Team:SIS Korea/Public Engagement
Education
Kindergarten
We consider early childhood education to be equally important as a higher level of education. Therefore, on September 10th, our team visited “SOT/School of Tomorrow” English kindergarten to raise awareness about plastic and educate kindergartners about the dangers of plastic. In addition to statistics and a brief introduction to plastic, we incorporated several engaging activities throughout the class. In order for younger kids to fully absorb the information and develop an interest in this social issue, we prepared educational games and pictures related to the plastic epidemic. Furthermore, we provided kindergartners with opportunities to reflect back to the class, drawing and sharing with their peers about what they know and learned about plastic.
For example, in one of the games, we first divided the kindergartners into small groups of 4 to 5. Next, we gave them multiple objects - some plastic, some not - that they are familiar with and asked them to distinguish plastic items from nonplastic ones. We hoped that this activity would help them better understand plastic and learn how to differentiate certain objects from others; we were aiming to teach them the importance of choosing and using non-plastic items over plastic ones. For a different activity, we brought two different kinds of paper: regular paper and paper with an alginate(eco-friendly polysaccharide found in brown seaweed) coating on one side. We explained that this could be, in the future, a replacement for plastic cups. In order to help them understand, we demonstrated how compared to regular paper, where water leaks through it almost immediately, the alginate covered paper was able to hold water over 3 minutes without leaking. For the rest of the class, we discussed the severity of this social issue with pictures and stories, relating to kids’ experiences. In the end, kids drew pictures of what they had learned in class: plastic items, potential harm, and other eco-friendly replacements for plastic.
The kindergartners obviously had very little knowledge about basic biological concepts, such as bacteria or DNA. so it was difficult to explain our subject in depth. Therefore, we attempted a different approach to them, explaining our project briefly using very simple terms during the talk about plastic solution and thus implementing an eye-to-eye educational method for the kindergarteners.
Overall, the kids were very engaged and entertained. Many enthusiastically raised their hands to participate and shared their stories with the class. Our fun-oriented activities allowed them to obtain new information about items they see commonly, a dangerous side of plastic that they were not too sure about previously. For the game that required them to distinguish plastic and non-plastic items, most kids needed our help and assistance to separate them into two groups. They often looked perplexed after realizing the misconceptions they had toward some objects. During demonstrations with “special paper,” (paper with alginate) they were amazed by the fact that the water was not going through the paper cup they were holding in their hands. However, the section they participated in the most was when we were explaining the harm plastic use might bring to the environment. Although we found out that they were generally well informed about plastic and its negative impact on society, they often looked surprised after listening to future consequences and images of devastating effects. For example, images of trash mountains and pictures of animals consuming plastic were very effective in influencing kids’ mindset and motivation toward this social issue.
Through this educational campaign, we were able to understand how lacking the younger generation of this country lacked general understanding about the plastic epidemic, which is alarming considering how these children grow to lead the future of the country and thus its environment. Thus, the education worked as an opening gate of knowledge for the environmental epidemic for the children, which once again helped us understand the importance of social practices (which is equally important as the biological or engineering aspect of the solution) in helping solve the plastic epidemic.
Elementary
People’s most profound and respectful morals are created during their rudimentary years. We, as students reflecting on our elementary years, understand that hands-on activities created the most exciting and most memorable experiences. Our team members still remember when we, in third grade, made grass-heads out on the field and learned about the values of life and recycling. The elementary school, however, was starting to change its active classes to be more knowledge-based, making the students grow tired of the regimented school days. Thus, catalyzed by the memories of how impactful these activities were at creating a lasting impression on the importance of recycling, we approached the elementary principal to restart the tradition of hands-on learning.
After we were permitted to proceed with our lecture plan, we met 4th and 5th graders at our school’s green field where we had already set up a booth with all the other ingredients to make a grass-head. We lined the students up in three lines, one person in charge of each line, and helped them create their grass-head. We believe that teaching these young students about microplastic or our biological solution would be just too hard for them to understand. As such, we only described our solution in short, easy terms that summarized what our project was about and what is was for. For the most part, we focused our lecture on explaining the different ways that a plastic cup can be recycled. In this case, the plastic container was used as a vase for the grass-head to grow in. Everyone was so enthusiastic about this activity, with some even trying to decorate their grass-head to be the unique one in the class. Thus, we spent a good portion of our lecture time just letting them enjoy their time out in the sun.
However, as we wanted to engrain the importance of recycling, a lecture was crucial to capture their attention. We sat the lively children down on the grass-field, with each of them hugging their grass-heads, and asked them questions like “what are other ways to recycle those plastic cups?” or “Do you know what happens to plastic after you throw them away?” to get them to interact more with our topic. Fortunately, the children were already captured by our lecture, mostly due to the fun nature of the first part, and were shouting out answers. Many did not know what happened to plastic after they reached landfills but were full of creative ideas to reuse plastic goods. We had expected this ignorance about the aftermath of plastic and had created a presentation to teach them about it. We utilized many pictures to illustrate the dirtiness and longevity of these landfills. Our efforts were answered with shocked faces and yelps by the children. Lastly, we asked them to reflect on the amount of trash they produce every day and how to decrease it. With answers ranging from “eat less food,” to “reduce the number of disposable products,” we were sure that most students were well-affected by our lecture. Most of the children’s reflections were deep and personal, and that was what we were trying to get at.
