Thank you, Josephine! Your curriculum looks like it is being well developed - CLEAN always appreciates resources that use scientific data. Once you have a finalized version and if you feel it's relevant to climate (we don't always include weather resources unless they have a climate focus), please suggest it for our collection: https://cleanet.org/clean/participate/suggest_resource.html

Vivian,  Your feedback means a great deal to me.  Abigail will be reading it this evening when she gets off of school. (She is in the 9th grade in Maryland, in the county just north of DC). That you share your reaction as a member of the team that produced YOUR video will mean the world to her too.

We've been viewing the videos in the Showcase, and noting which video teams we simply MUST provide supportive comments to.  I'm being quite honest that yours was already on our short list.  

Readers of this comment can take this as a recommendation:  Please see and comment on the "Vivian's video,"  in the link above and to the left.

We have 6 more days to be in conversation on-line. Yes... Please! I look forward to our comparing notes.  To look for ways to collaborate in the year(s) ahead.

Thank you so much. I have gotten so much support from adults throughout my time working with James, but encouragement from people like you never loses its meaning. This is a multi-generational fight. Everyone has a part in this, everyone can contribute, and often kids aren’t included in that “everyone”. Even if our opinions are acknowledged, we are judged as “not have anything meaningful to bring to the table”. Reading all of these incredibly supportive comments from people who do acknowledge the thoughts, views, and opinions of young people is so, so inspiring. It gives me so much hope.

Remy,

One of the great benefits to us presenters, when taking part in the Showcase, is getting to meet the facilitators. 

How does the Showcase do it?! How is it that the best educators and leaders in STEM education and social justice come together in this one annual event.?  (Those are rhetorical questions. The Showcase makes the details of its methods available to all. Perfection.)

We are so glad to meet up with you.  To have you as a facilitator is incredible. As you saw, given Twitter activity, we've been getting to know your important work. I hope it is OK for a presenter to say to a facilitator.  If not, please don't read this until after May 17.  It is sincere.  I hope that we stay in touch.  We believe strongly in your work.  Where collaboration is practical and timely, let's not fail to advance working together.

Thirty three cheers for the STEM for All Video Showcase, and its collaborative spirit and achievements!

LaShawnda!  Woah, I am simply floored by the facilitators we are so fortunate to have engaged with this video.  You and Remy.. just now Harrison too!  There is so much we have to learn from your work, and insight. All of you.

There is much I will just step back on and let Abigail and you chat.  Maybe Noemi Milam will be able to chime in too -- one of the 7th grade students in Climate Club at Lowell.  I'll especially leave it to the students (who might better be described as the younger colleagues on our team) to speak to the impact of their learning.  And their dedicated work.  ... Ahem... STEM-based climate action.

How can our work not be intertwined with action on social justice?  We're not shy that we are deliberately working to prove, by example, that it is simply wrong for something akin to Apartheid to exist relative to STEM. Including it being wrong on who is supposedly not capable to be STEM leaders.. Our presenters share a passion to prove what is possible.

I think I can respond more on the numbers and demographics questions.  There are many layers to our work, and much history.  

Specifically, on the pioneering of this STEM innovation -- being able to do energy efficiency surveys quickly and accurately of buildings as large as the US Capitol, the National Museum of Natural History, National Museum of African American History and Culture, and buildings on the Howard University Campus... that really took off in 2020 -- in the very early stages of the COVID pandemic.

The initial teams were all students at Lowell School in Washington DC. 6th-9th graders. First at the school and in their homes; next was a survey of the National Gallery of Art. Teams now are at 9 high schools in the Montgomery County Public School system. That's in partnership with the POWER program, sponsored by the Mo. county Department of Environmental Protection.  (Big kudos to Larissa Johnson on that!)  Abigail graduated from Lowell last year and now is in the 9th grade at Albert Einstein High School, working with the mentor for the Environmental Club, Lydia Walker... and Abigail's fellow students.

The energy efficiency surveys in DC evolved from the partnership between Lowell School and Mobile Climate Science Labs.  That started at the school, while providing hands-on science labs on a mass scale in DC -- especially to communities of color.  For instance, at the 2019 AAAS Family Science Days.  In partnership with the Howard University Department of Chemistry.

