Scholar of Change – Christine Topper
Scholar of Change – Christine Topper Program Transcript
CHRISTINE TOPPER: My name is Christine Topper and I am doctorate student in educational psychology at Walden University. Today I want to show you how I grow as a scholar practitioner and use what I learned in my courses to impact social change in my local community.
I am international school teacher in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is a compact and vertical city. As such our student body does not have much exposure outside of home and has developed a disconnection from the natural world. High rise buildings are taking over the natural green spaces where children usually play and media technology is keeping people indoors and changing the lifestyle of society from active to sedentary.
Richard Louv coined a term, nature deficit disorder, to explain this phenomena in his book Last Child in the Woods. Nature deficit disorder is a real social problem in a big city like Hong Kong. I decided to conduct an independent research study looking to ways to address nature deficit disorder.
Building on the rooftop greening project an early childhood teacher and myself started a sustainable micro-garden for the kindergarten students in the outdoor play space. The students were in charge of taking care of the garden, from planting, weeding, to harvesting and selling the produce at to the school community, and response to [INAUDIBLE] garden. We started with a herb patch and within a year it is grown into a vegetable and flower garden. With help from our secondary school the kindergarten students recently started a vertical plastic bottle garden.
We witnessed the benefits of the garden immediately. The pocket garden initiative will continue in my school this year. And we are collaborating with local organizations to create more green spaces in schools around Hong Hong. Contact and exposure to nature no longer happens intuitively, so adults need to create authentic opportunities for children to reengage with nature every day. We all can be an agent of change. Changing a child's life can be as simple as starting a garden at home or in the classroom.
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2. How was working for social change important to you before you came to Walden?
I have always been dedicated to the idea of social change on both the macro and micro level. I work as a counselor and a teacher, and for me that combination does both. I can impact individuals at the counseling levels, and teaching sociology, I can impact large numbers of people as I teach my students about the discrimination our society faces. I have been doing both counseling and teaching for nine years now, and I really feel dedicated to impacting my community in both of those areas.
a. Can you give me an example of what you did?
I, uh, I am currently trying out a new theory about counseling, including a biopsychosocial spiritual model in my counseling process to see how that goes.
3. How was the social change mission important to you in making your choice to come to Walden?
I actually earned a Masters in Psychology from Walden in 2007, so I was already familiar with the social change aspect. We worked on that philosophy, but not at the level that it is focused on currently, which is nice. I chose to return to Walden because of the convenience of online learning, but I chose the program because I feel that learning more aspects of how to uh approach a problem, social or individual, will help me to uhm be able to have a more holistic approach to any social problem I choose to attack. I
a. Please describe how it was important/not important to you.
Social change, I feel, can only be brought about by a paradigm shift in how everyone thinks. I need education to be able to understand the current paradigms and how they effect our thinking processes. I think it’s kinda like religion, where each religion has some of it right, but not every religion is 100% right. So, if I continue to study each discipline, I may be able to get a bigger picture of how I can affect social change.
4. From your perspective, what is social change? Well, social change is really just finding a problem in society and trying to change it for the better.
women, the gay movement, and on and on. One movement spawned a whole society’s search for equality. What a powerful thing that is!
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