True stories are powerful teaching tools for approaching environmental issues.  (Steps 2-4.) Success stories can introduce students not only to the issues themselves but also to different ways of approaching them, to the people and organizations that make solutions happen, and to the complications that they’ll need to overcome as they do so.  Success stories are a way of giving students positive images of solving environmental issues.  Here again, success stories can be found in the newspaper, magazines, TV shows and other media.

Assignment #9: Using Environmental Success Stories

Part One.

Reading Assignment: Success Stories   (Read all the stories.)

On the Discussion Board, post a short report on any one of the stories answering these questions:

·        What motivated the individual or group in this story to take action?

·        What types of action did they undertake?  (See note below.)

·        What barriers and challenges did they face?

·        How did they overcome these barriers?

Note:  One of the fundamental aims of EE is citizen involvement with and contribution to the resolution of issues that impact our daily lives. Dr. Harold Hungerford has written extensively about six categories of responsible citizen action that can be taken to resolve environmental issues. These are:

1. Persuasion - An effort to verbally motivate human beings to take positive environmental action as a function of modified values.
2. Consumerism - An economic threat by an individual or a group aimed at some form of behavioral modification in business or industry or some conservation mode of behavior with respect to goods and/or services
3. Political Action - An effort aimed at persuading an electorate, a legislator (or legislature), or executive governmental agency to conform to the values held by the person or persons taking that action
4. Legal Action - Any legal/judiciary action taken by an individual and/or organization which is aimed at some restraint preceding some environmental behavior perceived as undesirable
5. Ecomanagement - Any physical action taken by an individual or a group aimed directly at maintaining or improving the existing ecosystems
6. Interactions of any of the above

Part Two 

Answer the following question and add it as a postscript to the “report” you’ve written:

·        Which action categories in the list above do you feel most comfortable facilitating with your students? Why?