Classroom Caffeine
Classroom Caffeine
A Stories-To-Live-By Conversation with Dr. Alexandra Panos
In this special series of Classroom Caffeine in collaboration with the Stories-To-Live-By Collective, we highlight this group of K–12 teachers from across the state of Florida and former teachers now in higher education who are working together to sensemake and take action. We talk with educators and researchers who are working together to explore how literacy teaching can respond to the climate crisis. Since 2021, they have gathered in person and online to write, make art, share stories, and reflect on how climate change is shaping our classrooms and communities. Supported by grants and partnerships, they hold regular workshops a nd virtual meetings, creating space for teachers to learn from one another while navigating challenges like book bans, censorship laws, and the realities of living through major hurricanes.
Through this work, the group is studying how teachers use stories, place-based activities, and multimodal composing to bring climate change into English Language Arts classrooms. Their collaborative research asks: How do teachers tell stories about climate change? How do they navigate the political, social, and environmental pressures of their schools? And how can they build new literacies that prepare young people for more just and livable futures?
In each episode of this special series, we talk with a collaborator in the Stories-To-Live-By Collective about their experiences, connections, and learning through this work together.
Dr. Alexandra Panos grew up in St. Louis, Missouri and taught middle school in Chicago before doing her PhD in rural Indiana. Her parents and sisters moved to Florida 25 years ago so this has been a second home for quite awhile, although she only just moved her in 2019. It was her experience of learning to be an engaged Floridian, socially, politically, and environmentally, that led her to convene work related to the intersections of her passions: literacy, teacher power, and education for the climate crisis. She lives in St. Petersburg with her partner, two rescue dogs, and Drusilla, the cat, who demanded to live with them in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton.
Alex is an Associate Professor of Literacy Studies and Affiliate Faculty in Measurement and Research at the University of South Florida. Alex is the principal investigator in the Stories-To-Live-By Collective.
Connect with Classroom Caffeine at www.classroomcaffeine.com or on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Education research has a problem. The work of brilliant researchers often doesn't reach the practice of brilliant teachers. Over the years, we've also talked about how the work of brilliant teachers often does not inform the work of education researchers. In this special series of Classroom Caffeine, in collaboration with the Stories to Live by Collective, we highlight this group of K-12 teachers from across the state of Florida and former teachers now in higher education who are working together to sense- make and take action. We talk with educators and researchers who are working together to explore how literacy teaching can respond to the climate crisis. Since 2021, they have gathered in person and online to write, make art, share stories and reflect on how climate change is shaping our classrooms and communities. Supported by grants and partnerships, they hold regular workshops and virtual meetings, creating space for teachers to learn from one another while navigating challenges like book bans, censorship laws and the realities of living through major hurricanes. Through this work, the group is studying how teachers use stories, place-based activities and multimodal composing to bring climate change into English language arts classrooms. Their collaborative research asks, "how do teachers tell stories about climate change, how do they navigate the political, social and environmental pressures of their schools?" and how can they build new literacies that prepare young people for more just and livable futures?" In each episode of this special series, we talk with a collaborator in the Stories to Live by Collective about their experiences, connections and learning through this work together.
Lindsay Persohn:Dr Alexandra Panos is an Associate Professor of Literacy Studies and Affiliate Faculty in Measurement and Research at the University of South Florida. Alex is the Principal Investigator in the Stories to Live by Collective, leading and coordinating the work of the group by organizing meetings, obtaining funding and supporting members of the collective in many ways.
Lindsay Persohn:Alex grew up in St Louis, Missouri, and taught middle school in Chicago before doing her PhD in rural Indiana. Her parents and sisters moved to Florida 25 years ago, so it's been a second home for quite a while, although she only just moved here in 2019. It was her experience of learning to be an engaged Floridian socially, politically and environmentally that led her to convene work related to the intersections of her passions: literacy, teacher power and education for the climate crisis. She lives in St Petersburg with her partner, two rescue dogs and Drusilla, the cat who demanded to live with them in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton.
