Classroom Subjects

Science

Bangladesh: Easy Like Water

In Bangla, "easy like water" translates roughly as "piece of cake." The irony is that in Bangladesh -- with 150 million people in a country the size of Iowa, water poses a relentless threat. With increasingly violent cyclones and accelerating glacier melt upstream, flooding may create 20 million Bangladeshi...

Nigeria: Oil Rich But Hungry

Twenty-five years ago Abdullahi Tijjani had a vision for Kuki, a village in the north of Nigeria he became chief of at age 14: "Hunger will become a thing of the past once we marry modern technologies and traditional farming," he told reporter David Hecht when they met in...

The Next Wave: Climate Refugees in the South Pacific

Climate change is threatening to displace 2,500 inhabitants of the Carteret Atoll in the South Pacific. Their stories are the main topic explored in the Academy Award®-nominated film Sun Come Up.

Vietnam: The Price of Rice

The doubling of the price of rice in Asia has given rise to what some have coined "the Asian Food Crisis." While some economists feel that this is a temporary price hike, others see that the devastation from the recent cyclone in the central rice growing region of Burma...

Vietnam: War's Lasting Legacy

More than three decades after the Vietnam War ended, the Vietnamese people continue to live with the consequences of Agent Orange, a defoliant that has come to symbolize the unintended consequences of warfare.

During the war, American forces sprayed nearly two million gallons of Agent Orange across...

Mozambique: Paradise Lost, and Found?

Before the Mozambican civil war, Gorongosa National Park was among the top destinations in Africa, with a higher concentration of animals than on the famed Serengeti Plain. But during the war, soldiers and other poachers killed these vast herds, planted landmines and destroyed the park's infrastructure. By the 1990s,...

Alaska

Reporter Michelle Nijhuis and photographer Jeffrey Barbee spent 10 days on the Juneau Icefield following a research team led by veteran glaciologist Maynard Miller. Miller's half-century commitment to research and teaching on the icefield has given him a rare first-hand perspective on climate change. He has watched the Juneau...

Zimbabwe: Human Conflict/Environmental Consequences

In Zimbabwe, growing political and economic instability has put unprecedented pressure on the country's environment. Deforestation, poaching and unsustainable resource exploitation are destroying what was once among the best-managed park systems in Africa. As a result, people who depend on the country's natural resources - either for day- to-day...

Rwanda: Human Conflict / Environmental Consequences

Reporter Stephanie Hanes and photographer Jeffrey Barbee traveled around Rwanda to look at the lasting impact of choices made about the environment during conflict. The Rwandan genocide of 1994 left an estimated 800,000 people dead, and helped destabilized central Africa. In the face of this human catastrophe, few people...

Lesson Plan: Vanishing Groundwater

This lesson plan examines the effects of rapidly depleting groundwater reserves around the world using photos, video, interactive maps, startling statistics and rich interviews.

News Bite 5: Ebola's Legacy

In this lesson, students will learn about the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the people who worked to slow the epidemic, and the aftermath the disease has wrought upon the region.

Soil Pollution in China

Essential questions: What is the cost of industrialization and who pays it? How do we determine whether food is safe? How do you balance food security (production) and food safety?

Environmental Health: What is it?

This lesson draws from a range of projects on food waste, ocean health, global goods and extractives, food insecurity, water and sanitation and more to support student understanding around...