Update On Inconvenient Truth DVD & Science Teacher In My School

[Dinger]

I posted something about this a while back.
The school where I teach is a rural Pre-K-12 school. The middle school teacher here is a republican, but still a decent guy. He heard from another staff member here that I had purchased a copy of Inconvenient Truth, and e-mailed me to see if he could borrow it, and he wanted to know what Al Gore had to say about global warming.
He ran into me this morning and asked if he could borrow it a little longer because he wanted to show it to his middle school students, and of course I said "sure!" I mentioned about the national teacher's group that turned down 50,000 free copies of AIT. He hadn't heard about that, but I also said that if he went to the site, he had a good chance of getting a free DVD as an educator, if he logged in on the site. He seemed very interested. I told him about the educator's resources on the climatecrisis.org website, and e-mailed him the link. I heard from others that he is a republican, but he might be a prime candidate for a cross-over vote in an upcoming election. Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised by his response, but hey, we have to start somewhere, right?

:)

[InvisibleTouch]

1. Encouraging story - thanks! n/t

[IndyOp]

2. Yes! You did good. One science teacher at a time...

The amazing aspect of the AIT phenomenon is that Al Gore made a movie about Global Warming that has drawn positive attention from so many different groups: climate scientists with PhD's, ecology-minded adults of all stripes, and elementary school students. That is an AMAZING feat.

I, myself, am working on incorporating showing a good bit of AIT in my Introductory Psych class - in the section on Social Psychology about attitude change. It is a little bit of stretch, but I can do it!

:evilgrin:

[NashVegas]

3. When My 10th Grade Science Teacher Showed Us "Silent Spring"

Most of the class was pissed off at finding out what we were inheriting and being told that it was going to be up to us to clean up previous generations' mistakes.

I hope your co-worker doesn't make the well-intentioned mistake of charging his students with the task of correcting the dire circumstance, lest he overwhelm them.

[n2doc]

4. But they will be the ones living with the effects

Regardless of the hopefull message in AIT, the facts are that global change is happening right now and that it will continue to happen. We have set off a chain of events that we cannot control. We can mitigate some of it by reducing our CO2 exports, but even that is unlikely given the mindset of our leadership in this country and elsewhere. We need to be planning now for the future.