You Can Teach About Climate Change in Every Subject and Grade Level. Here’s How
Education Week
As a topic, climate change is often confined to science class, but it should be considered an interdisciplinary issue that spans subjects and grade levels, educators and experts say.
That line of thinking hasn’t caught on with all teachers, though: When a nationally representative EdWeek Research Center survey asked why they haven’t addressed climate change or issues related to it with students, 26 percent of teachers said they can’t think of any way it is related to the subject they teach. Nine percent said they think their students are too young to learn about it.
New Jersey made headlines last year for becoming the first state to require that climate change be taught in all grade levels and subjects. But for the most part, it’s up to individual teachers to decide whether they want to broach the subject in class—a tall order, considering the complexity of the science, the strong emotions it raises, and the lack of training in how to teach it.
