Classroom Readings and Exercises
Suggested readings done either before or after the screening of the film.
Susan (Suez) Jacobson
http://www.na-businesspress.com/JABE/JacobsonS_Web18_6_.pdf
Bill McKibben
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/03/reversal-fortune/
George Monbiot
https://www.monbiot.com/2016/09/15/disposable-planet/
Classroom exercises. These questions can be used either as a writing exercise, or to start a discussion among the students, or both.
Before the film:
- What is your favorite childhood memory, a memory of a time when you were happy?
- What does our society teach us about what makes us happy?
- What’s the connection / disconnection between your answers to the first two questions?
After the film:
- What does the film add to your thinking about our writing / discussion before the film started?
- What did you learn about the psychological research on happiness from the film? How does this apply or not apply to your own life and the decisions you make?
- What did you learn about climate change from the film? Did the film change the way you think about climate change and / or your role in contributing to climate change?
- What did you learn about economics from the film? How is what you learned about economics similar to or different from what you knew about economics before you watched the film?
- Describe a time when you experienced the positive emotion awe. What did you learn from the film about the positive emotion awe? How did you feel when you had an awe experience?
- How are you impacted when you have a nature experience – even one as simple as taking notice of trees or birds or bugs as you walk the city streets? What did the film say about how nature experiences can impact the way we think about our places in the world? Are your experiences in nature similar to or different from the way the film describes them?
- How does the film connect economics / materialism and the awe experience?
- How does the film connect economics and climate change?
- What is the “hope” in “Wild Hope?”
- Did the film motivate you to act, to change the way you make decisions? Why or why not?
