![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.yorku.ca\/yfile\/photos\/20101108\/\/FESAndersSandberg.jpg\")
Right: Professor Anders Sandberg\u00a0delivers the introductory talk to a class of high school students for the Change Your World conference<\/strong><\/p>\nYork Professor Anders Sandberg, a finalist in TVOntario\u2019s 2008 Big Ideas\u00a0Best Lecturer Competition, opened the conference by explaining how York can be used to illustrate some of the common environmental issues we deal with every day. In his talk, \"Digging Where You Stand: Exploring Environmental Issues on the 快播视频 Campus\", he gave details of flooding storm water and the drinking water supply, bringing some of the world's issues to the front steps of students who may never have considered them.<\/p>\n
Next came the workshops \u2013 and the conference\u2019s key twist. Though the workshop content was developed by environmental studies professors, they trained FES undergraduate and graduate students on how to present and facilitate the workshops, which included:<\/p>\n
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- \u201cZine Your Scene: What Does the Environment Mean to You?\u201d, coordinated by Professor Leesa Fawcett.<\/li>\n
- \u201cGrowing Art: Rooted in Communities\u201d and \u201cTelling Food and Eating Stories: Digital Storytelling Around Food Issues\u201d, both coordinated by Professor Deborah Barndt.<\/li>\n
- \u201cLandscape: Stand in the Place Where You Live\u201d, coordinated by Professor Laura Taylor.<\/li>\n
- \u201cThe Politics of Climate Change\u201d, coordinated by Professor Anders Sandberg.<\/li>\n
- \u201cEmPOWERing Ontario - How Renewable Energy Programs Help Promote Change and Create Prosperity\u201d, coordinated by Professor Jos\u00e9 Etcheverry.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
These participatory sessions invited high school students to create art, tell stories and ask questions about how their lives intersect with the environments that surround them. At the same time, they highlighted the FES focus on experiential education, giving the York student presenters a venue in which to exercise newly developed skills that will serve them in their degrees and in their careers.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.yorku.ca\/yfile\/photos\/20101108\/FESZineTreeCollage.jpg\")
Left: A zine tree collage created by high school students in one of the workshops<\/strong><\/p>\nAs the workshops progressed, collages reflecting the high school students' views on the environment could be seen hanging in classrooms, while chalkboard notes left evidence of the material covered and the preoccupations of people only beginning to find their places in the world. Some workshops went so far as to walk students through parts of the York campus where they could see firsthand how projects like the garden located in front of the Health, Nursing & Environmental Studies Building could affect people\u2019s perception of built landscapes.<\/p>\n
Afeefa Karim, a third year bachelor of environmental studies student and facilitator of \u201cThe Politics of Climate Change\u201d workshop, was surprised by how much her workshop participants knew. \u201cThese students definitely know more about the environment and its issues than I did when I started the Environmental Studies Program.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.yorku.ca\/yfile\/photos\/20101108\/FESChangeWorldWtrBottles.jpg\")
Right: These Change Your World water bottles were distributed to the participating high school students<\/strong><\/p>\nEvery hour or so, as the day progressed, Vari Hall would fill with the voices of 300 high school students as they talked, laughed and moved to their next set of workshops and events \u2013 learning not only about the environmental studies perspective on changing the world, but about everything 快播视频 can offer them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to facilitate interdisciplinary, critical thinking about different environments to encourage high school students to contribute their knowledge and desires for changing \u00a0the world,\u201d said FES Associate Dean Leesa Fawcett, who also gave the conference\u2019s closing presentation.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur hope is that by participating in presentations given by our current undergraduate and graduate students, high school students will see the possibilities our Environmental Studies Program can open up to them. At the same time, this was experiential education for our current student presenters \u2013 helping them gain tangible teaching skills and giving them an impressive new item for their resum\u00e9s.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the end of the day, each high school student left Vari Hall with a 快播视频 Change Your World water bottle, a reminder of the activities they had participated in and the ideas they had developed. The bottle also represented a notion fundamental to environmental studies \u2013 that the world can be changed in small ways, such as by avoiding bottled water.<\/p>\n
From her experience presenting, Karim saw that that the conference really brought the Change Your World message home to the high school students. \u201cThey left the workshops with a curiosity to question the everyday ideas and issues around them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n