I am sharing the following links without much elaboration, for the benefit of educators who may wish to follow up on either of the sessions I led or co-led at the Massachusetts Council for Social Studies Going Global one-day conference at Bridgewater State on March 9, 2018.
Those who were not present may nonetheless find some of these links useful. I hope so!
Teaching Coffee
My Geography of Coffee web pages are available for exploring, and include my theme song. The coffee slides I used on the day of the presentation are available as well.
Climate Change
The climate slides I used at the end of the climate-change panel include images related to most of the links below.
One indication of the inadequate state of public understanding of climate change is that the problem is often conflated and confused with ozone depletion. I begin many of my courses with a Global Atmosphere Pre-test, in which students are asked to associate each of 18 items with one problem or the other. It is quite common for respondents to do little better than random chance would predict. I follow the exercise with a Global Atmosphere Post-test document that provides a short explanation of each of the answers. I use the two documents on successive days, and find this combination effective at drawing students into further exploration of one or both of these problems, and the differences in public-policy responses to each.
Carl Safina: All of my blog posts mentioning Carl Safina's essential book The View from Lazy Point and my Goodreads review of that book. This is one text that students often thank me for assigning.
Leonardo DiCaprio: The official trailer of Before the Flood and my blog post, which includes a map of every place visited in the film.
AAG Atlas Awardees: Primatologist Jane Goodall and Human-Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson (and my post about her message).
My own climate introduction page and climate entries on my Environmental Geography blog, especially Frosty Denial, Climate Attack, and Climate Foxholes.
In reply to the often-repeated suggestion that climate scientists have somehow shifted their descriptions as evidence has "proven" them wrong, I include a link to the very first article on the subject in my post Early Warning.
Finally, teachers -- and others -- who want to learn more may wish to take our course, Geography of Coffee & Climate Change. Dr. Rob Hellström and I offered it in July 2017 but did not get enough participants. We hope to offer it in another July session in the near future.