MIT’s Day of Climate funds innovative, hands-on curriculum for young learners and educators around the world
Over $120K awarded to proposals from the MIT community focused on climate change curriculum.
By Mariah Rawding
MIT’s inaugural Day of Climate has awarded nearly $125K in grants to support seven Institute projects focused on developing curriculum for learners from kindergarten through high school.
Aligned with MIT’s presidential priorities, Day of Climate is designed to equip K-12 learners and their educators with concise, hands-on educational materials to better understand climate change, its impacts, and potential solutions.
“Day of Climate is a unified, interdisciplinary effort to provide resources for well-rounded, solutions-focused climate education at the K-12 level — keeping traditional and non-traditional education settings in mind,” says Christopher Knittel, professor of energy economics, faculty lead for Day of Climate, and director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research and MIT Climate Policy Center.
“With contributions from across the MIT community, the focus of these projects range from climate justice to coastal ecosystems and highlight climate change as a stellar topic for students to exercise diverse skills and consider real-world issues,” Knittel adds. “They have the potential to transform the way educators think about teaching climate change and to empower students as informed changemakers.”
Designed with learners and educators in mind, Day of Climate will host professional development opportunities for educators in early 2025 to enable them to effectively adapt the curriculum to their own classroom. To complement the asynchronous curriculum, Day of Climate will host an in-person event at MIT where learners and educators will have the opportunity to share their experiences with the curriculum and its impact.
The seven proposals selected for funding focus on a number of important topics in conjunction with climate, including: climate justice, renewable energy, sustainable cities, coastal ecosystems, and data science and coding, among others.
“It is inspiring to see how the larger MIT community has come together in response to our invitation to develop interactive, hands-on learning activities on topics related to climate and sustainability,” says Claudia Urrea, senior associate director of pK-12 and director of Day of Climate. “We selected seven different applications that include members of 10 different MIT departments, labs, centers, and initiatives. Those groups will develop powerful short hands-on activities that equip learners of all age ranges and educators with knowledge, experiences, and tools to address both local and global pressing challenges related to climate and sustainability.”
In addition to designing curriculum activities for educators to download and for learners to explore on the Day of Climate website, the grantees will work together with the team to offer professional development and support for educators to use these activities in their own educational settings.
The 2024 Day of Climate selected projects and researchers are:
Earth Story: Innovating sustainable housing design through local material experimentation and 3D printing
Alexander (Sandy) Curth, MIT Design and Computation, MIT Building Technology, MIT Programmable Mud Initiative, Institut auf dem Rosenberg, Formative Foundation
Globally, construction accounts for nearly 40% of annual carbon emissions. At the same time, many cities need to grow rapidly to provide equitable housing for their inhabitants. The project will build a hands-on curriculum focused on exploring and creating new innovation in the critical area of low-carbon, low-cost housing. It will engage 3D printing with locally sourced materials to rapidly prototype structures with students that speak to a climate-resilient future of building and design. To make the curriculum more broadly accessible, lesson plans and web based tools will be produced to allow students of all ages and subjects to engage with the research to understand climate change and the work being done to create resilient cities.
Climate change charades
Yashasvi Raj, MIT Edgerton Center
Focused on elementary school aged learners, climate change charades will address the gap in accessible, engaging, and interactive climate education for this age group where learners act out or describe climate change-related concepts, helping to reinforce their understanding in a fun, collaborative way. Inspired by Climate Fresk workshops, which break down the complexities of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, this activity will utilize a similar concept to make learning about climate change more accessible. By acting out different environmental and climate phenomena, students will deepen their comprehension of key climate concepts while also building communication and teamwork skills. The interactive play allows for the responsible introduction of potentially climate-anxiety inducing topics to impressionable ages. This game can be used as an icebreaker, an introduction to more advanced topics, or a way to reinforce content already covered in class.
