The best way to empower your students is to start now, weaving critical topics such as the climate crisis and social justice issues into the existing curriculum.
This site has a number of ideas for teachers in just about every subject area and grade level, but they’re meant as examples to open the door for you and your colleagues to come up with more!
Here are a couple of ideas from the summer issue of Rethinking Schools:
- engage students in the science of climate change;
- probe the social and economic roots of climate change;
- emphasizs the brutal inequality that results in those least responsible for the crisis being hit the hardest;
- alert students to the breadth of global activism for climate justice;
- help students see how climate justice is inextricably linked to addressing broader issues of racism, militarism, imperialism, and class exploitation;
- invite students to imagine a society based on principles of ecology and social equality; and
- encourage students to come to see themselves as activists for a green and just world.