What do tree frogs, penguins, polar bears and Walt Disney World have in common?
They all have the power to get kids engaged in the battle against global warming, according to environmentalist Dave Finnegan, as they are all treasured by youngsters and threatened by the melting of the polar ice cap.
Finnegan, of "Climate Change is Elementary," treated students yesterday at the Bresnahan Elementary School to an interactive learning experience that allowed them to see through the eyes of a furious Mother Nature, feel the plight of the world's most endangered species, and see how a rising ocean could change the geography of our most beloved and revered locales.
It's a truly hands-on learning experience, Finnegan said, and one that will hopefully spur students' interest in science and help them become energy-efficient consumers.
"The kids got to become polar bears, trees in the rain forest and hurricanes whirling across the Atlantic," said Finnegan. "As penguins, they swam from Tierra del Fuego to the Antarctic and looked for krill under the gym mats."
This green curriculum day was sponsored by the Newburyport Elementary PTO and organized by the 40 members of the school's Green Team, which is launching a variety of green initiatives at the Bresnahan this year in an effort to teach kids the importance of reducing, reusing and recycling.
Third-graders are taking responsibility for collecting plastics and paper products and, with the help of some parent volunteers, are packaging them up for the recycling bin. Students are being encouraged to bring lunches that minimize needless packaging, and an online notice program implemented last year has kept thousands of sheets of paper from being wasted and burned in the trash heap.
Parent volunteers are helping to keep track of how many trees have been saved from the chopping block as a result — the number of blue ribbons tied to Bresnahan's trees offers a running tally. As of June 2008, the online notices program had saved over 27,500 pieces of paper — the equivalent of three trees.
Yesterday, Bresnahan's first-grade class walked the Antarctic continent as polar bears, and second-graders became frogs in the rain forest, with a few taking on the persona of earth's land masses drifting apart and back together with the rotation of the earth.
The third-grade class twirled across the gymnasium as hurricanes, all at various speeds according to their storm's severity. They also took on the roles of a penguin society — either parents searching for krill under the polar ice sheet, or baby penguins awaiting food for their survival.
It's the kind of learning through movement and imagination that offers a lasting impression, according to Finnegan, who said he's administered movement programs to over 2,000 schools across the country and is hopeful his new environmental program strikes a chord with the younger crowd.
"It's that experimental learning that brings it home to the kids," said Finnegan.
A performer and environmentalist by trade, Finnegan said he was one of 1,000 people trained by Al Gore in January 2007 to deliver Gore's slide show on global warming to the public. The 317 slides would become the basis for Gore's subsequent book and Academy Award-winning film, "An Inconvenient Truth." But Finnegan uses only 90 of those slides in his hour-long presentation to the kids at the end of the day, and throws in some additional photos for their unique interest to the smaller set.
"I throw in some pictures of colorful frogs and shots from the space station," Finnegan said.
In the slide show he presented to children yesterday, Finnegan used Gore's startling images of what might become of New York's downtown Manhattan if water levels continue to rise as a result of the melting of the polar ice cap. In slow motion he showed the kids how the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean would creep across the Florida peninsula, potentially swamping Miami and much of the existing coastline leading up to Orlando.
"Disney's not going to disappear because it's all the way up in the middle of the state," Finnegan told a relieved assembly, which responded with cheers that the beloved family vacation destination was safe for now.
Finnegan said after the assembly that educating children will be the most important thing we do as a society, and while his message is warmly received in a handful of states at the moment, he hopes to expand and offer his program in areas that aren't currently prioritizing green initiatives.
"It's going to determine our survivability, so it's important to get the kids involved," he said.
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