NPR - Anya Kamenetz
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| Angela Hsieh/NPR |
NPR/Ipsos conducted a
national poll
recently and found that more than 8 in 10 teachers — and a similar
majority of parents — support teaching kids about climate change.
But
in reality, it's not always happening: Fewer than half of K-12 teachers
told us that they talk about climate change with their children or
students. Again, parents were about the same.
The top reason
that teachers gave in our poll for not covering climate change? "It's
not related to the subjects I teach," 65% said.
Yet at the same time, we also heard from teachers and education organizations who
are introducing
the topic in subjects from social studies to math to English language
arts, and at every grade level, from preschool on up.
That raises the question: Where does climate change belong in the curriculum, anyway?
The
"reality of human-caused climate change" is mentioned in at least 36
state standards, according to an analysis done for NPR Ed by Glenn
Branch, the deputy director at the National Center for Science
Education. But it typically appears only briefly — and most likely just
in earth science classes in middle and high school. And, Branch says,
that doesn't even mean that every student in those states learns about
it: Only two states require students to take earth or environmental
science classes to graduate from high school.
Joseph Henderson
teaches in the environmental studies department at Paul Smith's College
in upstate New York. He studies how climate change is taught in schools
and believes it needs to be taught across many subjects.
"For so long this has been seen as an issue that is solely
within the domain of science," he says. "There needs to be a greater
engagement across disciplines, particularly looking at the social
dimensions," such as the displacement of populations by natural
disasters.
Reasons Teachers Don’t Teach Climate Change
At the same time, there's a tension in pushing more educators to take
this on. "I worry a lot about asking schools to solve yet another
problem that society refuses to deal with."
As a potential response to this criticism, the nonprofit Ten Strands follows an
"incremental infusion"
model in California. In other words, environmental literacy becomes
part of subjects and activities that are already in the curriculum
instead of, the organization says, "burdening educators" with another
stand-alone and complex area to cover.
We also heard from
teachers who say they are searching for more ideas and resources to take
on the topic of climate change. Here are some thoughts about how to
broach the subject with students, no matter what subject you teach:
1. Do a lab.
Lab activities can be one of the most effective ways to show children how global warming works on an accessible scale.
Ellie
Schaffer is a sixth-grader at Alice Deal Middle School in Washington,
D.C. In science class, she has done simulations on greenhouse effects,
using plastic wrap to trap the sun's heat. And she has used charcoal to
see how black carbon from air pollution can speed the melting of ice.
These
lessons have raised her awareness — and concern. "We've ignored climate
change for a long time and now it's getting to be, like, a real
problem, so we've gotta do something."
Many teachers we talked with mentioned
NASA as a resource for labs and activities. The ones in
this outline can be done with everyday materials such as ice, tinfoil, plastic bottles, rubber, light bulbs and a thermometer.
On the
Earth Science Week
website, there's a list of activities and lesson plans aligned with the
Next Generation Science Standards. They range from simple to elaborate.
2. Show a movie.
Susan
Fisher, a seventh-grade science teacher at South Woods Middle School in
Syosset, N.Y., showed her students the 2016 documentary
Before the Flood,
featuring Leonardo DiCaprio journeying to five continents and the
Arctic to see the effects of climate change. "It is our intention to
make our students engaged citizens," Fisher says.
Before the Flood has
an action page and an associated curriculum. Common Sense Media has a list of
climate change-related movies for all ages.
The 2006 film
An Inconvenient Truth and
its 2017 sequel, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth To Power, have curricular materials created in partnership with the National Wildlife Federation.
3. Assign a novel.
Rebecca Meyer is an eighth-grade English language arts teacher at Bronx Park Middle School in New York City.
She assigned her students a 2013 novel by Mindy McGinnis called
Not a Drop to Drink.
"As
we read the novel, kids made connections between what is happening
today and the novel," Meyer says. "At the end of the unit, as a
culminating project, students chose groups, researched current solutions
for physical and economic water scarcity and created PSA videos using
iMovie about the problem and how their solution could help to combat the
issue."
She described the unit as a success. "They were very engaged; they
loved it," she explains. "A lot of them shared this information with
their families. When parents came in for parent-teacher conferences,
they mentioned their kids had been talking to them about conserving
water."
Not A Drop To Drink belongs to a subgenre of science fiction known as "
cli-fi" (climate fiction) or sometimes eco-fiction. You can find lists of similar books at websites like
Dragonfly.eco or at the Chicago Review of Books, which has a monthly
Burning Worlds column about this kind of literature.
Looking for English topics for younger students?
EL Education
covers environmental topics, including water conservation and the
impact of natural disasters, in its K-5 English language arts
curriculum.