Lindsay Persohn:So pour a cup of your favorite drink and join me, your host, Lindsay Persohn, for this special series of Classroom Caffeine: Stories To Live By that are sure to energize your thinking and your teaching practice.
Lindsay Persohn:Alex, thanks for joining me. Welcome back to the show.
Alexandra Panos:Always happy to be here. Talk to you.
Lindsay Persohn:Thanks. So this conversation is specifically related to your work with the Stories to Live by project. So, from your own experiences, would you share with us one or two moments that inform your thinking as it relates to climate literacies and climate education?
Alexandra Panos:Certainly. So, I guess the first thing I'll say is that I've had the opportunity to work on the intersection of literacy and climate issues since about 2014. When I began working on this kind of work with my advisor, and when I first started working with him on this, we were thinking about climate literacies as really about the critical sort of reading practices related to processing and making sense of complex, often politicized information. And, those kinds of reading practices are really, really important. They are necessary for a civic society that's functional, for shared understandings of what truth means, for critically examining information and then coming to some conclusion about what solutions look like in the face of something that's as wicked of a problem as climate change and that intersects with so much of our lives and our bodies and our social systems. So, that was a big moment, was sort of thinking like, "wow, reading and literacy practices and teaching them and studying them have to do with the environment and have to do with the way that our experiences with the world around us are politicized, are part of our civic experiences and part of our material experiences with the world." and I think that's really important.
Alexandra Panos:But, the second moment so I carried that with me and I continued to think about you know, okay, so these are critical literacies' practices. We need to be critical and ask critical questions and be reflexive about our own thinking in order to incorporate science-based understandings of the world around us and, you know, sort of question our biases and all that kind of good stuff that, like, critical literacy fosters or can foster, and so I've taken that with me.
Alexandra Panos:And then I came to Florida in 2019 and began working with teachers here, and critical literacy remains an essential thing, and you know, I continue to work with teachers in that area related to climate issues or anything you know, like, those critical literacy practices are not unique to climate change. But when I got here, I think Florida itself is just an enveloping experience for the body and senses, and I'm speaking to you right now, Lindsay, in August, so it's very, very hot and right. So, I don't know. I feel like living in Florida, we live through so much in our environment and experience it so much that way that it sort of changed how I oriented to what I thought literacy's intersections with climate and environmental issues are, and so now I think a lot more about the socio-ecologies or the social and ecological dimensions of our lives and climate is a huge part of that, but I realized that here we can see those social and ecological dimensions play out before us so profoundly all the time, whether that's you watching another hundred acres of land, beautiful central Florida land, get raised for housing developments, or you go to the beach and your chest tightens because of red tide algal blooms, or whether you have hunkered down or are sitting in traffic to evacuate a major hurricane, or one of many, many, many, many other social, ecological experiences, socioecological experiences that we have.
Alexandra Panos:I sort of started to recognize that these are not discrete literacies' practices that we have to investigate. They're part of what we need to do and certainly essential, but our bodies and our social experiences moving through the environment and thinking about how we're responsible to the land and waters where we live, that there's a much greater relationship and responsibility there than just a critical reading practice is sort of, I feel, like the it's not a moment, it's more something that Florida has taught me, and being around folks that have lived here for a long time has taught me that, and I guess the final thing I'll say is that social ecological is not just, you know, like me moving through the world, it's also all the systems that create what me moving through the world and the environment intersecting with our lives look like. So that includes our infrastructure, our city planning, our politics and the ways that politics mediate education and what we do in our schools, and all of that intersects with how we can prepare children for the world that they are inheriting. So I think that, like those are two, they're not moments, they're just like more of more motivations or like our bigger picture thinking.
