Blogs

The Final Stretch

July 2, 2021 by Lydia Sellers

As we approach our last week of our DukeEngage program, we are reflecting back and wrapping up our work with a final portfolio and lesson plan.

The final lesson plan covers SDG 14 and 15 with the module titled “Life Below Water, Life Below Land.” We began Monday with a presentation by Kevin Glinton. His presentation surrounded the conservation of marine life and environments within the Bahamas through an organization he is a part of titled Bahamas Environment Educational Foundation, BREEF. I really enjoyed BREEF’s interactions with the public which includes using social media and television to reach out, allowing students to help out and take action, bringing awareness to schools and even hosting presentations there. I really enjoyed his incorporation surrounding the protection of species and his call to take action near the end. I wanted to encompass a similar idea within my final lesson plan.

I’ve always been drawn to endangered species, especially since arriving at college and going in depth on learning about policies surrounding animals and ecosystems rights and protections. However, growing up, I was not exposed to similar ideas and concepts with the K-12 classroom. Therefore, I wanted to direct my focus on the protection of endangered species and in particular the Endangered Species Act. I designed my lesson plan for middle school students and focused on individual research and group presentations. I wanted to give students creative freedom within the lesson plan to discover their own information and build their own ideas on protection and solutions for endangered species. I also wanted to allow them a choice in how they want to express what they learned within the final project through multiple options. This fifth and final lesson plan marked the last addition to my final portfolio. For the portfolio, we were able to incorporate visual design tools to showcase our work throughout our time with DukeEngage. We went back to the very first week and included all of our journals, butterfly diagrams and lesson plans within our designs. The final portfolio was both a creative and meaningful way to reflect and look back at the progress we made. It showcased the valuable lesson plans we were able to create as future resources for educators and students. It was also beneficial for myself as an individual to see where my work grew and where I still need to improve when looking at visual design and developing educational material.

Overall, I really enjoyed DukeEngage and the new perspective it offered on education and my knowledge of the Bahamas. I also loved the new visual design tools and plan on using them frequently throughout the rest of my learning experience here at Duke University. It feels bittersweet to reach the final stretch, but I can’t wait to see what the last week holds!

June 28, 2021 by Sofia Silvosa

This week we began the fourth and final module of our program titled “ Life Below Water, Life Below Land” which encompasses the SDG 14 and 15.

On Monday, we were introduced to the new module by speaker Kevin Glinton. He talked to us about the organization he is part of the Bahamas Environment Educational Foundation (BREEF). The organization is concerned about the declining state of the marine environment and promotes the conservation of Bahamian marine life. He also explained the various ways BREEF acts in order to achieve their goals of protecting the marine environment which includes helping students take action, hosting class presentations in schools, coastal field trips, social media, and using radio and television media to raise awareness about the marine environment. In the presentation, Glinton also talked about “our Blue Bahamas” and its vital ecosystems and environments. The Bahamas is a coastal country, he illustrated, “ you’re never more than three miles away from the beach.” It has one of the longest underwater cave systems and contains various marine ecosystems like rocky shores, sandy shores, coral reefs, blue holes, seagrass beds, sandy shores, and mangrove wetlands. Finally, he concluded the presentation by emphasizing how it is our duty to protect the ocean and our earth as a whole. “Earth is our common home and we must protect it” and “ we cannot have a healthy planet without a healthy ocean. Throughout the presentation, we, the students, were developing a mind map about the presentation to help us encapsulate the concepts we were being introduced to.

Throughout the rest of the week, we worked on our journaling, lesson plans, and butterfly diagrams which revolved around life on water and ocean modules. For my journaling, I wrote about different articles that delved into the threat of invasive species in the Bahamas, the conservation efforts made in the Bahamas, and the country’s rich biodiversity. For my lesson plans this week, I developed two middle school lesson plans; One serves as an introductory climate change lesson in which delves into the science behind global warming and the role humans have played in this environmental issue. The lesson ends with an engaging project in which students have to pick a target audience like their parents, politicians, or farmers about what global warming is and what they can do to mitigate it. My other lesson plan teaches students about invasive species and the threat they pose to different environments. It’s exciting to see the knack I’m developing for writing lesson plans and have figured out my teaching style. Running class discussions before and after the class lecture, developing multimedia projects for evaluation that are open-ended in the formats, and using videos for the lecture are just some of the key components that I now realize form an important part in each of my lesson plans.

