Teacher-created unit: High school music theory

"I don't of think of sustainability as a thing to teach, but as a way of teaching about the world."

This project is an outcome of the 2009 Summer Institute for Sustainability Education sponsored by the Children's Environmental Literacy Foundation, with facilitation provided by Creative Change. The intensive week-long institute provided teachers with content knowledge, curriculum resources and instructional design support to revise an existing course or unit with a sustainability lens. This example describes the work of a high school music teacher.

This teacher starts her music theory class with a study vibration and sound, including how different woods affect the sound quality of guitars. To link this to sustainability, instruction will focus on rosewood, a tropical hardwood tree that is prized for it use for guitars. However, the tree takes 50-60 years to reach maturity, and stocks are becoming depleted because harvest rates are outstripping rates of regrowth.

To help students understand this, the teacher will use a simulation of regeneration and "overshoot".* In the activity, a group of ten students stand in a circle, representing a desired number of trees for a hypothetic forest community. Over three rounds, students leave and enter the circle at different rates--each time, with different results: When one student enters the circle at the same time one leaves, the total number stays the same, representing a "steady-state" system. When students leave the circle more quickly than others enter, the number in the circle gradually declines, illustrating depletion. Conversely, when students enter the circle more quickly than students leave, the scenario represents regeneration.

The message is not a simplistic "don't use trees;" rather, the "Big Idea" is that rosewood trees are a gift, and that they provide wonderful things (habitat, oxygen, beautiful guitars, music). However, the trees are increasing endangered and take a long time to mature; therefore, we must think long-term as we make the instruments, and care for them so that they last.

In addition to studying regeneration, students will also explore "sustainable" instruments, examine their life cycles, and dig deeper into "green" claims to uncover if they are true or not.

* Note: Instructional materials for these activities are available in the CRC.