Abigail is one of the students who have been STEM lab presenters since 2018.  Educators in climate science (itself a form of community level climate action), not just learners. Several of the labs already focused on short-wavelength infrared light. (With others on long-wavelength infrared light.) Approximately 40 students have been engaged in presenting hands-on science labs in the communities and to students in their elementary (primary) school. Including at major scientific conferences.

The programs are on-going, with the design being to grow and advance.  No end in sight.  So it is up to each student how long they want to stay involved. Right thru their years at a university if they wish to.  Each year, new students join from the elementary school grades.  The resources of CLEAN, and assistance from the CLEAN Network have always been touchstones in our work.

I've gone on much too long already.  So maybe later, I'll come back to the whole other place-based component: our teams and communities in California. Science festivals, field trip hubs conferences, mass scale community events and in the schools.  And why it is no accident that most of our presenters are people of color.

Perhaps I'll leave you,for now, with an introduction to the coast-to-coast element. The link to Abigail's video last year for the STEM for All Video Showcase.  Where you will also meet one of our leading STEM lab educators, Sean Bovell:

https://stemforall2021.videohall.com/presentati...

Wow! It sounds like your team is doing amazing and important work.  The simple fact that your students remained engaged throughout their academic careers speaks volumes!. 

This is a great point! Thank you so much for watching our video. Abigail and team are fantastic.

Exactly the point we want to make! On top of that, science is often difficult to understand, or at least it’s presented in a way not accessible to the general public, much less to students. It’s another language altogether, and when you are fluent in that language and are so used to talking about these topics in that language, it is difficult to convey those ideas in general terms. But people can understand this. It all comes down to accessible language. 

Thank you, Russanne! We very much appreciate people like you helping to spread the word about CLEAN. Your current position sounds neat and I'm glad you are able to bring citizen science to student learners in Brazil and that the CLEAN videos are useful for you. We also appreciate that you have reviewed resources for CLEAN - if you are a scientist or educator, please consider becoming a CLEAN reviewer.

Barbara,  Your videos have had a profound influence on us.  We have consciously, and quite deliberately, been learning from you and your team. For many years. Which means drawing from the essential wisdom of the Mexican and Indigenous cultural heritage your programs are discussing.  Our desire is to ourselves Learn by Observing and Pitching In (practicing LOPI). That is precisely what we elder volunteers encourage and allow our younger volunteers to do -- in regards to climate action, social justice and STEM education.  How we always work together as a multi-generational team. I think of our students as young colleagues in making a better world.

I say your videos in plural as we would like to consider ourselves a part of your family, or village. Your culture is our culture. Your way has become our way. On purpose.

https://stemforall2022.videohall.com/presentati...

https://stemforall2021.videohall.com/presentati...

https://stemforall2020.videohall.com/presentati...

https://stemforall2019.videohall.com/presentati...

We too, in turn, enthusiastically vote for your videos. Always. Further, we live what your team encourages. Learning by Observation and Pitching In (#LOPI) is now what we are all about at the Mobile Climate Science Labs, ClimateChangeEducation.org and Lowell School. It is how Abigail Stark relates to others in our (her) teams.

Thank you Barbara! We appreciate it.

Wow! Thank you James for that amazing comment, and for your amazing work!  (And for your support of our videos...)  I'm so glad to know about your team's work. Barbara

Thank you, Barbara! I'm glad our work connected here - thanks for your support of our video and I'm glad we can support your videos as well.

I’ve since left the school where this is based. I’m a freshman in high school and many of the people still working with CLEAN resources are in middle school, but I have heard amazing things. So many of them are taking excellent initiative and I’m really blown away by their dedication and passion. The interest around this has taken it from a club to an actual class. As for my career, I want to continue to work on energy surveys and get people interested in them. It’s an excellent way to introduce people to climate solutions. A (fairly nebulous) end goal at this point would be to overhaul the lights in the Capital Building, although we won’t be getting a good look at the inside of it anytime soon. Thank you so much for your questions!