Climate change happens below water
Robert Parks, MIT App Inventor
Climate change is disrupting water ecosystems, causing shifts in pH levels and increasing unwanted chemicals in lakes. Yet many students lack opportunities to engage with these challenges or develop the necessary data science skills to address them. To bridge this gap, this project is aimed for grades 5–12, where learners will design and deploy tools to monitor water quality, using affordable sensors and the MIT App Inventor platform to gather and analyze data related to pH and soluble materials. This approach will not only teach digital literacy skills but will also increase engagement by connecting students to real-world environmental issues, particularly empowering those from underrepresented communities to use data science for advocacy and interdisciplinary learning, ensuring greater equity in education.
Coastal Climate Science: How climate change is affecting coastal ecosystems
Andrew Bennett, MIT SeaGrant College Program, MIT Edgerton Center
Increased CO2 in the atmosphere is impacting coastal environments with adverse effects such as sea level rise, damage to marine life, and extreme weather. This project will present an overall framework that illustrates how increased CO2 is causing changes in water quality including acidification, temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, and others. Students will derive the connections by means of experiments and text investigations then place them in the overall framework, creating the big picture for themselves. This curriculum, building on the work from Sea Perch II, aims to foster climate science knowledge and scientific practices, empowering students to understand and act on climate-related issues.
MIT Climate Action Through Education x Day of Climate
Aisling O’Grady, MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR), MIT Climate Action Through Education (CATE)
Climate education can be intimidating for those who are not trained in the sciences, and in general, with concerns around engaging students in a way that does not discourage them. The goal of this project is to empower students — and educators — through solutions-focused climate knowledge that is also grounded in the causes and impacts of anthropogenic climate change. The project will make interdisciplinary curriculum enhancements on MIT CATE materials, making them more project-based and adaptable to shorter timeframes beyond the traditional classroom setting. Key modifications will include hands-on activities like creating public service announcements to combat climate misinformation or crafting pitches on the economic benefits of battery storage. This approach will foster critical skills in scientific inquiry, media literacy, and data analysis, while connecting to climate action. By adapting the curriculum for various contexts and diverse settings, the project will ensure broader accessibility of the curriculum for educators and students globally.
Right Beneath Our Feet: Heating and cooling with geothermal energy networks
Christopher Rabe, MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative and Home Energy Efficiency Team, Inc (HEET); MIT Climate Action Through Education (CATE) and MIT Open Learning, as advisories
Megan Lim, MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative
In Massachusetts, approximately 30% of greenhouse gas emissions stem from buildings. Geothermal networks have recently gained more public attention as they offer an equitable pathway to decarbonization of the built environment. Creating a geothermal network involves principles of heat transfer, energy conservation, and earth sciences. Understanding these systems has become increasingly important for experts, energy consumers, and students alike. However, geothermal energy networks are not well represented in the K-12 curriculum. This project aims to create engaging educational activities that will provide a unique opportunity to introduce young learners to the principles of geothermal networks and their role in the energy transition. By equipping students with both theoretical knowledge and practical skills, the curriculum will prepare them to become informed and confident advocates for sustainable energy solutions, within their communities and beyond.
Empowering students as engaged citizens via data activism for climate justice
Christopher Rabe, MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative
Lelia Hampton, PhD Student, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT
Many high school students experience climate anxiety and often lack direction on how to address climate issues. Schools can play a key role in alleviating this anxiety by teaching students how to take climate action and develop a sense of agency, as recommended by the K-12 Climate Action Plan. To help, this project will expand a college-level curriculum from the Environmental Solutions Initiative’s Climate Justice Instructional Toolkit 2.0, integrating machine learning and data science as tools for climate justice, to reach high school students. Through hands-on workshops and coding activities, students will learn how to analyze local climate disparities, use data science to advocate for equitable policies, and engage with ethical considerations. The goal is to empower students to become informed citizens and active participants in democracy.
Day of Climate is part of MIT Open Learning. Learn more about Day of Climate and the professional development activities for educators. Stay tuned for more information about the in-person event in Spring 2025.