Finally this week, we have also been working on developing our final portfolio for the program. It was satisfying to put together all the work I’ve done in the past eight weeks. All my different journaling collages and drawings, with my different lesson plans and mindmaps: all together and organized in one place. I’m excited to present my final portfolio and for our final sessions this week to conclude this wonderful and insightful journey.

DukeEngage: Connecting Us to Each Other and Our Work

June 28, 2021 by Ayla Weiss

Duke Engage has always been a buzz word around campus, and I am truly beginning to understand why. This program is impossible to sum up in a simple blog post. It’s a lively experience even through our virtual Zoom environment.

I am involved in the Duke Engage Bahamas program. The mission is to understand the United Nation’s seventeen sustainable development goals within the context of the Bahamas and then create lesson plans for teachers that incorporate awareness, goals, and/or actions related to the SDG’s. Now, this program is virtual, and I’ve never visited the Bahamas before. I was curious how I could possibly feel immersed in a foreign country and try to make a difference all through a digital environment. However, I’ve discovered that it is possible, and I’ve identified three reasons why:

First, the Bahamas is a fascinating place. It is one country composed of 700 separate islands throughout the Caribbean. It’s densely populated on just a couple of these islands. Now, with this physical structure many complications emerge. How do you transport food to and between the islands? How do you transport people? How do you get proper services and resources on each island? How does weather and natural disaster impact the islands? The Bahamas is a stark contrast to New Jersey, where I’m from, and I’m so curious learning about this new place.

This brings me to number two— the incredible people. Part of what has made this experience so engaging and real has been getting to be on Zoom meetings with students and professionals from the Bahamas. Specifically, people from the Bahamas are the only experts in the lived experiences there. I listen and value their every word as they talk about food transport, mobility, services, and disaster there. They can draw direct connections from the underlying structure of the country to the sustainable development goals. Some of the most interesting connections have been to public health, education, and climate change. For example, one of the professionals, Steph, has explained that the main hospitals are only on New Province Island. This means that anytime a citizen is sick, pregnant, or needs to visit a family member, they must go through the tremendous experience of taking off work, flying or boating to the island, and trying to see a doctor. This trip is expensive, dangerous, and inconvenient. Within these lectures, the experts integrate their ideas for solutions. They have taught me how to think more critically and view problems as opportunities for solutions, not opportunities for failure.

Third is the focus on education. The focus on education throughout this program has instilled a growth mindset and a real motivation to learn. I’m motivated to listen closely and learn because I also have the opportunity teach others through this program. As I mentioned, we are creating lesson plans for teachers to utilize in the classroom. This is something I’ve never done in the past. This is different than tutoring and filling in the gaps or projecting the methods I wish I was taught as a student. The goal is to be comprehensive, attract and impact all different kinds of learners, and give context for the lesson, highlighting its importance so that students are motivated. Thankfully, our program has done many exercises from mind-mapping to cause-and-effect butterfly diagramming which have helped us recall what it’s like to be a bright young student and see connections to lessons in school and real-world problems. It has also been incredibly helpful to be in communication with students and educators from the Bahamas who have provided insight on the curriculum, classroom structures, and resources there.

In my experience creating lesson plans, I have chosen to focus on science topics. Science has always been my favorite subject, and I think that I can be the most effective where I am the most excited. Also, I believe science topics can teaches foundational logic and problem-solving skills that must be applied when tackling the sustainable development goals. So, my first lesson plan surrounded basic knowledge on nutrition for upper elementary students. In order to take care of others, students need to know how to take care of themselves and make healthy decisions. This topic also allowed me to be creative as I came up with a “Know Your Food Groups” bingo board and “Class Restaurant” activity that culminates in a collaborative class menu. Finally, this topic of nutrition elicits questions that connect to real world problems — where is your food coming from, and is it sustainable? How might access to food affect health, and what controls access to food? My next lesson plans center on the scientific method for middle school students and chemistry and a discussion on its connections to climate change for high schoolers.

