Educators know that their students are most engaged with the curriculum when it is relevant to their own lives. Hands-on lessons with real-world implications can catch students’ attention and keep it. This is why Massachusetts Breast Cancer Coalition (MBCC) introduced the Let’s Talk Prevention: Actions You Can Take environmental health education program. These standalone classroom modules can supplement science, health, or environmental studies curriculum by helping high school students understand the impact of chemicals on disease risk. Based on MBCC’s award-winning Let’s Talk Prevention: Reducing Toxic Exposures community education program and tour, these modules bring that same information to adolescents. Several schools have taken advantage of these free downloadable modules since the program launched in August 2017.
As an extension of this new high school program, MBCC and Silent Spring Institute partnered to bring a hands-on environmental health program to students at six high schools across the Commonwealth. Through a grant received from the Toxics Use Reduction Institute (TURI), Michelle Dixon, MBCC’s Program and Development Director, and Dr. Jennie Ohayon from Silent Spring led class discussions and exercises in science classrooms at Roxbury Latin School, Boston Latin Academy, Drury High School, Dennis-Yarmouth Regional High School, Barnstable High School, and Chapel Hill – Chauncey Hall.
To learn more about MBCC’s high school program, please click here.