondelet trip to France next week in the wake of today’s Notre Dame Cathedral fire in Paris
  • Sports covering the Carondelet swimming, rugby, and lacrosse teams
  • Arts and lifestyle covering the construction of the art class’s school bus in the inner court that was tragically stolen overnight and replaced with a gigantic croissant
  • And the broadcast closes out on a very high note covering the erratic weather we’ve been experiencing recently.
They quickly edited their videos using either iMovie or the Apple Clips app which Karina and I presented about on Friday (and I’m looking forward to creating a screencast or future blog entry showcasing all the cool features Clips has to offer if you weren’t able to attend our Grab-and-Go session last week). 
Here is the folder of all their videos if you’re at all curious to see what they were able to produce with the quick 80-minute turnaround during today’s class. I had a lot of fun helping them think through their scripts and watching the final production (which we won’t get to watch as a class until after break), and I am so proud of them for their creativity and sensitivity and attention to world news as it relates to this class.
This was one of my most favorite long block periods of the entire year, and I am looking forward to getting even more creative next month when I roll out a food truck race competition in my French 3 classes.
That’s it for this blog, see you on the other side of Spring Break, everyone!