Monique

Monique, at a spot by Swan Lake where her family puts on their skates when the lake is frozen over.

[The] reason I love swan lake is because growing up here, every year when I was little it would freeze and my family would come right here to this spot of trees next to the lake and we would leave our shoes... here, put our ice skates on... And it sucks 'cuz we moved right next to the lake which I thought was gonna be amazing 'cuz we would get to ice skate every year -- and then everything started warming up, we weren't getting 4 feet of snow, and the lake was freezing every other year. It sucks because that means I rarely visit this spot and it has a lot of memories. [The lake is] freezing in almost spring time (if it does) and people have to go up to heart lake to ice skate which sucks cuz this is... downtown where the fire department can set up lights for us...

How do you feel about that change?

Honestly... am I allowed to cuss? I'm f******* p*****.

I love ice skating -- it reminds me of roller derby... and now I can't do it every other year and I missed out on it this year because it finally froze over this year and then I was down south at college.

We're also not getting 4 ft. of snow anymore like we used to.

I remember my dad building mazes in our front yard for us and me getting lost in them, and my dad had to crawl in and find me, and he popped up and threw me to the edge of the snow so my mom or brothers could grab me...

That's another thing that sucks that we don't get a lot of snow because now we can't do much sledding or snowboarding...

Do you have any anxiety about the future in terms of climate change?

Yeah because for me I want out of Alaska because it's expensive living here and down south is honestly getting better winters than us now, but when I go down south I'm getting like 100+ degree weather...

What do you wish Sitka High taught you about climate change?

They taught us the main things that are causing pollution, but they haven't taught us what personally we can do to prevent that from getting worse. They're like 'oh these are the things that are causing this. Moving on...' and they don't talk about how to prevent it or fix it or anything...

Do you wish Sitka High had taught you about how the economy will change?

Yeah that way we would know what we were looking at... when/if we're the generation that creates the movement --

It would be nice to know what we're looking at; what struggles are gonna be ahead of us.

Again it's like 'this is what's causing everything' and then they just move on to the next subject -- they don't talk about like what can we do to fix it, what are we gonna the struggles through it, but how it's gonna be worth it in the end.

Which is probably one of the number one reasons everyone our age and younger are not gonna care so much. They're just being told the problem. They're not being told the solution.

Monique wants:

Solution-based education

Science Fairs (Idea #1) would provide students the opportunity to do a deep dive into a climate change solution that's important to them, while also learning about other students' chosen solutions.

STEAM classes (Program #1) at Blatchley include learning about how to mitigate the effects of climate change through cultivating yellow cedar seedlings.

To know how the economy is going to change and what struggles her generation will face

Apprenticeships (Idea #2) would allow students to talk to adults who work in their field of interest about the problems they're facing now and predictions they have for the future of their field.

Scientists in the School, AK-CSI, Legislative Internships, and Crew Training (Program #2, Summer Opportunities #1, 5, 6) all connect students with professionals and allow them to do meaningful work in environments that welcome curiosity and questions about those fields and their futures.

Both of these observations that Monique had about deficits in climate change education in the Sitka School District could and should also be integrated into classes and lessons about climate change. Teachers should also be given the support and resources to integrate these elements into their classes, no matter the subject.