Changing climate, changing lesson plans: New summer workshop for teachers on integrating climate science into lesson plans
Ever so slowly the flood clean-up has begun along the St. John River watershed.
Volunteer crews are dismantling the sandbag walls, homeowners are assessing the damage and an increasing number of people are beginning to ask what comes next.
Students are asking too — and teachers don’t necessarily have the answers. Why would they? Most of us don’t.
To address that the New Brunswick Environmental Network (NBEN) is partnering with the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (EECD) Anglophone sector to help teachers enhance their professional practice in this ripped-from-the-headlines issue.
‘Climate Change Challenges: Educators Exploring the Opportunities’ is a two-day professional development (PD) opportunity aimed at middle and high school educators of all subjects, school administrators and system leaders.
Participants will explore how to support climate change action projects in their classrooms, using inquiry and project-based learning for their students, and explore how to use a professional inquiry approach to determine how to address the complexity of climate change learning in their practice.
The workshop is happening August 12–13th at UNB’s Wu Conference Centre and will be facilitated by Learning for a Sustainable Future, a national organization that helps to integrate sustainable practices into classrooms across the country.
These two days in August are part of a larger initiative that aims to support New Brunswick educators thanks to a federal grant program launched in September 2018 to enhance climate change education across Canada.
New Brunswick’s efforts are spearheaded by NBEN, which brought together a half-dozen partners to deliver a four-part initiative. One group is developing classroom resources for teachers. A second, led by UNB researcher Louise Comeau, director of the Environment and Sustainable Development Research Centre, is studying how to build capacity with post-secondary (universities and community college) educators. The third is the August workshop and the fourth is the development of a virtual and in-person community of practice for all educators, from pre-school all the way up to post-graduate.
“It’s for that community of people that are interested in improving the way they teach climate change, in sharing times and resources, stuff like that,” says NBEN executive director Raissa Marks.
An online platform will be built over the summer (RFP closes on Friday May 3) with a planned launch in time for the start of the school in September 2019.
To support and strengthen the online community, NBEN will also organize face-to-face events. The first is happening in June in Moncton, a dinner and networking event for educators to meet others working and teaching in this space. The hope is to build a peer-to-peer professional network of educators who want to learn and improve how to teach around this complex issue.
“We want to enable people to unite under one goal and then help them do what they want to do,” says Marks, adding teachers are often hesitant to tackle climate change in their classrooms.
“It’s either because they don’t understand it well enough or they’re worried because it can be political and they’re worried that they’ll get pushback from parents.”
In answer to that, NBEN and Comeau are developing a toolkit to guide teachers in how to teach sensitive topics and while the impetus is climate change, Marks says the toolkit can help with any subject.
“It could be any topic that teachers shy away from because it could be controversial.”
Educators can register for the August workshop via www.collabe.nbed.nb.ca or by contacting EECD’s science specialist (Anglophone sector) Janice Williams.
“This is a two-day immersive experience for teachers involved in professional inquiry. On the first day they’re going to look at their understanding and their pedagogical content knowledge and then on the second day work on planning a cohesive learning experience for their students,” says Williams.
“It ties in all the pillars of sustainability, which includes economics, society and the environment regardless of their teaching position because climate change knows no boundaries.”
Lisa Hrabluk is a writer and owner of Wicked Ideas Media. Find me on Wicked Ideas’ Facebook page or on my personal LinkedIn and Twitter accounts.
School Works is a solutions journalism project and partnership between Wicked Ideas and the New Brunswick Department of Education and Early Childhood Education.
