Great video and project. You state that the project is nearing its end. What are your plans to keep your efforts and/or impact going?

Thanks, Kwame. I'll weigh on and also ask the co-presenter who manages the project to weigh in. We've been working for about 8 years with schools and community groups in the region and will continue to do so. we've recently built on the work to look beyond students' direct action STEM community contributions and introducing them more to how local government policy decisions can impact the local watershed and how they could use the data they collect to inform policy. we're at a really early phase on this work. 

To add to what Connie mentioned, we have been lucky in this project that we, along with our other organizations partners (The SEMIS Coalition, EcoWorks, The Washtenaw County Water Resources Commissioner's Office) have long-standing relationships with the schools that participated, and in the communities where this work took place. This project is just one example of the great place-based and community-driven environmental science work that is happening in Southeast Michigan. Some of the work in this project has been built on, and other efforts are continuing with these same schools, as well as other schools in the region.

Hi Sarah.  I just posted on your video and answered this question there. The students in our projects do present in public via a large forum day in the region where various community science - place based STEM projects come together. we do think the opportunity to communicate has big benefits - with respect to students' getting feedback that they can do science, that they've used STEM toward the benefit of their community, and that they are part of a larger movement of young people engaging in science for public good. I liked your JEI project and we certainly want our students to develop self concepts as investigators. I'll certainly share the info about the JEI more broadly with our team of teachers and community partners.  Thanks

Thanks for the question, Catherine and you bring up a great point I think teachers doing this type of work with young people struggle with. All of the projects students took on to address environmental problems were based on close collaboration of the STEM community partner, and the teachers. The team from UW and the SEMIS Coalition worked closely with them to help align students' work to the classroom curriculum, and the partners' areas of expertise, as well as the students' interest. So there were some boundaries on what the students chose to do.

This also differed by class, with some of the projects being more student driven than others. Some classes discussed options, others used a form of criteria based decision-making, borrowing from organizations like Earth Force, to help students narrow down choices of what they wanted to do and what problems to address, and those criteria included things like "is this doable". Still others connected what they were doing to work already happening in the community, which helped to keep the scope and actions reasonable, and to address larger issues than the students could have done just by themselves. And all of the issues students worked on were things they saw in their own schools and communities, so even a large issue like water quality could be narrowed to a smaller scope when they looked more closely at how their neighborhoods were being impacted and how they might tackle just one aspect of the problem.

I hope this helps!

Hi Kevin, I would say that similarly to your work with EBAYS, from what I got from your video, much of the student work in our project is driven by the connection between environmental and other social justice issues. Since our program differs from classroom to classroom, and the expertise of each community partner differs, the focus given justice these connections also differs from classroom to classroom. But all of the teachers and partners participate in professional learning in place-based education, with a focus on ecojustice, which seeks to address the same root causes of social justice and environmental issues. In these projects, teachers and partners both ask students to think critically about why some areas in their city, for example,  have sewage backups caused by flooding, or higher asthma rates, than others. In two projects students were interested in air quality and investigated the impacts of a nearby oil refinery and trash incinerator on levels of air pollution. The community partner working with these classes is an organization with an environmental justice focus, and introduced students to other similar environmental justice issues that the students connected with. We wrote a little about this, and about what students have to say about their learning around these issues, in this piece, if you are interested: https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2021.693455

Hi Erin: Thank you for the article. Indeed, our work has generated findings that are similar to those described in the article, particularly with regard to students becoming more aware of the connections between environmental and social justice issues. 

That's great! We would love to learn more about your work and what you are finding about student learning, especially around issues of justice. What is the best way to follow your work?

We recently submitted an invited paper to JRST that is currently under review, which describes some of our work and related findings. Until it is published, I suppose the best thing to do is remain in contact via email.  

Hi Andrew. Thanks for your question. I think you are right to consider the relative weighting of "natural" vs. "engineered" figuring in any project. We feel that students' place-based experience - both in terms of how their knowledge learned from their community and culture and in terms of how they can contribute to their local community with their learning - have to be at the center of any learning experience. The fact that you use words like "collaborative" suggests your commitment to learning from students' lived experiences. I do think there are some common learnings that students gain from place-based approaches - concerning human-nature interdependence, respect and responsibility for the 'more than human' world, and some principles about the Environmental Commons that they carry with them after participating in projects - rural or urban. Here's a paper that our team wrote based on a project in a rural area that may be relevant. 

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/016...

HI Nicole.  I totally agree that building relationships and trust are the foundation. The fact that you're committed to co-design of programs suggests that you're already on sound footing. We've been working with the schools and community-based partners for a number of years. The fact that we keep showing up has educated us about the challenges teachers and students are constantly negotiating (even before Covid). We also have participated for the past 8 years in a regional coalition of place-based educators - SEMIS - which has been a conduit for connecting with teachers and community partners - and sometimes we have recruited new educators to the SEMIS coalition. Our team has presented results from projects that we have documented over the years - at the annual SEMIS professional development - those presentations shine a light on the great work that teachers and community partners do and members of our team also have collaborated with teachers and partners in presentations to STEM educator networks and professional meetings. So there has been a reciprocity built over the years from which all of us have benefitted. 

thanks for your question, Russanne. We agree that Dante's voice captures a major goal of the project. Regarding numbers of classes, etc. - We collaborate with the Southeast Michigan Stewardship Coalition (SEMIS), a regional coalition of formal and non-formal educators dedicated to place-based education. They have built relationships with schools throughout SE MI and have a large and constantly growing group of educators who participate in their professional development annually. The teachers and community partners for Urban STEM Stewards were recruited through these connections and we have been documenting what students do and learn and how adults collaborate with them in projects in schools located in urban communities. Over the past 7-8 years about 500 students have been involved in the projects we have documented. The results of our documentation are shared during the annual PD to foster and inform further teacher engagement - and also are shared by our team and SEMIS with various STEM practitioner networks. Thanks again for your interest.  

Thanks for your interest, Mike. We have been working for several years with the teachers and community partners and work with SEMIS, a regional coalition of place-based educators. Our collective efforts will continue and we find that the projects evolve with each new cohort of classes. Students' solutions are implemented in various ways - some solutions can be done within the school year - i.e., installing rain gardens or bioswales; alerting local residents about bad air quality days. other solutions (getting rid of abandoned properties and replacing with public space, for example) take many years but dedicated teachers and community partners keep working with new cohorts of students to make those happen. since you mentioned urban schools, you may be interested in this publication: 

https://doi.org/10.3390/su13147736

Thanks for your interest, Nichole. Erin Gallay, the project manager, works closely with the teachers, community partners, and the SEMIS staff to manage the projects. Our team also has assessed the projects by collecting feedback from participants using multiple methods - open-ended reflections from students on what they learned; pre-post surveys; and interviews. Here are some representative publications. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2021.1994132.   https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2021.693455.  https://doi.org/10.3390/ su13147736. 

Thanks, Anita. The fact that Dante took what he learned to another community group and convinced them to implement a similar project suggests that there are some ripple effects, often hard to capture.

Thanks, Barbara.  These students reinforce my (sometimes waning) faith in humanity and hopes for the future. Best, Connie

Thanks for your remarks, Katie.  I couldn't agree more.

Thanks, Clara. We do have pre-post data on students' interest in careers where they could use science to benefit their community, family, and people. that's the way we have framed a STEM career in the study. Currently we are working on a paper to summarize those results. We do not have any possibility of following students long-term to actually find out what careers they pursue.

Thanks for your reflections, Anita. The work is critical in light of the environmental challenges younger generations face. They restore my faith in humanity.