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All Hands on Deck--You Can Make A Difference! A Solutions Focused Course Using Systems Thinking and Stella Modeling Tools to Address Climate Change with Green Work! A Five Week Course Designed for Upward Bound Students in 2019 University of Massachusetts Boston: Beta Pilot---Summer 2019 Funded by NSF Grant #1759163 1 | All Hands on Deck Dear Upward Bound Students, Each generation is faced with new challenges and new stories that define an era. As students in 2019, your generation is faced with an especially deep challenge of climate change and environmental degradation. But each challenge is also an opportunity. This course is designed to be a co-learning education experience to foster our increased understanding of the problem and help us develop the skills to work together to address the serious challenge faced by global climate change. It’s not something that any one of us can solve alone, or any one state or country can solve. It is a challenge to which each of us working together on all levels (self, family, neighborhood, city, state, country, world) has something to contribute and can make a difference. This challege also intersects with related issues of poverty, inequality, civil rights and the rights of all species. This 5 week pilot course is designed to immerse you in systems thinking as applied to your own personal life journey, and your role in global and local climate and sustainability issues. In this course you will develop skill using Stella Software a powerful tool for modeling solutions and prepare a systems model presentation to share with your community. Through systems thinking and technology tools we will explore together the critical issues and potential solutions that touch each of us where ever we are and what ever our interest for future jobs or careers. As this is a Beta Pilot of this course, thoughout the 5 weeks we will be asking for your feedback about the course to help improve it. We will also be asking you to complete certain surveys that will help us make the course better for next year. Thanks for your help, Thank you ---We hope you enjoy this UB educational experience! 2 | All Hands on Deck Getting Started with All Hands on Deck Cloud and Surface Temperature Data combined in image from NASA’s Terra Satellite This guidebook although specifically designed for high school participants in the Upward Bound summer program can be used by anyone who wants to actively learn about and engage in the process of understanding and practicing Systems Thinking Habits and modeling to help address one of the key problems of our times—that of global and local climate change. Through 20 integrated lessons, we engage in “empathetic science inquiry” and explore positive possible solutions that can be applied both globally and locally by each person. 3 | All Hands on Deck The overall student skills that you will be developing by completing this course are: Knowledge of systems concepts and habits Understanding of historical and current World Climate issues through simulation and role play Knowledge of the concept climate balance and the carbon cycle Awareness of climate Solutions and how to apply them including the role that your actions play Skill in using Stella Architect https://www.iseesystems.com/store/products/stella-architect.aspx modeling tool for modeling problem solving Solutions of the potential impact of a Solution of interest to you Knowledge of Green Jobs that are Related to Climate Solutions Importance of collaboration to address climate issues Increased skill in written and oral communication about what you are learning through project and product based activities The guidebook is designed as an active-project based hands-on course with students at the center. The co-learning lessons are designed to be implemented in a collaborative group setting with each of you contributing your diverse talents and skills. There will be a mix of group and individual projects to complete but each lesson will require each of your active and engaged participation to be successfully completed. Some of the lessons may be challenging, but your Upward Bound teacher/facilitator or mentor will always be there to facilitate and help you successfully complete each of the 20 modules. We also aim to have some fun along the way! 4 | All Hands on Deck The co-learning lessons will contain the following as appropriate: Introduction to topic and overview Objective and learning goals Time required (usually 60 minutes) Links to other lessons Reflection and discussion questions Materials/technology needed Writing or oral sharing Additional resources with links Data tables, lab sheets, worksheets, guide sheets as applicable A key focus of systems thinking is developing your knowledge and skills needed to engage throughout your life in what some have