Alexandra Panos:But that has really crystallized both through like my progression through these ideas and then to where I am today. And it brings me to this project, I guess, because when I wanted to start working with teachers, I realized that teaching or working with them only around discrete practices, teaching practices or learning opportunities was not actually enough, because I can teach teachers or we can do PD around how do you teach critical literacies, practices around climate change, or how do you do X, Y and Z. But I think Florida has taught me that being an educator in relationship to climate literacies and climate education and our socioecological lives is a whole body experience and it's about our whole mindset. It's about our relationship to where we live, to the future of where we live, to the future of all the beings that inhabit that place, and about the rights of children to feel that way too and to understand that all encompassing thing.
Lindsay Persohn:Alex, you explain this so well and I think that, you know, for me it also helps me to better understand your work around what placed- based literacies really mean. Right, because when you talk about what it's like to live in Florida, I think anyone who has spent any time here, you kind of have this visceral reaction, not just to the heat, but like if you've ever walked on the beach in red tide, you know what that's like to have. You know it takes your breath away. I know for me, as someone who's had asthma my entire life, you know I'm at the beach for about two seconds when it's like that and then I've got to go lest I suffocate.
Lindsay Persohn:Like, you know, the poor marine life that has to suffer through that stuff. But, that you know, integrated with this idea of what it means to live through the change of our climate, you know, I think there are times that when you've lived here a long time, just like in any other experience, you almost become a little bit numb to what that's like, because you know they use the old metaphor of the frog slowly boiling right.
Lindsay Persohn:You know our lives around hurricanes have changed over the last several years.
Lindsay Persohn:I feel like I'm more prepared, so to speak, and I use, you know, hurricane preparedness than I've ever really thought I needed to be, you know, growing up here and as a younger adult, and so, yeah, the way that you describe this it reminds me that, yes, in fact, living in Florida is a very visceral kind of experience between all of these things that we do kind of on a day-to-day or maybe a season-to-season sort of basis, that we may not really think about in that way, and then thinking about what that means when we hand this off to the next generation.
Lindsay Persohn:It's just really, it's critical work. And, I think your approach of bringing teachers together to embed this work in their own experiences, like you said, it's not just you giving a workshop where you say, "here we can do this and we can do this, but really it's teachers identifying where they already are and what questions they have, and then how do they integrate this work to support the children they teach. So, it's really cool to hear you describe this because I think it makes a whole lot of sense.
Alexandra Panos:Thank you. Thank you and I guess, yeah, in the same way that I'm saying like, yeah, we can't just teach discrete practices, we can't work discreetly with one another, and we can't work discreetly with the world around us.
Alexandra Panos:We might need to focus on particular areas and particular issues, but we need to be in community, and so I think that that's a huge reason why the Stories to Live by project looks the way it does is to be connected to one another, to think together, and it's not just Florida.
Alexandra Panos:I will say, like I, when I go around and I talk to other teachers around the country and colleagues around the world about this, one of the things that I think resonates, even when I'm speaking specifically about this very immersive, like Florida specific issue, is that there are resonances, right?
Alexandra Panos:So I was just in New York recently and shared some stories about algal blooms here, and red tide is our most, I think, profound one that we sort of immediately think of here, and I'm in upstate New York and they were like we have algal blooms on our lakes and they're starting to cover our entire lakes because of the climate crisis and you know, it's one of those things. It's such a different environment. I mean, it's cool and green and crisp and you know, clear, fresh water that doesn't have alligators in it, and yet we share this like deep connection, and it's also because the folks up there care so deeply about where they live and what it feels like to live there, and so so, yeah, so I think Florida opened to this for me, but I feel like anywhere to your point about place-based sense-making and storytelling and our educational orientation to things, anywhere can do that. Any we are responsible to everywhere and some places really open that for us, that understanding of the power of of place.
Lindsay Persohn:Well, I love that you really highlight the commonalities, even whenever we think that we don't have much in common with a particular place, like it immediately made me think about the recent reports of the subways flooding in New York City due to heavy rains and you know those sorts of things that I guess, in some ways, you know, you never really think that that's going to be the reality, and here it's happened several times and so, yeah it just I don't think any of us are really safe from what Mother Nature is experiencing right now, you know, at the hands of humans. So, Alex, what else do you want listeners to know about your work related to climate literacies, specifically the Stories to Live by project?
