Students and staff attend climate conference in Taiwan

District administration as well as teachers and students from SHS will head to Taiwan to participate in a conference for Carbon Neutrality.

Superintendent Bill Sanderson, district board president Katherine Tseng, STEM teachers Audrey Warmuth and Matthew Welander, and seniors Naomi Hsieh, Owen Liang and Eric Norris flew to Taiwan on Oct. 21 to attend the 7-day New Taipei City Multi-Action Green International Carbon Neutral (MAGIC) Youth Forum.

The visit comes after a panel of 13 educators and government officials from Taipei City visited Saratoga High’s STEM classes on Sept. 20 to learn and observe teaching practices that they could integrate into their own schools.

Organized by the Taiwan Education Department and New Taipei City government, MAGIC aims to create an international platform for mutual learning and exchange. Participants from across the globe will share teaching techniques that they use in their own school systems and also learn from each other.

Because this year’s theme is “Carbon Neutral & Net Zero,” the event also hopes to help schools implement environmental sustainability practices.

“We really want to figure out what our schools and districts can improve upon in teaching methods, but also for implementing carbon neutral practices,” Welander said.

The conference will host over 100 student and teacher participants from countries across three continents, including Australia, France, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the U.S.

The event will be divided into four parts over seven days: technical sustainability project presentations, collaborative work on projects that center on green innovation for future generations, industrial visits and in-school cultural exchange and learning.

Sanderson is scheduled to be a keynote speaker at the conference; he will talk about LGSUHSD as an exemplar of STEM education. He will discuss the district’s Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) implemented in classes as well as the instrumental power of student advocacy in bringing about environmental change.

Students attending the conference will present sustainability projects that they worked on for months with Taiwanese high school students.

Welander said that while SHS’s student project is focused on engineering, other projects will span a variety of topics. Los Gatos went to the conference in 2019 and did a project that bridged fashion design with engineering to create a jacket that could be heated with solar panels.

Seniors Hsieh, Liang and Norris have been collaborating since April with students from the Jhangshu Creative Technical High School in New Taipei City for their project: a bicycle that records the amount of carbon emissions saved compared to a car ride.

“The motivation for the project stemmed from the question of how can we let people see their impact of choosing a more eco-friendly option’,” Norris said. “It really is just, ‘why take a car when a bike is more eco-friendly?’”

For the industrial visits, participants are scheduled to see companies and sites such as the National Taipei University of Technology that have sustainable environmental practices and contribute toward the theme of “Carbon Neutral & Net Zero.” The students are also scheduled to have in-school exchanges with host schools in New Taipei City such as the Jhangsu Creative Technical High School and Tamsui Vocational High School.

Besides conference activities, the group will have time to visit cultural sites and explore Taiwan.

Prior to going, Norris told The Falcon he is excited about the possibility of going on a biking excursion along the Taiwan coast.

“This is my first time visiting Taiwan,” Norris said. “I’m sure it’s going to be very enlightening and I’m curious to see the schools and students there, as well as the cultural sites.”