Astrid Dubois and Max Harmon on their summer adventures: volcanos and place-based curriculums

Astrid Dubois ’20 and Max Harmon ’19 gave a special log lunch talk about their CES-funded summer endeavors.

Astrid spoke about her summer internship at the Mt. Saint Helens institute in Washington, her home state. She worked as an educator, guiding groups of students on field trips. Astrid also brought our attention to a 1980 earthquake and landslide on site, which wrought massive ecological destruction upon the region.

Max worked in L.A., his hometown, at a high school using a place-based curriculum. This is important to him because of his educational experience, which was isolated from the place he was in. “We don’t learn about the things that we care about,” said Max. Learning skills that we may or may not use in our postgraduate lives subverts the purpose of education. He argued that we need greater connectivity between curriculums and social issues, as well as connections between the issues themselves. If we don’t get this from our educational institutions, we won’t be able to solve the complex issues that define the society we live in.

Link to Max’s presentation tool: https://prezi.com/view/aRLJ65aPYCSuP4zZHmsF/

—Jane Tekin ’19