Alexandra Panos:The Stories to Live by project is really driven for me, and what I hope people can learn about it from this podcast series and hopefully more in the future, is driven by this idea that we can't do these things alone. Individual actions are certainly important, but we are operating within very large systems that perpetuate the climate crisis very concretely and perpetuate ways that we sort of are forced into interacting with our environments. So we need to think together, and this includes the education system. Our education systems are designed to support all learners to a certain extent, and each teacher I know is very driven to support every child in their classroom. However, the sort of functions of the education our testing testing apparatus and our scripted curriculum and the politically mediated environments that have been created in recent years means that teachers have lost a lot of control over the environment of their classroom. And when I thought about, okay, I could teach teachers and I'm saying that like I could come at this as a project to teach teachers how to teach about climate I realized that that just doesn't work and teachers need to be motivated from their own experiences and they know their classroom environments and they know their communities the best. So I wanted to make sure that this project was driven by what teachers' knowledge brought to the work and, ultimately, the stories that their students have to share about their lives and the stories that they need to explore so that they grow in their abilities and capabilities and skills and understandings the necessary stuff to tackle the changing world. So what ultimately I think that has meant is supporting teachers in nuanced and diverse ways to think about their socio-ecological realities and who they are and who their students are, in very diverse places across the whole state. This project spans to do that work, so I think that's part of it.
Alexandra Panos:The other thing that I want to share is that climate change, like climate education, is officially sanctioned in Florida. We've had references to climate change removed from textbooks by state law that went into effect last year on July 1st, and we've further had a lot of censorship and restrictions beyond that to just scrub climate change and scrub other things, and we've created an environment where teachers are very nervous and rightfully so about what could happen to them if they say or teach the wrong thing or if a parent gets upset about bringing political information to the classroom, which climate change is often positioned as political, and what I realized in working with teachers for a long time and thinking about this for a long time is that we don't have to and I'm not saying this to get around state law. I want to be really clear. I'm not trying, and I have never wanted to guide teachers to get around any laws.
Alexandra Panos:But when I think about what I said about the socioecological realities of living here, that's not political, that's just true, and any Floridian you talk to knows that, and we know that here in our state we have deep bipartisan support for protecting and caring for our Florida, the parks and the wild places and the animals and the ecosystems that are special and that matter to us here.
Alexandra Panos:And so this shift that I've sort of done to thinking about the stories of the children, the stories of the places and our relationship to those really nuanced situations that we live through and what it means to live through red tide and what it means to live through hurricanes and what it means to live through runoffs from Okeechobee and heat domes in Miami and all of those things, those aren't political and I've never had a teacher that I work with who engages with those topics and finds them to be concerning. And so I think that the other thing is is just creating space for teachers to talk through and think about who and what matters and how to work on stories with their students. That's community-based work and so creating those communities, for teachers to think about that, to think about the all-encompassing experience of climate crisis, but not make it the political theater that it is in other spaces, in their schools, in their classrooms, because it doesn't have to be and yeah, so I think that's the other big thing.
Lindsay Persohn:And, it's not helpful.
Alexandra Panos:No!
Lindsay Persohn:Right, whenever it comes to political theatre, it's just... it's not helpful to anyone, least of all those who are living through the realities of what this means in their day to day life.
Alexandra Panos:Right.
Lindsay Persohn:Yeah. So, could you maybe give a few examples of what you all did together in your time in your time in The Stories to Live By project?