Duke Engage Bahamas is a program I am incredibly grateful for. Not only did I get to learn about a new country and what life looks like there, but I also got to work with amazing mentors and classmates who provided amazing insight and help. I hope that our careful lesson plans will be used and adapted in classrooms across the world to inspire students and empower students to cause change. This is a cause I believe in and will continue to try to understand and contribute to.

Working on Lesson Plans

June 28, 2021 by Mina Jang

Throughout the course of this program, I’ve been working alongside peers from Duke University and the University of the Bahamas to create lesson plans for students K-12 in the Bahamas. These lesson plans focus on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), which range from promoting well-being to conserving marine resources. Over the past couple of weeks on Zoom, we learned about these SDGs in more detail through talks from multiple lecturers. A talk that stood out to me was from Stephanie Kelly on SDGs 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure) and 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities). During one part of the talk, Kelly stressed the importance of cities having a community-driven approach that reaches all members and outside people not telling a community what it needs but really listening to that community.

We also met virtually with K-12 educators from Wake County and attended a Design Lab every Friday to learn/practice how to create engaging, effective lesson plans. In the Design Lab, we would practice creating mind maps and butterfly diagrams to process our thoughts better as well as see how they connect. We would also do exercises where we would reflect back at our own K-12 experiences and share them with each other. An activity we had was creating a mind map of how we would personally teach the SDGs to our younger selves and what our top priorities would be. I remember writing down that I wouldn’t want to be assessed in a lesson by multiple-choice tests or quizzes but instead open-ended assignments. Adding on, during this activity, I kept looking back at fun projects I had done in elementary/middle/high school and jotting those down. One thing I had to keep in mind, however, was to not let my mode of learning dominate my lesson plan, as Dr. Harris said during a lecture. Because while I may have enjoyed certain assignments back then, other students may have not, as we are all different types of learners. As I created my lesson plans, I kept reminding myself another point Dr. Harris had said–that a good lesson touches on all kinds of learning styles to try and include everyone.

The day we each presented our lesson plans, a question came up near the end: These lesson plans seem good on paper, but will they actually be used in classrooms? Will educators be able to add in these SDG-related lesson plans within the lessons they’ve already planned? This question stayed on my mind, because it’s something I’ve been worried about. It’s nice to create fun and engaging activities, projects, and assignments, but what’s the point if they cannot be used? This program’s main goal is also to create educational materials for students. I think the response to this question was that educators could implement parts of the lesson into their own, so I tried to take this into account when creating my lesson plans. One example of this was my lesson plan on looking after one’s mental health. I thought of small ways educators could incorporate practicing relieving stress or taking care of one’s mental health, like taking short breaks throughout class or asking students how they are doing. But I still wondered if that would be enough, because I felt like it wasn’t.

Who Are We Designing For?

June 15, 2021 by Sam Ramey

Who are we designing for? As my DukeEngage Bahamas peers and I have been designing lesson plans to be used with students in grades k-12 in the Bahamas, this is a question that must be kept at the forefront of our thinking.

Designing from a first person perspective is an easy trap to fall into! But this would be like creating a square peg, and then hoping that it will fit into a round hole. The inverse of this is more optimal- we should first understand the dimensions and shape of the round hole, and then craft a peg specifically suited to it.

Applied to our program, this entails learning and understanding education through the eyes of the students and teachers who will be interacting with our lesson plans. And it is only after doing this, that we should attempt to create a lesson plan for them. We could make an impressive lesson plan, but if through ignorance we structured it in a way where the students who would be using it could not benefit effectively and equitably, then we would not have done our job correctly.

One way in which those of us who have not attended school in the Bahamas have attempted to design from the perspective of our community partners is by utilizing some of the amazing people working within this program who either attend college or teach in the Bahamas. The enthusiastic and detailed accounts given about the education playing field in the Bahamas helps us custom tailer lesson plans that can actually be used! Margo Blackwell, a professor at the University of The Bahamas, gave us an insightful history of how education has changed over the years in the Bahamas, oftentimes with personal examples and anecdotes. This talk was very helpful for me, because I had little understanding for the educational landscape and some of the reasons of why the landscape is the way it is.

Moving forward into the phase of our program where we start to really focus on finalizing our lesson plans, we will do well to remember to constantly be asking the questions, “Who are we designing for?”

