Coming at climate chaos with a perspective that our students have to understand the concept of sustainability when they think about climate change is helpful. The reality of what’s going on will be just as brutal to present as it was before taking this course, but this perspective does lead to presenting choices to our students. Talking to students about their choices as they grow up and the ways that their choices will make a difference will hopefully be empowering to them
The current state of things, with multiple extreme weather events every year, can be scary for our students, although I get the feeling that when I am showing students dramatic video about a place where they don’t have any family, they are somewhat entertained, not traumatized. Also, giving them the costs of cleanup after such events, when it’s in the billions of dollars, doesn’t have a whole lot of meaning to them. So I’m looking forward to thinking about how to balance any presentation or discussion of what is happening with what we need to do about it.
I like looking at our environment in terms of the commons. It ties in to my overall theme for my classes, which I have promoted across the curriculum in the 6th grade. Our goal is to give students a sense of their place in a community where their choices have an impact beyond themselves to the greater community. Certainly the choices we make in regard to sustainability are a big part of that. It’s good to have choices to present—what do they think about geoengineering? Adapting to changing climate? Mitigation? I’m looking forward to presenting them with concepts that they can gather evidence about so they can then make informed decisions about what we’re doing, skills they need to grow to become fully contributing members of society who make a difference.