The First Day
The long awaited first class finally arrived. Jared and I met at 9am to begin prepping for our 2:30 pm class, so that should tell you where our heads were at. I don’t know about him, but I was a jumble of nerves and honestly needed overpreparation to settle me down. I wanted everything to go smoothly and set the right tone for the class. We got all of our ducks in a row—our introductions, course themes, administrative notes, expectations, and icebreakers. We decided to start the class with a demonstration of where the law fits into what they may already know to be environmental harms (as many are in environmental sciences). I prepared a walkthrough of one of the biggest and most devastating disasters that happened to take place right in our backyard: the Kingston Coal Ash Spill. Jared very kindly became my guinea pig for presenting an abridged version of the case.
After a couple run throughs, Jared and I thought we were sitting pretty. Then, news comes in. Professor Jacobs, our advisor for the course, sends us a summary of recent Trump administration executive orders. We quickly read through to find severe changes to the regulatory landscape. To say Jared and I were shell-shocked would be the understatement of the decade. We spent months crafting our syllabus, with just one day in office, we might need to adjust our coursework extensively, or at least find ways to account for new changes and challenges.
Right off the bat, we decided we needed to address that the field is changing in our course description, and bring attention to regulations and efforts to deregulate. We made plans to incorporate recent developments when we get to topics like environmental justice and climate justice, considering Trump’s stance on all things equity and his plans to drill, drill, drill. We want to be careful when addressing extremely contentious and controversial topics, but these changes will substantively change the practice of environmental law and strategies of environmental protection, so we cannot just ignore the current events.
So with this huge bombshell, we walked in to teach our class. It all went as we prepared. Introductions were made, and course themes described. We artfully tried to explain how recent administration changes and actions will affect the course. We may have tried to navigate the language of politics a little too artfully, and ended up a bit vague on the subject. However, we have plenty of time to figure out how to address Trump’s actions and efforts to challenge those actions from groups like the Sierra Club, Earthjustice, the Center for Biological Diversity, and many more. We want to stay out of political debate, but acknowledge the very real challenges in working in environmental law. We will continue to discuss amongst each other and with our advisors on how to handle such a delicate balance.
We continued to learn more about the students and their backgrounds. I feel very lucky that we got such an amazing group of students who all seem very passionate and interested in the subject. Many were interested in environmental justice and microplastics, so we will make sure to pay extra attention to those topics.
After hearing from our students, I walked the class through the story of the Kingston Coal Ash Spill, and all the associated harms of the event. I posited questions to the class throughout, and students answered most of the time. Jared pointed out to me that I need to wait a bit longer after asking questions for responses, so I will work on incorporating more pauses. The students were very on top of it when asked about different remedies each group in the story may want after the harm, which was great. I described how we will learn the law to bridge the gaps between the environmental harms, and the remedies to redress those harms. After the demonstration, all of the students had a million questions. Many were asking about things that we won’t plan to cover until weeks into the course! I was excited to see their eagerness, but we will need to find strategies to tell students to slow down and take it one step at a time. Jared closed us out with a preview of the next class, and it was over.
Many students stayed after to chat with us, and it was great to get to know them a bit better. They were all so bright eyed and bushy tailed and seemed eager to learn the material. If we can keep at least some of that energy, I have high hopes for a very rewarding semester.
