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“Wu and Wu’s book includes some stories which lay stress on the spirit of engagement as well as personal narratives and testimonies. Jinlang Lin and Bao-feng Zheng’s story tells how their lives have been destroyed by the Six Naphtha Cracker Plant. Since 1990, the Lin family has made their living through oyster farming in Taisi. After the construction of the Six Naphtha Cracker Plant, their lives changed: “Due to the sand pumping, the seascape was altered, and the ecology of the intertidal oyster reef was damaged. Oyster seeds were covered in sand and oyster harvests declined sharply. The old men living in the country had no idea how the Six Naphtha Cracker Plant would impact oyster farming” (Wu and Wu 71). The government broke the promise that the plant would not have any impact on oyster farming. However, the burden of providing the proof requested by the Environmental Protection Administration lay on the oyster farmers themselves. Moreover, the “no compensation” rule was based on the government’s position that “industry comes first” and “the land of the emerging industrial park” does not belong only “to oyster farmers” (Wu and Wu 71).” (Chang, 2023, p. 173)

“Bao-feng Zheng’s story is a particularly powerful testimony in terms of ecofeminist engagements. Women in Taiwan’s fishing villages play a vastly under-recognized role. They wear traditional bamboo hats, nondescript clothes, aprons, rain shoes, face masks with small floral prints, and sleevelets, and their two eyes and two hands are always busy opening the oysters. They work in oyster farms with their husbands during the early morning at low tide and with other women during high tide. When they open, clean, process, and cook the oysters, they perform the same tasks as local men, reducing the pressure on men, and they are equally exposed to pollution. Yet, due to sexism in fishing villages, as Zheng testifies, women often endure insults when they stand up for the rights of illiterate fishermen and protest sand pumping and sea reclamation. Zheng has since passed away, but her husband Lin carries on her passion, keeping an eye on every development plan along the seashore of Yunlin and asking the Six Naphtha Cracker Plant for more details regarding the depleting fish populations.” (Chang, 2023, p. 173)

“As Wu and Wu also note, “either local factions or gangsters control Yunlin” (Wu and Wu 73). The Six Naphtha Cracker Plant and the offshore industrial island at Mailiao village are intertwined with political interests and huge profits (Wu and Wu 72). Lin claims, “Without knowing, we [he and his late wife] are on the same boat. Fighting persists. It is responsibility that drives our common mission” (Wu and Wu 73).” (Chang, 2023, p. 173)

I think that this is interestingly written and an interesting comparison between your own experiences in Singapore and the Naluwan grandma. What do you think can be applied to your final piece of work from this fieldnote? Do you think that your experiences in Singapore has shaped you to think differently and feel differently from an Amis person living in Naluwan?

• Flame retardant chemicals
• Migrate off of products and into air/dust
• Many are endocrine disruptors, interfere with the reproductive system and thyroid
• Stain repellent chemicals
• Polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFASs) or polyfluorinated chemicals (PFCs)
• Enter air, dust, and drinking water
• 6 million US residents have blood PFAS concentrations over EPA limit
• Associated with cancer, thyroid disease, immunotoxicity, reduced immune response to childhood immunizations
• Phthalates
• Enter air and dust
• Associated with asthma and allergies
• Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs)
• Environmentally persistent pollutant, endocrine disruptor, and probable carcinogen
• No longer used, but remain in estimated 25,000 US schools
• Prenatal exposure may affect height, weight, head circumference, and body size at puberty

• Ventilation & air quality:
• Children breathe more air than adults relative to their body size
• Water quality:
• Contaminants like lead have greater effects on cognitive development and behavior of children than adults
• Thermal comfort
• Current models for thermal comfort are based on adults and do not predict children's comfort levels
• Children are more susceptible to the effects of heat stress
• Children's clothing and activity levels (major determinants of thermal comfort) are distinct from adults
• Lighting and views
• Children have larger pupils than adults
• Children have greater light-induced melatonin suppression--their Circadian rhythms are more susceptible to manipulation
• Noise
• Children under 15 are more sensitive to difficult listening conditions because they are still developing mature language skills
• Children need a greater signal-to-noise ratio in order to understand language
• Memory and attention development are sensitive to chronic noise exposure

• Ventilation:
• 15 cubic feet of outside air per person or 5 liters per person per second
• Carbon dioxide concentrations below 1000 ppm
• Water quality:
• No amount of lead is safe
• National Primary Drinking Water Regulations (NPDWR)
• Thermal health
• Indoor temperatures between 68 and 77 degrees Fahrenheit
• Lighting
• Minimum 350 lux, up to 1000 lux
• LED instead of fluorescent lighting
• Noise
• Maximum background noise: 35 dB
• Maximum reverbration time: 0.6-0.7 seconds

• Public schools are the second largest sector of US public infrastructure spending (after highways) - investment falls $46 billion short annually
• 60,000 schools, or 46% of public schools, have significant environmental hazards
• Students will spend 15,600 hours inside a school during K-12 education
• Schools are four times as densely populated as offices
• Childhood asthma accoutns for 13.8 million missed school days each year
• 31% of schools use portable classrooms
• Average school building in the US has a lifespan of 50 years, many are older than this

Studie provides visual representations of lead concentration in Santa Ana cross matching it with vulnerability risk.

 “Under a 1986 federal law titled the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), hospitals are required to treat people who come to the ED presenting with an emergency medical condition, defined as a condition that, without treatment, will likely lead to serious impairment or death. … EMTALA is one of the largest federal mandates to provide services to have gone unfunded (Friedman 2011); costs instead fall on states and local health care systems.” 481

• The process of designing curriculum is quite useful as it details how different activities correspond to learning goals in science, mathematics, and technology. Fig. 3 describes the steps: selecting content through content specialists in the POAC team, making a curriculum outline, individual meetings with content specialists, and making the lesson plans. I really like the activities they designed, such as comparing different mask materials and how they protected against differently-sized viruses. They were also given time to research career pathways and present on epidemiology careers, a step that invites students to imagine career pathways. 

• I realize the scope and audience of this paper is different, but I am so curious about how the Imhotep Academy created a setting that encouraged underrepresented students to participate and speak up, given that they cite evidence of how difficult that can be. How did they choose participants? 

• Having read Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed recently, I am thinking about his approach to curriculum design that is based on a feedback loop between would-be learners and would-be educators. The roles of learners and educators aren’t fixed. Content development is not done beforehand just by content specialists but in an iterative process with multiple feedback loops. Since very few research teams have the time or the resources to deploy Freire’s rigorous approach, I am not surprised that most curriculum development does not follow the route. And educators are working with former experiences anyway. So I am curious about how the authors’ previous experiences shaped their approach to curriculum design?

• A context for this paper is the controversy on the proposed revisions to the California math curriculum that conservative media outlets argue “waters down” calculus–a cherry topping on the college admissions cake–to privilege data science in middle-school grades. Education researchers contend that apart from physics and engineering majors, not many colleges actually require calculus for admissions (many private institutions do), and that the relevance of advanced calculus for college preparation is overrated. 

• National Commission on Excellence in Education ‘s 1983 report Nation At Risk: the need for a new STEM workforce specializing in computer science and technology 

• National Council on Mathematics 2000 guidelines for preparing American students for college in Common Core Mathematics 

• Stuck in the Shallow End: Virtual segregation; Inequality in learning computer science in American schools focusing on Black students