4. Do citizen science.
Terry
Reed is the self-proclaimed "science guru" for seventh-graders at
Prince David Kawananakoa Middle School in Honolulu. He has also spent a
year sailing the Caribbean, and on his way, he collected water samples
on behalf of a group called
Adventure Scientists, to be tested for microplastics. (Spoiler: Even on remote, pristine beaches, all the samples had some.)
He
has assigned his students to collect water samples from beaches near
their homes to submit for the same project. He also has them take
pictures of cloud formations and measure temperatures, to see changes in
weather patterns over time. "One thing I stress to them, that in the
next few years, they become the voting public," he says. "They need to
be aware of the science."
5. Assign a research project, multimedia presentation or speech.
Gay
Collins teaches public speaking at Waterford High School in Waterford,
Conn. She is interested in "civil discourse" as a tool for
problem-solving, so she encourages her students "to shape their speeches
around critical topics, like the use of plastics, minimalism, and other
environmental issues.
6. Talk about your personal experience.
Pamela
Tarango teaches third grade at the Downtown Elementary School in
Bakersfield, Calif. She tells her students about how the weather has
changed there in her lifetime, getting hotter and drier: "In our Central
Valley California city of Bakersfield, there has been a change in the
winter climate. I told them about how, when I was growing up in the
1970s, we often had several two-and-three-hour delays to school starting
because of dense tule fog, which affected visibility. We really never
have those delays in the metropolitan area. It is only the outlying
areas, which still have two-and-three-hour dense fog delays, and they
are rare even for the rural areas."
(Although the Central Valley winter has
indeed become hotter and drier because of climate change, recently a University of California, Berkeley
study has attributed the reduction in tule fog specifically to declines in air pollution.)
7. Do a service project.
"I
teach preschoolers and use the environment and our natural resources to
highlight our everyday life," says Mercy Peña-Alevizos, who teaches at
Holy Trinity Academy in Phoenix. "I stress the importance of
appreciation and eliminating waste. My students understand and have
fantastic ideas. We recycle and pick up around our neighborhood."
Environmental service projects can be simple, elaborate or just for fun. Check out the
#trashtag challenge on social media, for example.
8. Start or work in a school garden.
Mairs
Ryan teaches science at St. Gregory the Great Catholic School in San
Diego. "The sixth-graders oversee the school garden, as well as our
vermin composting bin, christened the 'Worm Hotel'. The garden is their
lab and the students 'live and learn' soil carbon sequestration and
regenerative agriculture. Our school's compost bin is evidence that
alternatives exist to methane-producing landfills. In looking for more
solutions to reduce methane, students debate food reuse practices around
the world."
Check out
ThePermacultureStudent.com
for resources on building school gardens with rainwater capture and
compost systems to regenerate the soil. There are local and regional
resources such as the
Collective School Garden Network in California and
Growing Minds
in North Carolina, which offer basic plans for a school garden as well
as lesson plans that connect gardening to Common Core standards.
Links
- Alliance for Climate Education has a multimedia resource called Our Climate Our Future, plus more resources for educators and several action programs for youth.
- The American Association of Geographers has free online professional development resources for teachers.
- American Reading Co. sells an English Language Arts curriculum called ARCCore that includes climate change themes.
- Biointeractive, created by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, has hundreds of free online education resources, including many on education and the environment, and it offers professional development for teachers.
- Climate Generation offers professional development for educators nationwide and a youth network in Minnesota.
- CLEAN (Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network) has a collection of resources organized in part by the Next Generation Science Standard it is aligned with.
- Global Oneness Project offers lesson plans that come with films and videos of climate impacts around the world.
- Google offers free online environmental sustainability lesson plans for grades 5-8.
- The Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility has a group of 19 lessons for K-12.
- "We
believe that the social and emotional skills we help strengthen in
young people and adults are sorely needed to combat the fear and
avoidance we and students experience around climate change,"
spokesperson Laura McClure told NPR.
- The National Center for Science Education has free climate change lessons that focus on combating misinformation. They also have a "scientist in the classroom" program.
- The National Science Teachers Association has a comprehensive curriculum.
- The Paleontological Research Institution in Ithaca, N.Y., has a book called the Teacher-Friendly Guide to Climate Change.
- Ripple Effect "creates STEM curriculum" for K-6 "about real people and places impacted by climate change," starting with New Orleans.
- Ten Strands offers professional learning to educators in California in partnership with the state's recycling authority and an outdoor-education program, among others.
- Think Earth offers 9 environmental education units from preschool through middle school.
- The Zinn Education Project (based on the work of Howard Zinn, the author of A People's History Of The United States) has launched a group of 18 lessons aimed specifically at climate justice. Some are drawn from this book: A People's Curriculum For The Earth: Teaching Climate Change And The Environmental Crisis.
