Post by reuben on Jun 3, 2017 9:52:19 GMT -8
Jakob Namson peered up at the towering ponderosa pine before him. He looked at his notebook, which was full of calculations scribbled in pencil. Then he looked back at the pine. If his math was right — and it nearly always is — he would need to plant 36 trees just like this one to offset the 831 pounds of carbon dioxide that his drive to school emits each year.
Namson, 17, gazed around at his classmates, who were all examining their own pines in northern Idaho’s Farragut State Park. He considered the 76 people in this grove, the 49,000 people in his home town of Coeur d'Alene, the millions of people in the United States driving billions of miles a year — and approached his teacher, Jamie Esler, with a solemn look on his face.
"I think I’m beginning to understand the enormity of the problem," the teenager said — a revelation that Esler later described as "one of the most inspirational moments of my entire career."
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"Esler is kind of a genius," said Annika Jacobson, 17. "He teaches things in a way that doesn’t mold your brain to his, so you almost don’t notice that you’re learning all these things."
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Esler prods students to investigate and reach their own conclusions about people's impact on the environment. Instead of lecturing about the perils of warmer winters, he takes his class into the surrounding Bitterroot Mountains to measure declining snowpack. Instead of telling them to use energy-efficient LED bulbs, he has them test the efficiency of four varieties of lightbulbs and then write about which they prefer and why.
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Since [Chuck] Morris’s daughter Sarah joined Esler's class, father and daughter have been having what he calls "discussions" — and what she calls "arguments" — about the issue.
"It’s kind of scary" to challenge a parent, she said, "but he’s respecting it."
"She suggests things, and I don't blow it off," Morris agreed, adding that he wants to encourage his daughter in her favorite class. "Who knows? Maybe Sarah gets looking into [an environmental problem] and she comes up with the solution."
Article
Namson, 17, gazed around at his classmates, who were all examining their own pines in northern Idaho’s Farragut State Park. He considered the 76 people in this grove, the 49,000 people in his home town of Coeur d'Alene, the millions of people in the United States driving billions of miles a year — and approached his teacher, Jamie Esler, with a solemn look on his face.
"I think I’m beginning to understand the enormity of the problem," the teenager said — a revelation that Esler later described as "one of the most inspirational moments of my entire career."
----------
"Esler is kind of a genius," said Annika Jacobson, 17. "He teaches things in a way that doesn’t mold your brain to his, so you almost don’t notice that you’re learning all these things."
----------
Esler prods students to investigate and reach their own conclusions about people's impact on the environment. Instead of lecturing about the perils of warmer winters, he takes his class into the surrounding Bitterroot Mountains to measure declining snowpack. Instead of telling them to use energy-efficient LED bulbs, he has them test the efficiency of four varieties of lightbulbs and then write about which they prefer and why.
----------
Since [Chuck] Morris’s daughter Sarah joined Esler's class, father and daughter have been having what he calls "discussions" — and what she calls "arguments" — about the issue.
"It’s kind of scary" to challenge a parent, she said, "but he’s respecting it."
"She suggests things, and I don't blow it off," Morris agreed, adding that he wants to encourage his daughter in her favorite class. "Who knows? Maybe Sarah gets looking into [an environmental problem] and she comes up with the solution."
Article
