• Replies 4 replies
  • Subscribers 5 subscribers
  • Views 576 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Related

Teaching climate in non-climate history classes

Freda Anderson

So - I don't teach the Climate Project course. BUT, I find a way to teach about climate in all of my classes somehow, and I would even if I was an English teacher, or a Spanish teacher, etc.

This is because I heard a climate scientist turned ed professor say once to a group of teachers "what would you be doing if the sh*t really hit the fan? Like we're full on in the life and death emergency? What would you be doing?" and then he listened to some of our replies "how to grow your own food," "how to create shade," "how to forage," "how to avoid heat islands," etc. And then he was like "Great, because the sh*t has hit the fan, so we need to be teaching these things now."

So I've been trying to bring that in ever since, to varying success.

I am curious, how have you taught about climate OUTSIDE of a climate specific course?

  •   , I love the story and I love your question. 

    I bet that most of us who are using "The Climate Project" are NOT doing a stand-alone climate course. We are using parts of the Climate  Project as units within a different course. Here are some of the ways I have used climate education activities:

    As part of "Contemorary World Problems"

    As the research project in Senior Engish

    Sprinkled throughout BHP courses, which hava already been part of geography or world History classes

    As a "Project Pathway" or "Culminating Project" for those who need to meet a graduation requirement

    With the current version of the Climate Project, I like the "Pathways" option. It allows for unit sized materials to be borrowed from a full-blown course.

  • Contemporary World Problems or Issues classes should have climate in the curriculum without question.  If a CWP class anywhere in the world does not, that school is lying to the people it serves.  Our school has embedded climate change in our CWP classes and as your post says, that part of the class has become more of the central focus.

  • in reply to Bryan Dibble

      , I agree with you on a CWP class owing a lot of space to climate change issues.

    I also like the idea of "climate education" in general to encompass climate change. People seem to grasp climate change and be more open to understanding the human factors when they know more about how climate and weather work. 

  • in reply to Donnetta Elsasser

    I did a lot of traveling this summer, internationally and domestic.  Looking out of the window of the polluting jet plane I see human activities and changes to the land everywhere.  Just from Washington to Las Vegas there are no places, even mountain ranges and deserts, where power lines or roads don't cut the landscape into pieces.  Who has discovered a site or source that shows just how much humans have molded the surface of the Earth?  Are there any sources that really capture what we've done and are continually doing?  Something neatly summarized so I don't have to do the work? Stuck out tongue