DEVELOPING A VISUAL CONSTRUCT TO CONNECT STUDENTS TO PRESENT ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES USING PAST EVENTS

Classroom environments play a central role in generating student interest in a topic and can serve as a bridge to independent research and life-long learning. This project used fossil collections to illustrate past environmental events and highlight how they relate to contemporary environmental issues. Specific topics included displays on paleogeography, mass extinctions, and interactions among the biosphere, atmosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere. While each display focuses on various aspects of topics, together the displays focused on how past events can inform current environmental policy. For example, past mass extinctions were used to address present extinction rates by discussing the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and Global Carbon Emissions. All displays included access to additional resources (QR codes) so students could pursue specific topics of interest. Ultimately, the potential outcome of improved classroom environments is to intrigue students enough that they familiarize themselves with local policies and potential steps of action that transform their education into operation.