How teachers can #MakeClimateAClass for Earth Month

It's been a long Covid-19 year for teachers and students. Meanwhile, the planet kept getting hotter, with 2020 tying for the hottest year that humans have ever experienced. Yet it is likely that 2020 will be one of the coolest years in the next 100 unless we change course quickly. As we head into Earth Month (April), how can educators engage students with this critical issue?

This spring, the Loyola College for Diversity and Sustainability is helping overworked teachers from every discipline to bring climate change into the classroom. This opportunity is not just for environmental science classes. Climate change touches every discipline: psychology, political science, engineering, literature, natural science, art, communication, music, economics, philosophy and more.

On April 9th, along with more than 100 universities around the world,  the Loyola College for Diversity and Sustainability is hosting an interactive webinar with Adeela Arshad-Ayaz, Peter Graham, and Anthony Garoufalils-Auger. The webinar will focus on critical global citizenship and environmental justice, the importance of shifting a commonly-shared metaphor for structuring the relationship of humans with the world, and the need to be uncompromising when advocating for climate solutions.  Like the events of our recent Sustainability and the Climate Crisis week of discussion, this webinar will be recorded so that teachers across fields can use it as n educational tool.

Teachers can use the webinar to #MakeClimateAClass by assigning it as homework. Then there are one-page Teachers Guides available to lead a one-class period discussion about climate change from the perspective of your subject area. The Guides, for over two dozen different disciplines, have been developed by a global climate education project based at Bard College in New York.  

“The world’s top climate scientists have told us we have ten years to act to hold global warming to the low end.” said Rebecca Tittler, organizer of the webinar.  “This April, students deserve a class period to talk about climate solutions  and climate justice—from many different disciplinary perspectives." Join us for this webinar on April 9th, and ask every teacher you know to  #MakeClimateAClass.