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What is Your Climate Education Vision?

by
Krysta Hougen
A word cloud where the largest words are hopeful, equitable, accessible, solutions oriented, funded, and peer learning.
A word cloud created by attendees of the 2024 Mid-Atlantic Climate Change Education Conference when asked to “sum up your vision for climate education in 1 to 3 words”.

by Krysta Hougen-Ryall, NOAA Environmental Science Training Center

This summer the Mid-Atlantic Climate Change Education Conference celebrated five years! Since its beginning, the goal of the conference has been to gather formal and nonformal educators from across the Mid-Atlantic to share ideas, resources, and inspiration for advancing education for climate action. The virtual conference has averaged 250 participants each summer since 2020.

As educators across the region registered this year, they shared their visions for education to achieve climate action in their community, their state, or their region. Reading the visions of so many educators inspired many attendees and helped center the conference on hope and action.

Attendees answered the question, "What's your vision?"

“A supportive environment for students and teachers to work together with their communities and talk about climate change learning and action with hope, willingness to change, resiliency, and care.”
- Conference attendee
“Equal access to action-oriented, age-appropriate climate education and the tools needed to take action.”
- Conference attendee
“[For] states and school districts [to] prioritize climate education so it’s not just what SOME students get.”
- Conference attendee

Over the last five years a lot has changed in climate education across the Mid-Atlantic. Students are taking climate action at school and participating in Youth Climate Summits. Schools are taking part in local Climate Action Plans (e.g., Prince George’s County MD, Woodland Hills School District PA, Montgomery County MD). Plus, states are integrating climate education into their state standards and initiatives (e.g., New Jersey, Maryland).

A map of the continental United States with pink arrows indicating the location of conference attendees. The arrows are highly concentrated in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, with a few arrows in California and Florida.
A map of the continental United States showing the location of conference attendees (plus one in Paris, France).

The evolution of climate education in schools has also been reflected in the conference themes. Climate solutions have always taken center stage, but based on feedback from attendees and educators, there has been a growing emphasis on helping students connect to green careers, interdisciplinary climate education, and uplifting student voices. This year’s student panel reinforced the value of providing space for student leadership, and key conference topics included the importance of peer-to-peer learning and student-centered networks to engage more young people in climate action.

This year also saw an increase in conference proposals focusing on climate anxiety. As climate change is increasingly discussed across news outlets, social media, and within our communities and schools, the public is becoming more aware of the impacts of climate issues on mental health. Anya Kamenetz shared during her keynote that more than 45% of young people around the world said climate change has negatively affected their daily life and functioning. Adding mental health support to education about this complex science topic is a unique additional challenge for educators.

“The challenge that climate change poses to education [is] that we are not just giving our students information, we are also [giving them] the emotional tools to process the information which hopefully will have an element of empowering them…”
- Anya Kamenetz

Climate anxiety and its impacts on students and educators was brought up often during the three-day conference and it will likely continue to be a popular topic for years to come. One tool that can be used to start a conversation and offer space for students to share their feelings related to climate issues is the Climate Emotions Wheel, co-created by Anya Kamenetz and Panu Pihkala.

A rainbow wheel with four interior quadrants of Anger, Positivity, Sadness, and Fear. The quadrants are surrounded by an exterior wheel with the names of 23 more nuanced/detailed emotions.
The Climate Emotions Wheel can be used to help name and validate feelings that climate issues can cause in many people.

To learn more about climate anxiety, watch Anya Kamenetz’s keynote and review the resources she highlighted: Climate Mental Health Network, Climate Emotions Wheel, How to Talk to Young People about Climate Emotions, and An Educator's Guide to Climate Emotions.

Although there is still a mountain of work to be done to advance education for climate action, it is important to continue to strive forward with hope, as one attendee expressed:

“I see a place for climate education in virtually every setting and that education is interdisciplinary, informed by systems thinking, and, while tempered by reality, also informed by love and hope in its orientation.”
- Conference attendee