Yes, we've also found that getting people interested in taking action to save energy is a good way to begin a conversation about climate change.

Good luck with your goal with regard to the Capitol - who knows, you may be able to persuade the powers that be to let you do an audit. I would not be surprised if you did!

Gilly, I think you'll love this.  About the Capitol Building specifically:

Regarding the inside: Abigail and the students have a standing invitation to do surveys inside the Capitol -- especially of the House side.  I have met with officers of the US Capitol Police.  (Yes, the heroes on January 6th, who defended the Capitol and the electoral process.  One and the same.)  One of the Lowell students and her mom also talked with one of our friends at USCPD. Two officers will provide personal tours inside to Climate Club DC students -- while the students  have SWIR camcorders in hand.  Tours are just now coming back.  We will be inside soon!

Perhaps the results can be a subject of our next video Showcase video.  Innovate to Mitigate teams are absolutely welcome to benefit on this.  There is plenty of room for further innovation, and true independent creativity.

Regarding doing a survey from the outside.  Footage already taken!!  Over the summer, Mobile Climate Science Labs teams will be processing and analyzing the images we've already collected. Making split screen images, for example.  This includes the use of spectrum analyzers based on diffraction gratings. 

Abigail was part of our daytime scouting and daytime reference photography. Others of us were out until 2am getting night time shots. (The police keep a protective eye out of us -- looking out for our safety. Loving to look at the shots we've just captured. Very supportive.)

We have survey images of all the major buildings on Capitol Hill. We know which (as in whose) offices of the Supreme Court are still hold outs with incandescent lighting. (Government waste in plain sight, if you have the right cameras.) 

For the surveys, we are using short-wavelength infrared, which can see right through windows. We are very respectful of privacy.  The Capitol Building, however, is being photographed almost constantly by interested visitors, so a chandelier or sconce light inside a room is totally fair game.  Not intrusive. (Note: if we were using our long-wavelength thermal infrared cameras, they would not be able to see inside.  Due to the greenhouse effect.  Glass absorbs and blocks long wavelength light/energy, of course.  Climate science 101.)

Hint on one of the results we will be reporting -- publicly and to our friends at the Architect of the Capitol:  The lights at the very top of the Capitol are still incandescent!!  They can be changed to LED with little trouble -- technically at least.  These lights are known as the Tholos Lights.  They are turned on only when congress is in session. They indicate when either or both the senate and house are in session.  Visible from almost anywhere in DC. 

That's an example of a perfect subject for the teams to report on. Both symbolic and of real energy savings significance. Made possible by a STEM innovation pioneered by Abigail and her posse. 

The electricians and maintenance crews of the Architect of the Capitol ( its own department in the US government) are very busy converting to LED's. Yea, AOC! (as they are known in DC)   Our students are helping them by finding the lights they have missed.  No surprise, with so many light fixtures, a lot get missed.

We also are documenting the historic transition to much more efficient lighting -- right on Capitol Hill.  The students' cameras dramatically and beautifully reveal that which is not visible to the naked eye.

Question for Abigail:  Should we keep Gilly and Santi up to date on major milestones of our energy efficiency surveys and historic documentation of progress on Capitol Hill?

I look forward to hearing from them, thank you Jim!

At TERC, we're also proud of Tamara Ledley, the NSF grantee who co-founded and was the Chair of the CLEAN  Network at its inception.

Thank you, John! And thank you Gillian for mentioning Tamara & TERC who were integral to the development of CLEAN. Tamara is still part of the CLEAN Leadership and does work with CLEAN such as hosting webinars for educators.

There are many ways to encourage youth to join climate action. There are youth summits (such as those developed by the Wild Center), encouraging students to discuss climate & sustainability with their administrations and school boards, doing energy surveys such as the Climate Club DC does, and speaking with local emergency managers about resiliency and mitigation/adaptation efforts. We host the CLEAN Network, which is a space in which educators and educator supporters can come together and discuss these ideas for how to encourage youth to engage in climate change action. I'd encourage you to join: https://cleanet.org/clean/community/index.html

Hi Katie - I'm already a member, but thanks for the invitation!