When I learned my host organization would be the Centre for Environment Education (CEE), I was both excited and nervous. I have always been passionate about anything nature related and I was excited to be a part of a team that does environmental work on a large scale. However, I have had little experience in creating educational materials or working in accordance with national education guidelines. Prior to this fellowship, my main educator experience was teaching preschoolers how to swim, which is entirely different than creating curated pedagogies on climate change and sustainability. I knew I would have a lot to learn during my first months at CEE to get up to speed.
One of my biggest learning opportunities came along in early November in the form of a two-day teacher workshop as part of the Asian Teacher Educators for Climate Change Education network. 30 teachers of various grade levels and subjects attended the workshop to share pedagogies and learn how to incorporate climate change education into their classrooms. The event was organized by both CEE and Okayama University ESD Promotion Centre in Japan and hosted by CEE at their Ahmedabad campus. CEE’s climate change department, which is the group I work with, was tasked with creating presentations and helping curate some of the sessions that would be held.
I volunteered to create the opening presentation for the workshop. It needed to introduce the topic of climate change education, its role in the education system, lesson planning, and various pedagogies. I had spent time during the previous month reviewing national education policies, reading over curriculums, and talking with my senior Fellow about how to develop curriculum. I thought I was more than ready to take on this challenge.
Yet when I began making the presentation, I had no idea where to start. What specific pedagogies are used in classrooms and how are they used? What exactly is a handprint action? What goes into creating a lesson plan and how can climate change be incorporated? What sectors are involved in green skilling? And perhaps the most important question, what are the goals, the deliverables, and the purpose of climate change education?
I vaguely knew the answers to all these questions. But vague knowing does not translate well into a presentation for teachers (who know exactly how to make a lesson plan), CEE staff members (who work daily on creating climate change pedagogies) and guest speakers from Okayama University (who have traveled around Asia discussing climate change education).
It was intimidating to create a presentation that would be seen by such experienced professionals especially since I am new to the education field. However, creating this presentation really helped me learn, and retain, the knowledge and guidelines needed to create education materials. As one of my college professors always said, “The best way to learn something is to teach it”.
Both preparing the presentation and attending the workshop itself provided me with a better understanding of how I can develop, and improve, my own curriculum during the remainder of my fellowship with CEE. Here are a few of the keys concepts I learned:
Filtering content
Climate change is a huge, complex topic that continues to rapidly evolve. To develop curriculum on this vast topic, developers need to decide what content should or should not be included in the lesson. While creating curriculum I need to ask, “What do I want the student to take away from this lesson?” Climate change curriculum must be filtered for the purpose of the lesson. This purpose varies depending on student grade level and subject type; for example, it would not make sense for an economics class to learn about the carbon cycle. It would make more sense for them to learn about the monetary losses that come from carbon emissions rather than the science of those emissions.
Role of climate change education
There are three main points to climate change lesson planning: Feel, know, apply. First, the curriculum should make the student feel something. The goal is to have students understand how the environment supports humans by giving us a home, drinking water, and clean air to breathe. By helping students understand this important connection between us and nature, we hope to make them empathize with nature and how climate change is degrading it. Climate change education encourages students to use this empathy to protect nature.
Second, curriculum should help students know the basics of climate change. The facts included in the lesson will depend on the grade level, but all students, no matter their subject interests, should know the basics of climate change. This is a part of the interdisciplinary education that both of India’s national education policies call for.
Finally, the overall goal of climate change education is for students to apply what they learn in the classroom to real life. Curriculum should include discussion on how students can be a part of the climate solution. Even something as small as not leaving the water tap on when brushing their teeth or minimizing their use of single-use plastic are applications the curriculum can encourage students to do. Fixing climate change will require action from everyone, and thus climate change education cannot just be left in the classroom; it must be applied in real life. The curriculum I develop needs to include topics on how society, adults, and students can help. The goal is to encourage students to get involved and think of their own ideas for ways to help the planet.
Incorporating localized content
Again, climate change is a huge topic that can be difficult to grasp the full implications of, especially for a young student. Including localized content in the curriculum can help with this issue. For example, during his lecture in the workshop, Professor Hiroki Fujii of Okayama University provided case studies of climate change education in Japan. Students learned how to read weather charts and predict typhoons which are increasing in severity and are a major climate change threat to Japan. Students are familiar with typhoons and thus can understand how climate change is impacting them directly. Â This localized content would look different for India, which faces different threats than Japan.
The concept of creating localized content really resonated with me. On a personal note, I originally connected with the climate crisis because I saw the changes happening in my backyard. I saw snow falling less and less in the mountains. I felt the 80-degree heat in November when temperatures should have been colder than 40. I want to provide students with localized content that they can connect with in the same way that made me so passionate.
I am currently helping to develop curriculum for nationwide workbooks on sustainability and climate change. It is difficult to include localized content when writing for all of India. India has such diverse ecosystems, communities, and cultures; trying to include them all in the textbook while also teaching the basics of climate change and staying within the allotted number of pages is difficult. However, in the content I create for the workbooks, I can make sure I discuss how climate change will impact regions of India differently and why it is different. This could be used as an opportunity for students to learn how climate change impacts areas of the world differently.
Conclusion
Designing curriculum is not easy. There are many things that need to be considered ranging from the purpose of the lesson to the type of content included. There are many more things that should also be considered that I did not write about. Â As a newbie to the education world, it can be quite overwhelming some days. However, the two-day workshop provided clarity for me. Working to create a presentation on climate change education and attending the workshop sessions helped give me a big picture view of how I can approach curriculum design. I now better understand how I can translate my scientific knowledge into usable content.
On a final note, it was wonderful to attend a workshop and be in a room full of people so passionate about halting climate change. Learning how teachers get students excited about nature and its conservation makes me excited about developing curriculum that will do the same. I am excited to continue my educator journey with people so passionate about climate change education.
