Climate Action Lesson Connects Students With Young Learners
By Cyndi Cunningham
Cal State San Marcos students brought climate action education into a rural sixth-grade classroom through a hands-on lesson focused on food systems and sustainability.
The project grew out of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) 304: Ecofeminism, taught by lecturer Kit-Bacon Gressitt. Gressitt incorporated the lesson plan assignment with support from the university’s new Climate Action Sustainability Center, an offer she said she “pounced on.”
“Two students jumped on board, Rickie Haynes and Soleia Lafaye, and they dug into the project – much deeper, ultimately, than they originally expected. It was a lot of work,” Gressitt said.
Students in the class Education 350: Foundations of Teaching as a Profession were looped into the project through Paula Hewitt, a Distinguished Teacher in Residence at CSUSM. One of Hewitt’s students, Megan Hedges, joined Haynes and Lafaye in the project.
The class partnered with Vallecitos Elementary, which Gressitt said was an easy choice given her connection to the school over the past 12 years.
“It’s a wonderful, Title 1 school in a rural setting, serving preschool through eighth grade,” Gressitt said. “The school’s sense of community and collaboration is strong, and Superintendent Meliton Sanchez and sixth-grade teacher Jessica Mentze welcomed our students and their project enthusiastically.”
Title 1 schools receive federal funding to support students from low-income communities.
The lesson introduced sixth-graders to the climate impacts of global food supply chains and offered an adaptive action: growing your own food to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The CSUSM students guided the class in planting lettuce seeds to take home and helped them map the origins of their favorite foods.
“Watching the sixth-graders ask and answer questions while planting lettuce to take home to their families was a joy,” Gressitt said. “They quickly grasped the differences between having a family garden and the climate pollution that results from shipping produce around the globe.
“The most revealing evaluation of the students’ work is that the Vallecitos folks were pleased with the lesson and invited CSUSM back next semester.”
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