Guest reality check by David Middleton
8 Ways To Teach Climate Change In Almost Any Classroom
April 25, 2019
ANYA KAMENETZ
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.
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That raises the question: Where does climate change belong in the curriculum, anyway?
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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.
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.
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3. Assign a novel.
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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.
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.)
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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.
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7. Do a service project.
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8. Start or work in a school garden.
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Here are some more resources
After the publication of our climate poll story on Monday, we heard from people all over the country with dozens more resources for climate education.
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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.
NPR = Nitwit Pinko Radio
Nothing on that list of 8 idiotic “ways to teach climate change” is even remotely related to climate science… And citing Howard Zinn as a resource? Really? Citing Howard Zinn as a resource for anything other than Marxism is academic misconduct writ large. Yes, I know Howard Zinn is dead… So are Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao… Your point?
The article actually included an informative graphic:
55% of the teachers surveyed said they did not teach about climate change in their classrooms. 65% replied that it wasn’t related to the subject(s) they taught and 17% said the didn’t know enough about climate change to teach it… My hunch is that >97% of teachers, including the 45% who “teach” about it, are insufficiently familiar with the science to teach it.
Instead of having English teachers focusing on climate change, maybe they should just teach English…
“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.”
–Ellie Schaffer, sixth-grader at Alice Deal Middle School in Washington, D.C.
But then again, you can get, like, an Ivy League degree in, like, economics, you know, like by speaking this way. You can even, like, get elected to Congress, like you know, whatever…
I really liked this bit…
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.)
Who needs science teachers when you have a “self-proclaimed ‘science guru’ for seventh-graders”? A veritable Gardner McKay version of Bill Nye. Terry Reed studied geology and journalism at Ball State University and now sails around collecting bits of plastic… Green Adventures in Paradise! However, he apparently missed out on some important science lessons from George Carlin…
“The planet … is a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, ‘Why are we here?’”
Instead of showing the Leonardo DiCappuccino flick, they could just show “the American scientific film ‘The Day After Tomorrow’, which demonstrated ‘the breath-taking catastrophe brought to mankind by climate change’”…
That raises the question: Where does climate change belong in the curriculum, anyway?
It belongs in earth science (geology, meteorology, oceanography, etc.) and physical geography classes for science majors in colleges and universities… Not in grade-school social studies and English classes.
via Watts Up With That?
April 29, 2019 at 04:12PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 
