Undamming the Klamath: An Expository Reading and Writing Unit that Centers Indigenous Resilience, Climate Action, and the Healing of an Ecosystem
Podcast Summary
Gurbir Kahlon engages her high school multilingual learners in Torrance, California, with important literacy skills through the lens of environmental literacy. She has taught units in her ELD classroom on biomimicry, plastic pollution, and climate change. In this podcast, Gurbir discusses her most recent expository reading and writing unit on the powerful story of the resilient tribal communities in Northern California and their successful efforts to remove dams on the Klamath River in order to welcome their salmon home.
Sources:
Book: Teaching Climate Change: Fostering Understanding, Resilience, and a Commitment to Justice by Mark Windschitl (2023)
Article: “Undamming the Klamath” by Nika Bartoo-Smith for High Country News (May 2024)
Featured ELA Superhero
Gurbir Kahlon
Gurbir Kahlon teaches high school ELA and ELD in Torrance, California. She is passionate about elevating environmental literacy in the classroom, utilizing technology and AI to enhance learning, and building ethnic literature curriculum. She thrives on the relationships she has developed through collaborating with teachers throughout the California Writing Project network. Gurbir believes reading and writing allows students’ minds and creativity to flourish. She enjoys her newfound passion of reading nonfiction books and walks to the beach.
Teaching Snapshot
This teaching snapshot describes the unit discussed in the podcast in greater detail. Students spend time engaging with a variety of texts around the timely and relevant Klamath dam removal issue (UDL Consideration 7.2). Students research and discuss the issue in small groups through a variety of scaffolded texts and apply their knowledge of systemic and individual action to local climate-related issues (UDL Consideration 8.3). This expository unit is evidence that, with support, students can learn about complex environmental issues while building foundational literacy skills (UDL Consideration 8.2).
Additional Information:
Curriculum Unit: Save California Salmon Water Advocacy and Protection Curriculum
Article: “Yurok Crew Resumes Revegetation Work Behind Former Klamath Dams” by the Yurok Tribe (2024)