Alexandra Panos:Sure! So I guess to start with, we take a view of literacy that's very expansive. So we certainly think that literacy means reading and writing and that there are important practices that we can grow related to our socioecological realities and relationships, like how to write a story about where we live. But we have a more expansive perspective on what literacy means too. So we try to think about like moving through space, walking with one another, walking on our own, and documenting that work as part of like really growing our socioecological relationships. We wrote a lot of postcards and you know postcards in Florida are a fun thing. We have a long history of postcards and there's great resources on the USF library web page about like Florida postcards. But we thought about OK, so like what would it mean to send a postcard from our socioecological moment right now? What's a story that needs to be told and who do we need to tell it to? That's kind of political or advocacy work in itself, like what is happening where you are and who needs to hear about it. Is it your grandma? Is it a politician? Is it you know your past or your future self? Like who needs to hear a story from you about where you are right now.
Alexandra Panos:We also worked with the wonderful folks at the environmental news organization the Marjorie. They have a series called Dispatches from a Sinking State where ordinary Floridians create personal essays, including photos and narrative, about the places that matter to them and that they care about across the state. There's beautiful pieces about gosh, Chassahowitzka. You know the sugar cane fields outside of Miami. You know just wonderful pieces where Floridians are talking about what's happening to them and why they care for where they live, and so we've read those and talked about how personal narratives can be something that we grow with our students, and I know that teachers are thinking about that and we wrote them ourselves. We're presenting some of our work at an upcoming national conference, the National Council of Teachers of English, where teachers are going to talk about their place-based sensemaking, their field notes that they write.
Alexandra Panos:I mean there's so many ways to engage with this broad idea of socioecological story, right, the stories we live by, the stories we need to be living by, the stories to grow and live by. So we read poetry, there's curriculum, there's children's books. I have long lists that I can certainly share with you, Lindsay, to put on the website, but ultimately, what I saw over and over again is that teachers were drawn to stories because of the human connection, because of memory and sort of thinking about memory, that they motivate us, they give people a sense of agency we can share across difference and divide. You know, we can make things that are really complicated about the environment and climate or just socioecological realities more broadly simpler. It like makes it about, you know, things that are human or like tangible rather than overwhelming, and all of that I think really really helps us all to do that, do that work of socioecological relationship.
Lindsay Persohn:Well, the story certainly help us process all of these changes and the tensions around it, and you know our personal feelings and, like you said, the political pushback and the way that those things actualize in our lives. Yeah, Well, you know how much I love story. I've kind of built my life around stories exhibited by this podcast but you know it is a really important way for us to sense- make ourselves and then also, of course, share with the wider world. So I love this idea of postcards and thinking about not just a place to place kind of postcard, but even a time to time sort of postcard. I think that's really. It's really a cool way to get our creative side going while we're thinking about how we enact real world change or shifts in our thinking or, you know, whatever it may be that we're kind of up to in our thinking about climate literacy.
Alexandra Panos:Yeah, and I guess I'll say that I have two things that I want to add to that. One is that the model for this project was very much driven by building communities so that people can talk like a lot of what we did was talk and sense make together and then to doing doing the relationships with our socio-ecological lives in ways that are that are emblematic of the values and beliefs that we have about how to be responsible to the world we live in. And so I think that, like that work of like, I think so many of us deeply care and deeply want to contribute to a future planet that can sustain life. But it's really hard in the world we live in it's really hard, and it's really hard when suddenly you apply that to being a teacher. Like there's so many ways that like we feel like we're not living out who we know we are, and so to have people to think with that on is really essential, and then to be able to practice it on our own and then to take bits of that and to learn how to integrate slowly into classroom spaces is really essential. And I think that that's the one of the most important things for me about this project is.
Alexandra Panos:I think we're building wisdom together and building wisdom is so important to socioecological work. There's, I mean, a long, long tradition of indigenous folks and first nations peoples who have wisdom about socio-ecological relationships that have been dismissed and been violently stripped from community. And all of this thinking that I do is certainly built from Indigenous peoples' sensemaking and we try to do a lot with that in the work. And I think that one big thing I've learned from my own reading of Indigenous authors and working with folks is that stories build wisdom. And, the teachers and I trying to work to think about our current realities with those who have come before us and with those who will come after us is we're trying to build wisdom for how to manage this right now as educators. What do we, what is building socio-ecological relationships look like? What are the stories we need, how do we share those and who do we need with us to do to do that?
