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Women and the Environment: A
Web Quest by the Kentucky Department of Education's Division of Equity
You
work at the Kentucky Star Post as a writer.
Recently your best friend and some other women in town have
accused the Pacific Paper Mill, a large corporation in your town with
dumping harmful toxins into the ground water.
The women claim that the water has made their infant children
sick. Several of the
children in the community have actually died. The dumping has occurred in an area where many of the lower
income families live and depend on ground water wells rather than city
water. The population in
this part of the community tends to be mostly minority members of the
community. The President of the Pacific Paper Mill is on the board of
the local hospital and health center and has donated a large sum of
money to the medical research community. The three male doctors in town
have stated that there is no connection with the illnesses and the women
have taken their case to the state legislature with no success.
They have substantial evidence that points to the contamination
of ground water from other companies throughout the US. Your
boss has asked you to write an article that pertains to the issue.
He has not told you what direction the article should go.
You are to complete your assignment and present your article
along with a defense for why it is important to publish it.
------------------------------------------------------------------------ The
Task The
following questions must be answered in order to write the article with
accurate and informative information while maintaining an unbiased
viewpoint: ·
How have other Kentucky women in the media faced difficult
situations such as this one? ·
What are some of the issues that women in Kentucky have faced in
working with politics and the legislature? ·
What affect does being a minority population have on the issue? ·
How is health care for women different than for men? ·
How do the Pacific Paper Mill donations to the hospital affect
the relationship of the doctors to the issue? ·
How does the paper’s relationship with the mill (they get their
paper from the mill) affect your article? ·
What are the factors that affect the women as they take their
issue to the legislature? ·
What is your responsibility as a writer to the community? ·
What is your responsibility to women in Kentucky? ·
What is your responsibility as a worker to the paper? ·
What evidence exists to support the idea that groundwater
pollution from paper mills can be a factor in making people sick? ·
What are some of the struggles other women have faced in bringing
unpopular issues to the forefront? ·
What legal rights do the women have and what obstacles will they
face? Research
and answer the above questions using the resources listed in the
resource section. Form
teams of researchers to bring the information together and discuss how
each of the questions relates to
the article that your boss has asked you to write.
Write
the article and present it to your class or develop a power point
presentation to present. Take
a position or a stand and defend it using the information you have
gathered. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Resources Kentucky
Women in Public Service Kentucky
Women in Business and Industry
Women
and the Future http://www.women.com/womenfuture/index2.html http://www.nwhp.org/index.html Books
The
Future Well-Being of Women in Kentucky Zona
Gale, Her Life & Writings: A Resource Guide Votes for Women:
A Resource Guide
Pioneer
Women’s Diaries: A Resource Guide Latino
Women of Science Multicultural
Women of Science Celebrating
Women in Mathematics and Science Remember
the Ladies ! A Handbook of Women in American History Mary
Breckinridge : A Woman Who
Saved Many Lives Women’s
Curriculum Toolbox Videos
There’s
No Such Thing As Woman’s Work Fast
Food Women The
Fairer Sex Flyers in Search
of a Dream
Marian
Anderson Still
Killing Us Softly Women
in Construction Zona
Gale 1874-1938 Votes
for Women: The 1913 U.S Senate Testimony The
Life and Writings of Belle
Case La Follette Groundwater
Contamination Agencies http://water.usgs.gov/wid/indexlist.html http://www.heraldnet.com/Stories/98/9/25/10100554.htm http://home1.gte.net/tango33/paper.html http://puyallup.tricity.wsu.edu/~sonn/scenes.htm http://www.naplesnews.com/today/florida/d270945a.htm http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/deputate/fieldops/ne/PPC_News/PPC_News.htm http://www.sjwyman.com/overview.html http://www.envirolink.org/archives/enews/0143.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The
Process As
a group, divide the following steps up among your group and determine
who will do each. After
completing your assignments, come back together to present your findings
to the group. Determine what direction each group member would like their
presentation to take. Each
member will present their own project.
Each member of the group will present their project to the class
as though it is the review board for the paper.
The project should include key findings, justification for the
direction your article will take.
The teacher will act as the editor and will either approve or
modify your project as it is stated.
You will then write the article and present it to the class. 1.
Go to Kentucky Women and Media and find some of the women who
have presented unpopular ideas and write down what approaches they have
used to get their points into the public eye.
2.
E-mail or interview someone who has presented an unpopular issue
and document the pros and cons that they experienced. 3.
Go to the Women in Politics section and research the issues that
women in Kentucky have faced in working with politics. 4.
Write down the major issues and concerns facing women in
politics. 5.
Interview a member of the minority community and get input on how
politics has addressed issues concerning minorities and what their views
on the groundwater pollution issue are. 6.
Look in the Health and Medicine section and research how women
have been involved in health and medicine in the past in Kentucky and
write down some of the factors that may influence the situation with the
women and the mill. 7.
Talk to a health care official or a hospital administrator about
the importance of medical research and document the results. 8.
Talk to a business person about the economy and the importance of
business growth in a community and document the results. 9.
Go to the Law section and research the women in Kentucky who have
been involved in Legal careers and compare that number to men.
Write down what you conclude. 10.
Go to the Science Section and research the number of women
involved in Science and determine how they may be involved in your quest
for information? Write any comments that relate to the topic down. 11.
Visit the business and industry section of the quest and
determine if any of the women listed here add perspective to your
article. Make any relevant
comments. If there are
opportunities to contact any of the women and inquire regarding their
experience and motivations to do what they are doing, do so.
12.
Visit the Women and the Future to secure insight on what your
responsibility to women in Kentucky may be.
13.
Interview bosses to see what they feel their workers
responsibility to their company should be. Document the results of your
interview. 14.
Visit the Groundwater Contamination Agencies websites to
determine what the effects of paper mill pollutants are on ground water.
Document the information. 15.
Use books and videos to further research your area of interest. 16.
Meet together as a research group and discuss what you have found
and decide what you will write your article on and how you will justify
it to the Newspaper editor. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Learning
Advice As you begin to develop your
ideas use concept mapping to organize your thoughts and document your
findings. As a group you will want to put together the facts that each
member has discovered. Be
sure to listen carefully to each of the researchers.
If some researchers have had a more difficult time developing
their thoughts, other members of the team may want to work through the
information with them to develop it further.
The group should have a meaningful discussion about the issues
involved. If additional
issues come up that the group has no direct experience with, a plan to
speak with someone who has experience in the area should be developed.
Any facts that are not provided in the original web quest can be
determined through group consensus.
(For instance, one of the children who died, died of high
chlorine levels in her blood and the family doesn't have the money or
the expertise to hire a lawyer.) Each
member of the group will listen to all of the information provided
before determining the type of project he or she will develop in order
to convince the editorial board that their article should be published.
A power point presentation, video, performance piece, written
paper or speech may be developed to convince the review board.
Remember, in any of these presentations, justifications and
rationale for your article will need to be presented.
Everyone will write their own article at the end of the project. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Conclusion At
the end of this project students will have researched issues of ethics,
community responsibility, gender bias, civic and community
responsibility, community infrastructure and public service.
They will have analyzed the information presented, organized it
into a workable body of knowledge and developed conclusions and projects
that demonstrate multiple ways of knowing that stem from creative
critical thinking and problem solving. They will have a more in depth
understanding of the issues that face women in Kentucky and will have
experienced a historical perspective of the issues involved. This
web quest was designed by Jean McComb , Kentucky Dept. of Education,
Division of Equity
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