Program provides new avenues for teaching environmental science, including art

By Mark Muckenfuss

A five-year $1.3 million grant-funded program has drawn together leaders from three universities and teachers from three counties to introduce over 4,000 middle and high school students to environmental issues through teaching both science and art. 

That art aspect is particularly important this month, as October is National Arts and Humanities Month.

The Environmental Science Through Art program, which has also partnered with the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Artists Ink, the Monterey County Office of Education and the Youth Council, is now in its fourth year. CSU Monterey Bay recently held an ESTA workshop where a classroom full of teachers learned about local agriculture and incorporating art as a way to get the message of ecology across. In previous years, the program has also focused on plastic pollution, ocean health and climate change. 

“I’m hoping by teaching teachers, we’re getting them to open this dialogue with their students about environmental health,” said Brenda Eskenazi, senior scientist at CSUMB, professor emerita of epidemiology at UC Berkeley and co-author of the program’s grant. 

Other authors include CSUMB professors Dan Fernandez and Enid Baxter Ryce and associate professors Corin Slown and Amir Attia. Asa Bradman, who is chair of the public health department at UC Merced and spent 25 years researching the effects of pesticides on children in the Salinas Valley, also helped write the grant. 

Bradman said part of the program’s aim is to address increasing concerns about the environment and how teachers can more effectively educate their students in that area. 

“Concern about climate change and health is exploding and we want to provide additional resources,” Bradman said. “We want to increase environmental health literacy among students in Monterey County and a few other locations. Hopefully, that might spark an interest and encourage them to think about other career opportunities in these areas.”

Michelle Newkirk-Smith teaches freshman biology and senior anatomy at Carmel High School. She’s been involved with the ESTA program from the first year and feels strongly enough about it that she enlisted her son, Elijah Smith, a first-year teacher at Anzar High School, as a participant. She said ESTA has allowed her to change the curriculum and focus of her courses. 

“Instead of teaching environmental science just at the end [of the year], I create year-long projects,” Newkirk-Smith said. “Last year, my students picked one (geographic) area and then tracked air pollution and weather conditions the entire year. They had to dig down and find what was causing that pollution.”

Another teacher, Elizabeth Cooper, teaches seventh- and eighth-grade science at La Paz Middle School. Her three years with the ESTA program have given her more resources for bringing topical science issues to the classroom.

“As I’ve learned more, I’m able to bring in current information and talk about what’s happening locally,” Casper said. “Last year I talked about the loss of the kelp forests due to climate change. The first year, I did a full-on trash and plastics survey that I never would have done if it weren’t for this program.”

As Casper and Newkirk-Smith spoke, they were engaged with others in pressing and drawing pigment from indigo leaves. The activity was part of the art element of the program, which is Baxter Ryce’s domain. A professor of art, she teaches in the Cinematic Arts and Technology department at CSUMB. She has been showing participating teachers how they can make art from natural materials – such as tempera paint, oak gall ink and plant dyes – avoiding plastics and sometimes toxic chemicals. 

“I grew a pigment garden, so I could give teachers the seeds and they could grow their own,” Baxter Ryce said. “It’s relaxing and exciting to use natural materials for art. 

“Art provides a unique and healing road into the science content,” she added. “We know from our reports that it is working to increase student engagement. It’s integrating thinking in a holistic way about environmental health and human health and giving students new avenues into the content.”

In addition to CSUMB, the Monterey Bay Aquarium has its own cohort of about 70 educators who are focused on issues connected with ocean ecology. The aquarium has also hosted programs for both groups over the course of the project’s history.

Slown, an associate professor of biology and chemistry, said the program is designed to be flexible for teachers. 

“It can be part of their courses, whatever they’re teaching,” Slown said. “It can be any class interested in these themes.”

The long-term goal is to spread the word. 

Slown said many of the students involved will be producing projects that they will share with fellow students who may not be in the program.

Eskanazi said it’s hoped the reach will go even further. 

“We hope that we get more students to be aware and bring that home to their families,” she said. “If we can educate students, we’re educating families.”