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When students “break bread” together, they begin to understand each other, and the world. Cooper Price, an S6 (Grade 12) student at UTS joined 150 students from 14 different schools around the globe for a virtual climate change learning exchange in October called Our Shared Planet: Climate Action Now, as part of the Massachusetts-based Tabor Academy’s Breaking Bread program.
“In the first Sunday session, we broke off into groups to talk about how climate change was having an impact and affecting our lives in different parts of the world,” says Cooper, a climate change activist who was one of 14 UTS students taking part. “A student from Denmark talked about how their land is pretty low in terms of sea level and how that’s a threat. The sea levels are rising and that’s going to affect them. The student from New Mexico talked about their work in an animal shelter, and how extreme weather events and rising heat was having a negative impact on the animals. In Turkey, the student talked about concerns for water access.”
For Cooper, who is an executive on the UTS Sustainability and Environmental Action Committee (USEAC) and an activist-organizer for the Fridays for the Future climate strikes in Toronto, the program put a face and name to climate change in other countries – real people who will feel the impact.
“Living in Canada, we are pretty privileged in that we are relatively safe from the climate crisis for now. That impacts my own perspective, but then there are definitely certain parts of the country like the Arctic North that are much more affected by climate change – everyone has their own perspective based on where they live.”
The Breaking Bread program arose out of the pandemic, when Tabor Academy, known as the school by the sea, created an avenue for its boarding school students to connect socially during lockdown by developing a virtual exchange with a social justice focus with international schools.
A partner school of UTS, Rysensteen Gymnasium in Copenhagen, Denmark, took part and later helped UTS join the program in the winter of 2021, with Richard Cook, UTS Global Citizenship Coordinator and Canada-World Studies teacher, overseeing our students’ participation.
“Rysensteen reached out to us and we jumped on board,” says UTS Vice Principal Garth Chalmers, who also used to teach courses on climate change. “Our students were in the middle of lockdown and seeking social outlets. We had a lot of students sign up in the winter and the spring.”
For the 2021-22 school year, the program had partner schools in 14 countries, including several in Western and Eastern Europe, as well as Argentina, Turkey and Jordan. UTS was the only Canadian school that took part. Important issues of our time became the focus, with climate change for the fall, and gender identity, diversity and inequality planned for the winter and spring.
On three Sundays in October, the students learned about climate change while getting to know each other. After the first session, students spent the second working in clubs where students could discuss climate change in the context of similar interests. The third took a TEDx format, with two speakers: an overview on climate change by Tabor Academy’s Science Department Chair Tamar Cunha, and a discussion on Carbon and Climate Solutions with Dominique Barker, Managing Director and Head of Sustainability Advisory at CIBC, a speaker arranged by UTS Vice Principal Garth Chalmers.
One takeaway from the sessions that stuck with S5 (Grade 11) student Anna Reso (pictured left) was the concept of mandatory and voluntary carbon offset markets. “I was only vaguely familiar with carbon credits and offsets, much less how a carbon offset market works and it was cool that I was able to learn about it from Dominique as the Head of Sustainability Advisory at CIBC, who explained it in such a way I was able to understand without much prior knowledge.”
Another UTS student taking part was S5 (Grade 11) Evelyn Fallah (pictured right), who reached out to a new friend from France made through Breaking Bread last spring, for a “more authentic perspective” when she was assigned to represent France in Southern Ontario Model United Nations (her performance earned her the award of Best Delegate). “Through Breaking Bread, I’ve discovered there’s a large difference between learning about other places through research on their governmental policies and history, and it's something entirely different to talk with people from that place and hearing about their culture and daily experience.”
Before the fall Breaking Bread session, she says she had not fully realized the impact of climate change, and now she feels really inspired to pursue more action through attending climate strikes and actively following the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) taking place in Glasgow, Scotland from October 31 to November 12, and attended by Breaking Bread speaker Dominique Barker.
Dominique says it is of “utmost importance” for students to be engaged in civics, to engage with their parents and society and vote to their full potential, as soon as they can. “As the scientists have said, this is a code red for humanity. Much more action is needed – the private sector can do its part but governments will only take action when truly enabled by the voting population.”
As for Cooper, he is at the forefront as a co-organizer of the Global Climate Strike in Toronto that took place Saturday, November 6 in conjunction with COP26, where over 100,000 people marched around the world.
“We couldn't let the conference happen without taking action,” he says. “We are at an extremely pivotal moment in history. We can either take the extreme action we need to keep below two degrees of warming or reach for that 1.5 Celsius degrees of warming, or will continue to see very devastating impacts of climate change… At the same time, we're in this movement where a lot of young people really care – every student I talk to at UTS really cares. There's a lot of power to harness in that and make the voices of young people heard.”
