Environmental Justice Activists Look Like My Students
High school students envision alternative uses for a planned freight distribution warehouse near their school — and challenge their own conceptions of environmental activists in the process.
Climate
Debunking False Climate Solutions in Our Classrooms
An environmental justice teacher encourages students to critically examine proposed solutions to climate change.
Teaching the Truth About National Parks
An environmental justice teacher engages students in an examination of the problematic history of national parks.
Baltimore Students Fight for Climate Justice — and Their Own Lives
Bigelow discusses a recent episode of the NPR podcast Code Switch focused on student organized climate victory in Baltimore.
The Climate Crisis Has a History. Teach It.
Eisen and Wolfe-Rocca critique textbook timelines and introduce the new Zinn Education Project Climate Justice Timeline.
Black Land Matters
Dijour Carter refused to get out of the van parked in the gravel driveway at Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, New York. The other teens in his program emerged, skeptical, […]
Teaching that Food Justice Is Racial Justice
Swinehart highlights the work of Leah Penniman to teach about the connection between food and racial justice.
“We Cannot Create What We Cannot Imagine”
To imagine a better future, high school students role-play activists at a visioning conference and then create murals.
Ecological Footprint Calculators Are Bad for the Environment
For years, I would coax my 9th graders into the dreary, windowless computer lab for 10-15 minutes so they could complete an online ecological footprint calculator. I wanted students to […]
As She Rises
I recently stumbled across a podcast that made a wonderful addition to my students’ study of the climate crisis — As She Rises.
Action Research for Environmental Justice in the Kindergarten Classroom
A kindergarten teacher helps students investigate issues of environmental justice — like access to green space — in their communities.
Helping Young People Imagine a Future of Climate Solidarity
We need more books that celebrate young people who find themselves as they come to consciousness and commitment.
Teaching the Green New Deal: The Prequel
In an article introducing the student-friendly short video, A Message from the Future, about life after the Green New Deal, Naomi Klein points out: Almost every vision of the future […]
Necessary Trouble
Wolfe-Rocca describes her mixer around the “Valve Turners,” a group of climate disobedience activists who put their bodies on the line to stop the harm of pipelines.
Teaching the Green New Deal: The Prequel
In an article introducing the student-friendly short video, A Message from the Future, about life after the Green New Deal, Naomi Klein points out: Almost every vision of the future […]
A Message from the Future II: The Years of Repair
The latest installment of our regular Earth, Justice, and Our Classrooms column.
Youth vs. Apocalypse
A high school English teacher reorients his classroom to be a space for student organizing for climate justice.
We Need to Ask Our Students to Dream — and to Dream Big
Back in the 1980s, I taught an elective class at Jefferson High School in Portland, Oregon, called Literature and Social Change. It centered around the questions “What is a good […]
Dirty Oil and Shovel-Ready Jobs
High school students learn about the conflict over the pipeline by participating in a role play.
Science for the People
Ninth graders develop science literacy as they become neighborhood environmental experts and activists.
Coal at the Movies
Video resources for the classroom, plus links to activist websites.
Got Coal?
Students play a game promoted by the coal industry, then dig beneath the surface to look at the realities of mountaintop removal mining.
Our Climate Crisis Is an Education Crisis
Why is there so little teaching or discussion of climate change in classrooms?
Review: Our Dignity Can Defeat Anyone
By Julie Treick O’Neill A review of the film Maquilapolis [City of Factories]
Polar Bears on Mission Street
San Francisco fourth graders learn about global warming and take action to save the polar bears.