Learning To Lesson Plan

June 2, 2021 by Ja’nelle Kellam

These first few weeks of working with Chrysalis and students from the University of the Bahamas has been both enriching and eye-opening. Although I knew, when coming into the program, that we would be working to create lesson plans for k-12 Bahamian students, it was not until we began learning about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the Bahamas that I really began to understand the extent to which our created lesson plans could have an impact on the future of the Bahamas.

During Week one, we spent a lot of time getting into the swing of the design aspect of the program. I have never been a very creative person, so when introduced to the design assignments and materials we would be working with, I was a but frightened. However, through our extensive use of mind mapping, I have found that it really allows my creative juices to flow, making room for some creative thinking that I was not able to tap into in the past. The use of mind mapping has also shown to be an amazing tool to express the intersectionality of the SDGs. For example, to end all poverty (SDG #1), extensive hunger within the country must be lessened through rectifying food insecurity, which can be diminished through the development of infrastructure that would allow food to reach Bahamians in a more efficient manner, through the development of resilient infrastructure (SDG #9). To tie it all together, the strides to build resilient infrastructure and accomplish many of the other 16 SDGs, Partnership (SDG #17) is needed to build relationships between governments, the private sector, and civil society organizations. Additionally, during week one we were introduced to the concept of Project Based Learning, which works to allow students to gain knowledge by working for an extended period to investigate and respond to an authentic, complex question, problem, or challenge. I was amazed by what students had produced in a project Jennifer Wellberg had her students participate in which produced a replication of their community, which ended up being absolutely gigantic! Students were able to create their houses and community using paper bags, construction paper, markers, and pipe cleaners. The challenge in creating lesson plans for the Bahamian students will be the availability of materials that would normally be seen in an American classroom.

During Week two, there was much of the same activities as week one, however we were able to meet with some elementary school teachers about creating lesson plans. I am really excited to see the lesson plans my counterparts and myself will create, and how the Bahamian teachers will react to those lesson plans!

Education As A Tool

June 1, 2021 by Kaya Caouki

The third week of our program begun with a lecture from Professor Margo Blackwell discussing the SDG goal of education. Blackwell described education as effectively a necessary preliminary measure we must take on before even discussing the other SDGs, and for good reason. Education is not only an informative tool, but one used to ascend social status. In order to reduce poverty, it is necessary to provide a population with higher education so that they can attain higher work with higher pay. In order to reduce to gendered inequality, it is necessary to provide women with educational opportunities that eventually allow them to achieve positions of high power. Hence, education is illustrated as a twofold measure. What was startling, however, was Blackwell’s description of the opposition to education in the Bahamas. Before 1960, there were no high schools – education was viewed to end at just 14 years of age; when high schools were installed, they were few and far between, receiving just a few students per year. Blackwell states that out of the 1100 11-12 year olds in her grade at the time, only 96 received a place in high school. In fact, Stafford Sands, the dubbed “father of tourism” of the Bahamas, stated “pool men don’t need beyond a 4th grade education.”

The rest of the week held this idea of education as key at heart, yet was far more reflective. We began to look back on our own experiences in education, considering what went wrong and what worked. For me, one of my largest takeaways was in reflecting how I learn, and how that had impacted my education. I myself am a visual learner – I need to be actively engaged with content for me to digest any of the information. Textbooks and the like do not work for me. But, documentaries, stories, videos – anything creative, really – are incredibly successful for me. Hence, the medium of education can vary my results greatly. Moreover, we were asked to reflect on our top priorities. This task had me thinking a bit longer. Ultimately, I concluded with three things I hold dear to me. 1) my relationships with others 2) my own success in whatever field that may be and 3) my mental health. Everything outside of that circle can be disregarded, but those three things, I wish I had learned their importance earlier.

Hence, in beginning to construct lesson plans surrounding the SDGs I began to reflect on the tasks we were given throughout the week. I wanted my lessons to engage in everyone’s different style of learning. Whether that be through creating something, or through reading, or through doodling, I just wanted it to engage with the student. I wanted the student to be excited about his project. Moreover, I wanted the project to emphasize relationships with others, and so in this sense, I wanted the project to be collaborative, both in and outside the classroom (family members, friends, and classmates). Not only do I think this is constructive in teaching students how to learn together, but I also believe it creates a multidimensional classroom filled with different perspectives.