We utilized many pictures to illustrate the dirtiness and longevity of these landfills. Our efforts were answered with shocked faces and yelps by the children. Lastly, we asked them to reflect on the amount of trash they produce every day and how to decrease it. With answers ranging from “eat less food,” to “reduce the number of disposable products,” we were sure that most students were well-affected by our lecture. Most of the children’s reflections were deep and personal, and that was what we were trying to get at. We don’t expect students to suddenly become environmental activists and abandon their wasteful lifestyle. At the same time, we wanted the students to gain some empathy about the plastic crisis and feel related to this epidemic. By their understanding of the grass-head as a friend, the students did express a more personal connection to recycling and protecting the Earth.
Elementary students are the future of our world; they would be suffering from worse consequences than what we are in the present. To prevent a frightful future from occurring, students have to know from a young age about the importance of recycling and saving. Our activity hopefully would have affected the children permanently, just like how our grass-head experience made me into an environment-aware being.
Middle School
Middle School students eventually enter high school, in which many of them learn about biology in further depth. Our team wished to emphasize the capability of biological solutions in real-life issues before students entered high school; as a result, in the future, they could take such courses with more interest and faith in the potential of biology and the application of products derived from the field.
From September 16th to the 20th, we presented the plastic issue and our project to SIS’s entire middle school community. More specifically, we presented on 9/16 to the 6th graders, 9/17 to the 7th graders, 9/20 to the 8th graders. During our presentations, we educated the middle schoolers on the worldwide issue of plastic pollution, microplastic (a primary target), its detrimental effects, ways for them to reduce plastic immediately, and most importantly, our plastic-degrading bacteria and the process we went through to create it.
The middle schoolers already knew about plastic pollution to a certain extent, but it was clear that many students had become indifferent to the plastic pollution and only had a vague understanding of the negative consequences of plastic pollution. As such, we made heavy use of striking statistics (such as how Koreans use the most plastic per capita in the world) and comparisons to catch their attention.
Compared to the ordinary plastic, microplastic proved to be a less familiar term to the middle schoolers, and many took great interest in its presence. We talked about how microplastics are formed, how they reach us, and the fearsome issues they are capable of causing within biological organisms.
We then gave the young audience brief advice on how to reduce plastic usage, talking about the 3 R’s (reduce-reuse-recycle) and examples of how they could achieve such goals
The middle schoolers possessed crude yet commendable knowledge about the biological components of our project (we checked this by asking them basic terms such as DNA, enzymes, etc.). Thanks to this, we were able to expand upon the description of our project to the fullest extent. We talked in-depth about the abilities/purpose of our plastic bacteria, and how the bacteria was created, such as how we used plasmids to incorporate the PETase-coding genes, or how implemented a light-induced promoter. We made sure to explain it in more accessible terms.
In addition to our presentation, we also included a Kahoot quiz reviewing the material within our presentation in order to make sure the students were listening, but also to make the presentation entertaining. We made sure to include prizes, as we knew that it became increasingly difficult to interest students of older age without the usage of material compensation.
In general, the middle schoolers showed great interest in our project. In one case, there was a student that would ask complex questions about our project, as he seemed to be very knowledgeable in biology. Such an instance was very inspiring as it showed that the middle schoolers wanted to know how our project worked, which demonstrated curiosity in the field of biological solutions. We hope that our project was able to persuade many middle schoolers of the potentials of biological answers to world issues, and possibly spark a greater interest in the subject during their future high school years, motivating them to take further courses relating to biology.
Campaign
For our aforementioned school campaign, we had the opportunity to spread awareness to the school public through posters and banners that we created collectively. In the end, we put up a total of 2 posters, a sticker board, and two banners in order to convey and gather information; we hoped to convey the magnitude and degree of the problem through graphs, statistics, etc. and provide information about the processes we are undergoing in an attempt to deter the expansion of the plastic mismanagement and pollution epidemic. In our first poster, we provided an overview of our project, elaborating on the steps we took to reach our final goal. Even though our first poster was very wordy and lengthy, as it explained the steps, many teachers and students were interested to be presented with our procedures. Our second poster provided a more approachable explanation of the problem, as it basically depicted the magnitude of the plastic waste issue. In groups, we created a bar graph and a circle graph in order to illustrate the plastic usage rates of South Korea, the U.S., France, Japan, and the Top 10 Polluters, respectively. We also added a timeline containing the important events and dates pertaining to plastic pollution on a global scale.
We also had a sticker poster to get a brief understanding of the knowledge that people have about annual plastic usage per capita. We gave environment-friendly corn-derived straws to whoever made a guess at the sticker board. After a week into the campaign, we collected and summed up the tallies on the sticker board; through the sticker chart, we were able to realize that not many people thought that 76 kg of plastic was the correct answer, rather thinking that each individual consumed 114 kg of plastic every year. Moreover, we saw that not many people had even an approximate number in their minds. Finally, the banners that we put up next to the posters had big, bold letters to give a clear idea of what our experiment was about, reading ‘Manipulating the E.Coli to Produce Plastic-Degrading Enzymes’.
A huge number of students took great interest in the posters we set up for the school campaign. From time to time, there were groups of students who would read closely about the procedure we went through. The campaign was a very significant event for our project, as we were able to see that more and more people became involved in our project, and provided their opinions on our experiment. We were happy to see that many students would observe our project with curiosity and were willing to become more aware and supportive of our project.
We thought that through the school campaign, many people were able to become more aware of the plastic epidemic and what kind of effects it has on the overall environment. We also believed that people would be more supportive of the scientific approach that we took in solving the issue by producing plastic-degrading enzymes, in which many students showed great acknowledgment of our ongoing experiment, and at times asked questions to our members regarding our project.
