Educators That Rock!: Paul Diamond
Photo courtesy of UNESCO.
Paul Diamond, center, on the beach outside of Praia, the capital city of the Cape Verde Islands, showing teachers how to use simple tools such as broom sticks to measure wave heights.
This week, findingEducation spoke with Paul Diamond, codirector of the Sandwatch project, a UNESCO project supported in great part by the Denmark Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Sandwatch aims to make communities more aware of their marine and coastal environments.
Dr. Gillian Cambers, a member of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) formally established the Sandwatch program in 2001. Diamond joined a few years later and helped expand the program’s reach by building a Web site, and holding teacher trainings sessions on various island and coastal countries.
Born in Scotland, Diamond was raised in Canada where he studied archeology at the University of Toronto. He then spent several seasons in Belize at dig sites before crossing into the technology field. He helped IBM build computer labs throughout the Caribbean. Recognizing the need for technology instruction, he began teaching on the small island of Virgin Gorda before moving to Saint Kitts and Nevis, south of Puerto Rico.
In his work for Sandwatch, Diamond helps teachers create grassroots environmental projects in their schools and communities. As the senior technical director for the Nevis Historical & Conservation Society, Diamond keeps a watchful eye on the island’s beaches and historical grounds, while teaching students about biodiversity and technology.
fE: What attracted you to teaching?
PD: I did some teaching when I was in Toronto, but I didn’t really get into any teaching until I came here. I came originally to build computer labs for schools and quickly found out that governments would spend a lot of money—millions of dollars—to put in a computer lab, but then they wouldn’t give a few thousand dollars to train teachers how to use them. So very often, modern, state-of-the-art labs sit idle.
fE: How did you become involved in the Sandwatch program?
PD: I was teaching at a small school in Virgin Gorda, this tiny beautiful island, and I wanted to do an environmental project involving the beach there, Savannah Bay. I’d done some research and found a UNESCO project called Sandwatch.
So I contacted the woman who had started it, Dr. Gillian Cambers, and she said the project was beginning to languish because they didn’t have a Web site. I said, “I can design a Web site.” So we started to build a Web site and went from having schools in three or four islands to having hundreds in 50 countries.
fE: How does the Sandwatch program work?
PD: A teacher and some students adopt a beach, and they do a series of very simple measurements and tests using common, everyday tools, a tape measure, a stopwatch and a compass, once a month over the course of a school year. The teachers can see if their beach is stable and healthy or whether it’s deteriorated, and whether there’s been an increase in trash or in fish.
fE: Can you explain why small islands like Saint Kitts and Nevis are more affected by climate change than larger countries?
PD: I live on Nevis, which is considered one of the SIDS (Small Island Developing States). It’s very easy to spot problems here, because we only have so many wetlands with mangroves in them. So when a developer bulldozes one of them, everyone can see it. If we’ve a coral bleaching event, we can see the bleach has turned the coral white.
fE: One teacher called the Sandwatch project an “outdoor classroom” where their students could learn science and math. What specifically is the Sandwatch approach that you pass on to students?
PD: The core of the project is measuring areas of the beach width, and taking water and sand temperatures. Sand temperatures are very important, especially at the nesting sites for turtles, because they determine what sex the turtles will be, and if it’s too hot the eggs don’t hatch at all. We do some testing of seawater for contaminants such as sewage and E. coli, or runoff from agriculture, such as phosphates and nitrates.
We also try to encourage teachers to expand upon Sandwatch. For example, after picking up the trash on the beach, we encourage them to divide the trash up into different categories, between plastic waste and paper waste, and use graphs to teach ratios. It all fits easily into a primary or middle school curriculum.
fE: How does the Web enhance Sandwatch’s reach and help others learn?
PD: Whenever a school joins Sandwatch, I make Web pages for the class. For teachers in developing countries, knowing that people all over the world can see pictures of their own little town just blows their minds.
At workshops, we also show teachers how to use Google Earth to find their town, their home and their school. We’ve a Sandwatch team nearby in Montserrat, another Caribbean island, which has an extremely active volcano. You can zoom right in and see the steam and the ash coming off the top of the volcano. You can see where the ash wiped out the main town.
We also always spend the morning at trainings making a little two or three-minute movie using Windows Movie Maker.
And the best thing that happens, and it happens all over the world, is that they’ll turn to me and say, “That’s it! That’s how you make a movie. Anyone can do that.” And I say, “Yes, exactly. Anyone can do it.”
fE: Teachers and students are also incorporating art and drama into the program. What are some examples?
PD: In Africa, storytelling is a part of the culture. There’s a school in Kenya where the kids will actually go into the market and put on a play for the elders about the importance of the environment.
Also, when we take the students down to the beach for the first time, we divide them up into three or four groups, and we have them sketch what they see. Some students go into great detail with the geography of the beach but they won’t mention the people. Others notice all the plants, animals, boats and tourists. By combining the different sketches they can create a map.
fE: Another part of your program is training teachers how to intervene when their observations and measurements indicate a problem. Have they had any success?
PD: In Bequia, an island in the Grenadines near St. Vincent, fishermen were dumping trash into the ravine. And the Sandwatch kids went down there and hauled out truckloads of stuff and since it was their own children that were cleaning up the mess, they’ve kept it clean.
In the Bahamas, where students were doing their beach clean up, they noticed that there were fast-food containers from a local hotel, made of Styrofoam and paper. They took a video camera, and presented a petition to the restaurant owner. And of course, met by all these primary school students, the owner said, “You’re absolutely right. We shouldn’t be doing this.” And he started using biodegradable containers made of cornstarch.
fE: How does Sandwatch raise awareness for environmental issues?
PD: At the workshops we tell teachers “When you’re doing a beach clean up or bringing in a guest speaker, have students write up a story on what they learned and then send it with photographs to your local newspaper.” I guarantee the paper’s editors will love that. Hope builds momentum!
fE: How can you convince business owners and farmers and hotel owners that your environmental goals can align with theirs?
PD: The Nevis government and the Nevis Historical & Conservation Society, where I train students and oversee a biodiversity Web site, have launched a lot of public awareness programs to show people that the environment is what people come here to see: the rain forest and the monkeys, the coral reefs and the white beaches. If you tear that all down to build condos and golf courses, people won’t come here. You won’t even want to live here.
fE: Are there any schools in the United States involved in Sandwatch?
PD: I’ve never actively recruited in the U.S. It’s just the mindset. I live on a small island and the project is designed for small islands. But one of my best friends here is a marine biologist and she’s moving to Hawaii. When she gets there, she will ask the local school to join Sandwatch. If a school contacts me and says they want to do it, I wouldn’t turn anyone down.
Paul Diamond’s Favorites Sites:
