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DECEMBER 3, 2019

too hot to handle?

strategies for making climate issues manageable for middle-schoolers

It’s easy to become overwhelmed by news about our changing climate, even for adults used to tough headlines. For children, too much bad news can be reason to tune out.

This year’s Global Scholars curriculum, Nature and Our Cities, asks students to consider the effects of urbanization on biodiversity and climate. In preparation, the Global Scholars education team researched ways to make learning about climate issues manageable and meaningful for students ages 10-13.

The goal of the Global Scholars international digital exchange is to advance global competency in young students, including digital literacy, critical thinking, and respect for diverse cultures and perspectives. In order to accomplish these global learning goals, our curriculum asks students to exchange ideas about important global issues. We knew that climate change fit the bill and did not want to shy away from this critical contemporary topic.

One now-classic source informing our approach is Beyond Ecophobia, by David Sobel. Sobel observes: “If we prematurely ask children to deal with problems beyond their understanding and control, prematurely recruit them to solve the mammoth problems of an adult world, then I think we cut them off from the possible sources of their strength.”

This does not mean avoiding climate change discussions, but rather following a progression to introduce them. Below are 5 key steps that we distilled, with examples and stories from Global Scholars.

TIP 1: Build a positive connection to nature

Early in the program year – Unit 2 – Global Scholars students step outside and observe plants and animals around their school or in a nearby park. They share their field research observations in the e-classroom, in turn learning about the landscapes, plants, and animals surrounding their international peers. In this way, they build an appreciation of biodiversity from the ground-up, seeing through the posts of peers just how large and varied our planet is.  

As an example, a student in Warsaw shared a picture of a mirabelle plum tree:

In my daily life I usually sit under this tree and learn English and eat fruits too—they are delicious. I am more peaceful person when I sit here 1 hour.

A student in Buffalo, New York responded:

Thank you for sharing the very pretty tree in your city. This kind of reminds me of our lemon trees here in Buffalo. I learned that in your daily life you just sit and relax, wish I knew what that was like! In my city outdoors I like to play with my cousins and friends, it's the best!

Having shared a connection about two different kinds of fruit trees, each familiar to the writer, these students will likely look at trees surrounding their homes and schools in a new light.

“Students this age benefit from concrete experiences,” says Claire DeChant, a Global Cities Education Program Manager who helped write this year’s curriculum. “They are not necessarily ready to leap straight to the global or to the abstract.”

Tip 2. Expand focus gradually, from backyard to city to globe

The focus on concrete experience continues into Unit 3, where the students’ circle of awareness is widened from immediate natural surroundings to the city as a whole. How do the demands of an expanding human population—urbanization—affect neighboring plants, animals, and natural resources? Again, it is a question that can lead to difficult answers. But the curriculum focuses students on the unique opportunities that cities have to create solutions. Urban farms can reduce pressure on the land surrounding cities, for instance. City leaders can choose to invest in sustainable energy and waste management systems.

Students analyze and discuss local news stories to bring these issues and potential solutions into focus. This allows students to see how their immediate neighborhood fits into a wider context. It can also show that neighbors are involved in finding solutions. Finally, it shows that actions in each city contribute to global impact.

Tip 3: Offer students room to reflect on evidence

Looking at news stories can lead to a productive conversation on how to distinguish facts vs. opinions, a critical media-literacy skill. It might also lead to emotional responses. It is important to support students both in processing new information and in reacting to it.

Images, too, can offer students a chance for reflection. Instead of showing a gloom-and-doom picture of environmental damage, we present students with a neutral landscape picture. This allows them to identify points of vulnerability as well as sources of strength and resilience. The exercise also offers a critical-thinking workout.

Tip 4: Whenever you describe a global problem, offer a local solution

Unit 4 finally addresses climate change head-on, allowing students to draw on their recent, concrete experiences with nature. It introduces the idea of biodiversity, along with evidence that human activity has contributed to a profound loss of plant and animal diversity. This loss of diversity can in turn exacerbate climate change, which can then further threaten biodiversity. Since so many elements of climate change are beyond student control, the trick is to keep the focus on what students can do.

“It’s not useful for students to learn about big problems that they can’t do anything about,” says DeChant. “Not every student is in a position to be Greta Thunberg.”

Reducing individual consumption of animal products, for instance, is a step that students can personally take, contributing directly to preserving forests. (According to Greenpeace, nearly 80 percent of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon results from cattle ranching.) Our curriculum emphasizes nature-based solutions that are also student-friendly, such as composting, planting trees, creating urban gardens, and building insect hotels. Each of these ideas is introduced in Units 2 and 3.

Tip 5: Emphasize personal responsibility

A final important step is action. In Unit 5, students apply their new knowledge to support nature in their own city. An important learning outcome in this unit is self-efficacy: each student’s sense that it is possible to create local solutions to address global challenges. The community action project is also collaborative, beginning with teamwork in their own classrooms to design the project and expanding to the global e-classroom, as students get ideas and feedback from international peers. Students learn that it is possible to create better solutions and have bigger impact working with others than working alone.

And so students follow a circle, moving from the local to the global and back to the local, as they consider nature in our cities today and find meaningful ways to contribute.

Self-efficacy is 1 of 9 learning outcomes described in Evaluating Global Digital Education: Student Outcomes Framework, co-published by Global Cities, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and OECD.

Read more about student learning outcomes

See more examples of student exchanges by following @GlobalCitiesOrg on Twitter and Facebook