Lindsay Persohn:It's really beautiful to think of it in that way, I think, because stories do help us to find ways to feel a bit more human. And I think, especially in the world of teaching, as you mentioned, that is highly regulated and highly scripted and often, you know, I think, as educators, it can feel like a space where you're not really free to bring your whole self to the equation. And, so I think that you creating this space where teachers can come together to explore those stories and, as you said, to sort of leave them behind also it's really important stuff. You know, stories are an age-old way of sense-making and sharing ideas and wisdom, and so I love that you all are contributing to that foundation, that foundational wisdom for future generations as well.
Alexandra Panos:Yeah, that's my hope, and I think that we have a lot of wisdom that we've built together related to managing politically mediated teaching environments and to building practices that are loving towards the earth and all that inhabit it. I think that that's the thing that I've learned from the teachers. I've learned from their literacies' practices, things about being loving and knowledgeable and having relationships to place and the past and the long histories of this earth and Florida and each specific place where each of the teachers lived, managing those responsibilities and what that means to have those relationships practicing really like, lived in and embodied ways of being, you know, from noticing to taking action to. You know, working with children in the aftermath of hurricanes and continually creating stories about that that can resonate with people outside of Florida, with students, with parents, with administrators, with their colleagues, because that's that's the work is. My hope is that this can spread and it doesn't have to be some political show. It's no, we need to do this and let's do the work together.
Lindsay Persohn:Yeah, no, that's important to get to the actual doing. Well, on that note, you know I always like to end with this question. Given the challenges of today's educational climate, what message do you want other teachers to hear?
Alexandra Panos:That more is possible with children in classroom spaces when we're in tune with the values and beliefs that shape who we are in the world, and tuning ourselves and building our internal wisdoms related to our place in the world is possible even in challenging educational climates.
Lindsay Persohn:Yeah, I think that that sense of community is critical and, as you know, I've already spoken with several teachers who've been a part of this project and it's a big theme that they share is just how important this community has been to them in their own sense making and they're thinking about you know how they do the work of day-to-day teaching while keeping the planet in mind and while also meeting the needs of the students who are in their classrooms right now, who are facing these challenges and supporting them to navigate.
Lindsay Persohn:You know, even we could say deal with it, but I really think it's just, it's about navigating what it's like to live right now. And you know we are, we are in hurricane season at the moment. So I think you know we're all just kind of, you know you wait and you wonder and you try to get the best information you can, but you're helping kids to make sense of that and what that means in their lives, I think, is just it's, it's absolutely critical.
Lindsay Persohn:So thank you for the work that you're doing.
Alexandra Panos:Thanks, Lindsay, and I'll just say, if any of this, if this series that Classroom Caffeine is putting together on this project resonates. If something pops out and you, and you say, "That' me, that's what I'm thinking about, or I've been struggling with this, or I want to do X, y and Z with these folks," please, please, reach out to me and I would love to talk to you. So that's. The other thing is that, like a concrete thing, is that you are not alone. If any of this resonates, if you're listening to the series and thinking to yourself, these are the teachers that I want to be talking to right now.
Alexandra Panos:Please let us know.
Lindsay Persohn:Great. I appreciate that invitation and certainly we'll share your resource links on your page. So thanks so much, Alex.
Lindsay Persohn:By centering teacher's experiences and creativity, The Stories To Live By Collective reimagines literacy education as a powerful way to engage with the climate crisis. Together, members of this collective are showing how stories and teaching practices rooted in place can help communities respond to climate change, while nurturing hope, justice and resilience for future generations. If you have an interest in joining this group, please reach out to Dr. Alexandra Panos, Associate Professor of Literacy Studies at the University of South Florida, at ampanos@ usfedu. That's a-m-p-a-n-o-s at usfedu.