called “empathetic inquiry.” Being able to expand your thinking to see interconnections and “take the place of other persons, species and elements in the universe to whom you are in fact intimately related. This is a co-learning project in which we the developers of this curriculum, your Upward Bound teachers, and you as an Upward Bound participant in this the summer of 2019 are on a shared journey to help address critical issues of our times together! Welcome aboard and ALL HANDS ON DECK! 5 | All Hands on Deck Course Outline Unit 1: Understanding Systems Lesson 1-1: What is a System? Lesson 1-2: Habits of a Systems Thinker Lesson 1-3: Stock-Flow Maps Lesson 1-4: Feedback Unit 2: World Climate Simulation and Role Play Experience Lesson 2-1: Introduction to World Climate Lesson 2-2: The World Climate Simulation (2 hour lesson) Lesson 2-3: Build Your Own Roadmap to Climate Success Unit 3: Introduction to Stella, Carbon Cycle Model Role Play and Drawdown Lesson 3-1: Introduction to Stella with Simple Model of CO2 Emissions and Removals Lesson 3-2&3: An Empathetic Inquiry Role Play Deeper Dive into Modeling the Carbon Cycle in Stella (2 hours—can divide into 2 segments) Lesson 3-4: Putting Drawdown Solutions into Your Models Unit 4—Solutions, Multisolving, Let’s Do This, Becoming an Expert Lesson 4-1: Bring Drawdown Home, Selecting Solutions of Interest and Specifying in Your Model 6 | All Hands on Deck Lesson 4-2: Multisolving Lesson 4-3: Let’s Do This Lesson 4-4: Research—Becoming an Expert Around Your Solution Unit 5: All Hands on Deck---Sharing Your Model and Your Story with Your Community Lesson 5-1: You Can Make a Difference Lesson 5-2: Bringing It all Together Lesson 5-3&4: Presentations Pre-survey is at https://fs12.formsite.com/DZNAsc/PreSurvey/index.html 7 | All Hands on Deck Unit 1 Lesson 1-1: What is a System? Overview: The Systems Thinker Welcome to your systems thinking journey! This journey toward clearer thinking and new ideas, starts with the same terms and tools of systems theory that scientists and engineers use to meet the challenges of complex problems. With your first steps as a systems thinker, you will apply a Next Generation Science and Engineering Practice (1. Asking Questions and Defining Problems) to examine systems theory and relationships. Along the way, you will explore many familiar, meaningful connections vital to your thinking and learning. Your understanding of the systems at work in your life affects your decisions, your actions and your life choices, shaping your own journey’s future. 8 | All Hands on Deck “Systems Thinking is a vantage point from which you see a whole, a web of relationships, rather than focusing only on the detail of any particular piece. Events are seen in the larger context of a pattern that is unfolding over time.” (High Performance Systems) Objectives and Learning Goals Identify the four components of a system. Connect the four components of a system to a system of personal interest. Recognize your role in impacting a system. Time and Materials For this lesson you will use: The internet and a video at https://az.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/syslit14- sci-sys-bigidea/what-are-systems/ A large space to participate in the “The Systems Game.” Your teacher will facilitate this game. An on-line or flash drive space to place your work from this lesson as well as future lessons (Your teacher will direct you about setting this up) Access to a “Twitter” account for posting This lesson is designed to be completed in about 60 minutes. You are always encouraged to spend some time outside of class thinking about the lesson. Reflection Questions (these are key questions in the “background of the lesson”. Keep them in mind as you proceed through the lesson. Often they appear again at the end of the lesson in an activity or discussion) What are the major systems of which you are a part? How do you connect or fit into to your systems? How do you influence or impact your systems? 9 | All Hands on Deck Integration and Scaffolding (How Does this Lesson Fit into the Overall Course?) This is the first lesson of Unit 1 in a 5 week co-learning course. Unit 1, focuses on the concept of a system and habits of a systems thinker. In this Unit the foundation for the subsequent lessons is built. Although the iStronG All Hands on Deck individual lessons are designed to be complete in themselves, each lesson is also designed and ordered to build on the previous lessons, to give you the tools to fully engage in subsequent lessons, and to form an integrated whole. The intent of the curriculum is that together with your teacher and peers you will make a “co-learning scaffold” with strong “bridges” from which to launch a renewed process of co-creating knowledge and understanding of the world around you.

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