Two Continents - The Shared Environment

  Hey! After a complete change of topic, we finally finished our project on mental health. Here’s the presentation:   The working group members: Hilla Saarinen, Aida Pietiläinen, Kit Jordan, Melanie Perez

  We have met with our group four times via Teams. At the first meeting, we chose our topic: life below water. The second time we discussed how the topic affects our lives and our environment. We collected images and information on the Padlet platform and presented them. On the third meeting, Ocracoke High School students talked about the impact of bodies of water on their lives. We did a survey and compared the results.   Are you worried about pollution in the nearby waterways?  Climate change is talked more about in Finland, so it is easier to recognize its effects.   Have you noticed foreign species in bodies of water?   There is not much difference in the answers. Do you spent a lot of time near bodies of water? Ocracoke is an island, so there is water everywhere. In Finland, summer is short and some have a long journey to the beach. Have you noticed extreme weather phenomena in the last year? Ocracoke’s extreme weather phenomena are much more destructive...

  On Monday evening we arrived in Ocracoke. Everyone was tired from the flight and the drive, and it was very late, so we just went to our host families’ houses and we went straight to bed.   Because it had been so dark when we first arrived, we finally got to see the island in it’s full glory on Tuesday. We met the students from Ocracoke highschool for the first time and also got to know our host families better. During the school day we continued to work on our projects and tagged along with the students from our groups to their classes. We had good converstations about sustainable lifestyles but also learned more about the American highschool life. On Wednesday it was time to explore the island a bit more. We Finns did a tour of the island on bicycles. We went around the village and saw the pretty houses and beautiful nature that Ocracoke island has to offer. On top of that we visited the lighthouse that is located on the island. In the evening our lovely host families had ...

   We, group one, made a survey about sustainable consumption habits amongst young people. We asked American and Finnish people to fill in the survey and now we have compared the results and prestented them through a presentation. The group members from Ocracoke High School and Kauriala Upper Secondary School: Rahnier, Christian, Nicholas, Meeri ja Laulu

On Friday in Dallas we went to the Sixth-floor museum at Dealey Plaza to look at the JFK exhibition. It is a historical place with much significance to Americans.   After museum we had time to get lunch in Dallas downtown. On the way we stopped by an interesting monument, The Giant Eyeball. The whole park around it was beautiful as well. After eating lunch at Chick-fil-A we started to make our way down towards the Reunion tower. In there we were able to see the whole downtown Dallas. The tower is a must-see, if you want to get the whole idea of the size of the city. Näkymiä Reunion Towerista Lastly, we went to the West Village shopping center by train and wandered around in Sephora and some other shops. Then, by popular demand, we went to Target, where we bought food for our Airbnb. On Saturday we went to the Perot museum of nature and science. The exhibition was very interesting and well-made. We learned about humans, space, minerals, animals etc. The museum had a lot to offer for...

Since last spring we have worked remotely with our American friends from Ocracoke. When we first started working with our partner school, we divided ourselves into a few different groups. All kinds of sustainable habits are becoming more and more important to us so it was only natural to cover this subject from multiple perspectives. Each group had the chance to choose a topic related to our three main Agenda 2030 themes, which are "responsible consumption", "life below water" and "good health and wellbeing". Every group has Finnish and American students so that we can really ponder these themes from different points of view, and compare how American and Finnish youth thinks about sustainability. Sustainable development is a big theme in our studies in Finland in almost every subject. That's why we were very interested in learning how the American students view these things. Our own thoughts about the subjects is one of the things we have discussed whi...