Mapping Environmental (In)Justice: An Arts-Integrated, Secondary Social Studies Unit

What stories do maps tell us about how power and access shape our lived environments? How might we trace the ongoing impacts of discriminatory practices like residential redlining? What might an environmentally just Austin of the future look like?

As part of a youth participatory action research (YPAR) project to design new, arts-integrated, environmental justice curriculum for the Ann Richards School in Austin, TX, I developed and taught this unit across all sections of 7th Grade Social Studies in December, 2024, reaching 150+ students. We explored the questions detailed above through Theatre of the Oppressed strategies, collective analysis of maps and other artifacts, and collaborative visual arts expression.

Complete lesson plan linked here.

Professional Learning:

Student Testimonials

“Walker was such a wonderful highlight this semester, and I mean that with every fiber of my being. They were consistently making an effort to create curriculum that helped everybody, leaving no one out.

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“Meeting to discuss our teaching philosophy was really helpful. Getting that personalized, one-on-one feedback time was a good way for me to work out what I wanted to include and how to get there. All of the feedback and resources throughout the semester were incredibly helpful. I also feel like all of our in-class discussions were very intentional and mindful, and I always felt heard.”

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“Walker was amazing! Overall, they did an amazing job at introducing the concepts and helping us learn by fostering such a safe and welcoming environment. There was not one activity or project that I did not enjoy!”

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“Walker was extremely welcoming, warm, and attentive to the class's needs. He was always available to answer questions, and he did lots of extra work outside of class to ensure we felt supported.

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“I appreciated how inclusive the environment in the classroom was and how the professor was very understanding and uplifting throughout the course. I loved how most of the learning occurred during the hours of the class and that any assignments done outside of class hours were always throughly discussed during classes to bring the work into full perspective.”

University Teaching:

As a graduate student in the Drama and Theatre for Youth and Communities MFA program at UT Austin, I served as the instructor of record for two courses: Arts Integration for Multidisciplinary Contexts and Fundamentals of Acting. The former offered 25+ pre-service teachers from the College of Education an immersive exploration of arts-based pedagogies while the latter introduced 15 non-majors to collaborative theatre-making and the art of “living truthfully under imaginary circumstances.”

For Arts Integration, I designed and led a theatre arts unit that invited students to collaboratively devise performance poems around themes of identity, home, and belonging.

While at UT Austin, I also served as a Teaching Assistant for Professor Katie Dawson’s graduate Museum Theatre course as well as Dr. Megan Alrutz’s Retrospective Devising class.