Search

I am a (science) education researcher and look at most things in the world through the lens of education. On disaster (or anything else), the questions I ask are - e.g., why should we teach about it? What should we teach about it, and how? How can we support teachers to teach about disasters in their classrooms? My training in educational research has equipped me with the theories, tools and methods that can be utilised to approach these questions. I am hoping that these knowledge, experiences and skills can cross-fertilise with EcoGovLab's expertise in anthropology, SPS and environmental governance.

Our Purpose

One of our greatest responsibilities is to prepare the next generation to meet the challenges they will face in the 21st Century, with a deep commitment to the rights and responsibilities of U.S. citizenship. We have a unique opportunity for a community dialogue about the civic values, knowledge, and skills that K-12 students should learn and practice in our public school system. We will create strong community support for our schools to provide effective civic education for students to be successful in college, career and citizenship.

OUR MISSION

The mission of the Civic Education Center is to restore civility in America by creating opportunities for youth to learn and practice civic values and democratic skills.

About Us – Civic Ed Center

Civic Education Center | Fresno CA | Facebook

Goals

• Teach the vision of the Founders and the triumphs and tragedies of our history.
• Teach civil dialogue on controversial issues and democratic deliberation.
• Integrate science, technology, literature, media, arts and math with civic projects.
• To promote teacher understanding of connections with the State Seal of Civic Engagement, Social Emotional Learning, and Ethnic Studies.

Summer Institute – Civic Ed Center

The Mission of CV YEA is "Our mission is to fight environmental injustices in the Central Valley through connecting like-minded individuals". 

CV YEA is based in Fresno, CA and led by Executive Director Kamryn Kubose (interview), who we met during our visit to Golden Charter Academy. CV YEA takes part in Clean Vehicle Empowerment Collaborative. The board consists of master's students and environmental activists based in California.

“There is no such thing as being “too secure.” Living with risk, by contrast, acknowledges a more complex calculus. It requires new forms of political and ethical reasoning that take into account questions that are often only implicit in discussions of biosecurity interventions.” (Lakoff 28)

“On the one hand, they examine the different political and normative frameworks through which the problem of biosecurity is approached: national defense, public health, and humanitarianism, for example. On the other hand, they examine the styles of reasoning through which uncertain threats to health are transformed into risks that can be known and acted upon” (Lakoff 12)

“These initiatives build on a growing perception among diverse actors—life scientists and public health officials, policymakers and security analysts—that new biological threats challenge existing ways of understanding and managing collective health and security. From the vantage point of such actors, the global scale of these threats crosses and confounds the boundaries of existing regulatory jurisdictions. Moreover, their pathogenicity and mutability pushes the limits of current technical capacities to detect and treat disease” (Lakoff 8)

As many of these systems are relatively new, and not particularly effective, there appears not to be other apps modeled off of these systems. The only similarities are within the apps themselves, suggesting that the company We-Consent developing many of these apps is using a similar format for each of them.

The family followed during most of the film was able to get several members out of Liberia during the Ebola crisis, I was under the impression that travel across the border of affected nations was prohibited. The CDC webpage was able to confirm that travel bans were imposed to and from Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone during the Ebola crisis. Travel to and from these places was only permitted for health officials and aid worked, and required a 21 day quarantine upon returning to the US. However, several cases in surrounding countries were reported and it is known that people would first travel to a different country before attempting to fly to the United States.

I was also interested in how health care workers and emergency responders kept themselves safe while working with such a dangerous virus, the CDC webpage was also able to clarify the PPE used when dealing with suspected or confirmed cases of Ebola, including gloves, gowns, respiratory protection and boots. Protocols also exist for training responders in the proper methods of donning and doffing PPE to protect themselves.

As a portion of the film focused on the public outrage concerning the quarantine, I read an article “Encouraging Compliance with Quarantine: A Proposal to Provide Job Security an Income Replacement” by Mark A. Rothstein which explains in greater detail the effectiveness but also challenges posed by a quarantine, and how this directly effects the infected and uninfected individuals inside.

This policy was created in response to attacks against non-police first responders, the effort to enable the responders to carry firearms was in part motivated by a 911 call where the caller faked a medical emergency and then took the firefighters hostage when they arrived. He later stated that he had chosen a medical emergency because he knew they wouldn’t be armed. This, and other incidents, began to affect patient care as paramedics no longer felt safe entering buildings without police.

The article mentioned a database the Times was using to track the location of firefighters throughout the incident, I looked at that system. It is not publicly available but was interesting in that it entirely depended on the news footage, personal videos and eyewitness accounts.

The article mentioned helicopters were being considered for rooftop evacuation, which surprised me due to the smoke. I looked into the visibility in the airspace directly surrounding the World Trade Center, while the smoke was so severe as to be captured by the International Space Station the wind did clear the smoke sufficiently for a clear line of sight between the helicopters and portions of the towers.

The firefighters were climbing the stairs, and reportedly would take hours to reach the top. The article also mentioned several groups of resting firefighters, so I researched the weight each firefighter would have been carrying which added up to 45 pounds of gear and at least an additional 20-30 pounds of tools.

There wasn't any references in terms of individuals or organizations. The article focused mainly of statistics.