Hi, everyone!
I am living in China not too far from Beijing. Interestingly enough, a firewall blocked my school server from linking me to the petition. I’ll have to try again later with some software help that gets around these things.
I am a middle school and high school teacher here at a small international school in Tianjin, and I have plans on ending this school year with a conservation unit centered around misinformation about sharks and what we can do about it. My ninth grade class will organize a Green Peace style list of local Tianjin restaurants where shark fin is not served. I could tell you how difficult they are to find here, but it would depress me and you to expand on that. The good news is that local restaurateurs do go out of their way to appeal to the expat crowd for those beloved Pounds, Euros, and Dollars. This give us some room for influence, if only on a small scale.
To end the year my students will be responsible for organizing a showing of *Shark Water* to our community, this with a poster and speaking campaign that will target not just their peers, but also teachers and parents in the process. I bought a legal copy of Shark Water from the US, and I am putting some effort into trying to build a reading and video montage that exposes where our fears come from and how these fears we have of sharks have lead to both shark and human destruction.
Thanks very much for the links to conservationist organizations related to this topic.
I could use some help in coming up with movie clips highlighting how Hollywood and others have taught us to fear and hate sharks (as is nicely shown in Shark Water). My goal is to first try and get my students to acknowledge their own fears and misconceptions about sharks before they start to break them and understand what the truth is. That way, I hope, when the time comes to reach out to others they will be more focused and passionate about this and other issues related to sustainability. As with anything in education, the risk is high here. I might not get the results I want. I have no doubt that I am going to get in hot water with some people given where I live and how I and going to point out where shark fin is served in Tianjin.
I’ve got *Jaws* of course to help in building the shark mythology, but I need more before I can do this effectively. Could anyone recommend other movies or TV shows from the USA or elsewhere that can be of use as well? Someone told me that “The Beach” would be good, but I can’t remember why to tell you the truth.
Thanks for the thread and thanks ahead of time for any nudges you can give me so that I can begin to put this final unit together.
Cheers!
