Arts for the Environment
From Student to Organizer
The Right Climate for Poetry
Our project connects students to the climate and environmental justice movements by grounding creative learning in three living ideas: the balance of ecosystems, the impact of human systems, and the strength of community resilience.
First, students will study the natural world as a system of breath and belonging. They will learn how the same air that moves through their neighborhoods carries the stories of the planet. Environmental educators will guide them in tracing how climate change, pollution, and loss of green space shape their daily lives, showing that the environment is not something distant but something they live inside every day.
Next, environmental and climate experts will help students look at how environmental harm is tangled with survival in their own city. Many families in Hayward live close to freeways or industrial zones, work multiple jobs, and face the constant worry that comes with uncertain immigration status. Students will see that the fight for clean air and safe homes is also the fight for dignity and belonging.
A Good Environment
For Learning
The Roots of Change
Finally, the project turns toward resilience and repair. Through poetry, storytelling, and service learning, students will reclaim imagination as a tool for change.
These three ideas of ecosystems, human systems, and resilience come together in each student’s writing as art and action. Through their words, they begin to name the world they live in and write the one they deserve to inherit.
"What would you fight for?"
Each year we begin our poetry season by listening. I ask all of my students two questions: 1) What would you fight for? and 2) What would you fight against? The answers always open a door into their world. Some talk about fighting racism, injustice, or fear. Others talk about fighting for joy, for their families, or even for boba tea. This year something powerful happened. In addition to many social issues such as immigration, students spoke about fighting against pollution, waste, animals being harmed, and threats to the environment.
Their words carried both urgency and love.
Many of them also spoke with a kind of quiet fear, the anxiety of inheriting a world that already feels like it is on fire. They were not just worried about the planet, they were asking what it means to protect people and the earth at the same time. Out of that conversation our theme took shape. In the past, students have led us to explore intersecting identities, peace and conflict, and mental health. This year their vision reaches further. It asks whether saving the planet, caring for our communities, and healing ourselves are separate struggles or one shared fight for a future that lasts.