We the People – New book!
Stories, essays, poems and pictures for the Climate Classroom
Most educational material dealing with the Climate Crisis focuses on scientific information. The text may be academic, laden with dry sentences and jargon, or it may be journalistic, presenting the facts about heat waves and hurricanes in the style of a magazine article. We see pictures of a polar bear on a tiny iceberg, and a wildfire raging through a forest, and the white arms of bleached coral. We may see a picture of an oil well, and we may see a picture of a wind turbine.
What these teaching materials rarely if ever mention are the students themselves, who will live their lives confronting the unprecedented challenges of the 21st Century. The young people know enough about the Climate Crisis to be deeply worried about their future (even if they try to hide that worry, that fear, that dread, that anger, that bleak depression . . . behind the appearance of being light-hearted and cool.)
Featured E-books
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Photos from Sognsvann
Perfect ice on Sognsvann in January, 2017. Sognsvann is a lake at the edge of Oslo, wrapped by forest, at the end of a train line. Bring your skates, bring your skis, bring your baby buggy, bring your happy dog.
Meet the author
While the other twelve-year-olds were roaring around in a gang, John Slade, usually a solitary kid, was snorkeling in a lake with myriads of fish and tadpoles and turtles. He discovered a freshwater sponge, which he brought back to the dock to show everyone. No one was interested. It was limp and green and it smelled.
Over the following half-century, the snorkler watched as hundreds of fish become a scattered few, because acid rain ravaged the lake. When fishermen overstocked the lake with six-inch bass, year after year, the snorkler watched the smaller fish and frogs and crayfish vanish until the lake was nearly barren of life. The bass flourished for a while, then ate their own young. When John tried to talk with the fishermen, they gave him the finger.
John knows, today, about poisoning and plundering a lake. He knows that the same can be done, on a global scale, to planet Earth. While the other young teachers were seeking tenure-track positions, John Slade, with a doctorate in literature from Stanford University, taught English further and further from home. He taught West Indian students on an island in the Caribbean, Norwegian students above the polar circle, Sami students (the reindeer people) at their new college on the tundra, and Russian students at a university in St. Petersburg. The solitary kid found his best friends in the international classrooms.
Photo gallery
Who Would Be Reading John Slade?
Book Club
If Herodotus were here today, he would be reading John Slade.
If General Washington were here today, he would be reading John Slade.
If Benjamin Franklin were here today, he would be reading John Slade.
If Abigail Adams were here today, she would be reading John Slade.
If Abraham Lincoln were here today, he would be reading John Slade.
If Dwight Eisenhower were here today, he would be reading John Slade.
If Rachel Carson were here today, she would be reading John Slade.
If your great-grandchildren were here today,
they would insist that you read John Slade.