Polar Shifts and Health Enhancement
This article is from CBS News and is titled “The hottest climate science in the world’s coldest place”. This article addresses the Grand Challenges of ‘Understanding and Sustaining a Biodiverse Planet’. This story is told by the CBS news crew and it talks about the polar shift currently happening in Antarctica. It reports about the alarming rate at which ice is melting at in the coldest spot in the world. They say that two Olympic sized swimming pools of ice are melting every second. This is an extremely alarming rate and can eventually lead to oceans rising by as much as 6” all around the world. Six inches of rising seas can cause a lot of problems for coastal cities all around the world. This study by NASA, done by “Operation IceBridge”, shows factual evidence that the warming oceans and global warming must be taken seriously before it is too late.
This article raises many questions that I believe are relevant for my health enhancement class because our own personal health is directly correlated and impacted by the health of our world and surroundings. One question that comes to mind right away is, “Why is our world and seas becoming warmer at such a rapid rate?” This question would be perfect to lead us into a discussion about identifying personal issues and actions that we all due that can be adjusted to help with this problem. Another question that comes to mind is, “Why aren’t people taking this matter more seriously?” This also is a great question that could lead to a debate based on peoples own personal opinions and thoughts. The last question I want to dive into is, “What impacts will be made if nothing is done?” I believe this question is the most important when it comes to my health enhancement classes because it will have a substantial impact on our own personal lives and health.
A strategy I think I would use for this article and lesson would be the ‘KWL’ method. I think this strategy would be effective because it would help the students identify where they are prior to the reading, what they learn from the reading, and what more the may still be curious about. We would start off the lesson by me asking my students some simple questions on global warming, such as their thoughts, beliefs, etc. The class would communicate with each other about this idea and we would build from there. After the discussion, we would go into reading the article and watching the newscast documentaries to learn as much as we could. After going through the series. We would discuss our new findings and acquired knowledge. Then we would discuss how this would impact our own personal health and what kind of adjustments we could make to our daily lives to help with the problem. This may seem like a story that doesn’t belong in a health enhancement setting, more so of a science setting; however, I disagree. Health enhancement is a science of itself and our personal health, like I have stated earlier, is completely dependent on that of our world and surroundings.
This news story would fall under the following health enhancement content standards:
29. Examine barriers that can hinder safe and healthy decision making;
44. Work cooperatively as an advocate for improving personal, family, and community health; and
45. Adapt health-related messages and communication techniques to target audiences.
