Let's Make A Difference!

One of my students, Jessica Torres-Martinez, during her final research presentation May 17. During her talk on greenhouse gases and their effects, she shared about how both she and her daughter have asthma, movingly linking the personal to our global climate challenge.

I am really proud of the whole class's efforts, with presentations from the worldwide freshwater shortage to how scarcity of clean drinking water disproportionately affects those in poverty in developing nations, especially children.

In her hands is a tree that she made herself from beads! She said that the yellow beads represent the sunlight, the green our forests, the blue the oxygen we need and water we crave, and the brown gnarly trunk the earth we share. Sweet!

I love the photo behind her (which reads "Let's Make A Difference"), highlighting how green the two Americas, connected, can be. The globe is held in the blue swirling dreams of our hopes.