The Silent Rivers: Water Pollution in Iran (Karoon River) and the Ripple of Loss by Parastoo Yousefi

Purpose Statement and Essential Questions

This project explores how middle school students in Khuzestan, Iran can use writing as a form of environmental witnessing, cultural remembering, and community activism in response to the severe pollution of the Karoon River. It asks:

• How can writing become a way for students to engage with environmental injustice in their place?

• How do cultural memory, place-based storytelling, and intergenerational dialogue shape students’ identities as writers?

• What happens when rivers are seen not only as damaged resources but as sacred,

  remembered beings?

The project is rooted in the belief that writing can foster both personal transformation and

collective awareness, especially when students write from their lived places and histories. This inquiry addresses the urgent need for decolonial pedagogies that empower students to respond to ecological harm through creative expression and critical reflection.

Participants & Place

The project centers on middle school students in riverside communities of Khuzestan Province, Iran, particularly in and around the city of Ahvaz. These students live near the Karoon River, which once served as a source of life, ritual, and community gathering, but is now heavily polluted by sewage, industrial waste, and untreated hospital runoff.

Context & Significance

The Karoon River, as Iran’s longest and only navigable waterway, holds both ecological and

cultural significance. Its current state reflects broader issues of environmental neglect, uneven policy enforcement, and socio-economic marginalization. This project recognizes students not as passive observers but as active witnesses and potential agents of change.

Purpose & Goals

The project seeks to:

• Develop students' writing skills through creative, multilingual, and place-based practices.

• Encourage intergenerational knowledge-sharing between students and elders who

  remember the river before its decline.

• Connect ecological harm with emotional, cultural, and spiritual dimensions of place.

• Create public-facing texts (photo essays, two-voiced poems, letters, river diaries) that

  reclaim the Karoon as a living presence.

Project Description

Students begin with guided place-walks to observe and document the river using their senses, sketches, and photographs. Drawing on theories of relational pedagogy (Honeyford & Watt, 2025), environmental witnessing (Forte, 2024), and writing-as-becoming (Rubin, 2022), students then transform their notes into poetic and narrative works. The process is collaborative and multilingual (Farsi, Arabic, and English), supported by the Critical Response Process and community dialogue circles. Final works will be shared digitally or in local exhibitions to engage families and local environmental groups.