Thousands of teachers have signed up to teach children about climate change
The UN’s online training program takes 15-20 hours to complete and covers a wide range of topics including climate change science, adaptation planning, health, forests, climate change finance and international negotiations.
H
ow can cities adapt to the impacts of climate change? How do rising temperatures affect our health?
These are some of the topics children in England will be taught as part of a climate change programme launched by the United Nations (UN).
The UN has set up the Climate Change Teacher Academy in a bid to educate children about the climate crisis.
The online training program takes 15-20 hours to complete and covers a wide range of topics including climate change science, adaptation planning, health, forests, climate change finance and international negotiations.
Thousands of teachers have already completed the programme and become UN-accredited climate change educators.
The UK is leading the way – over 3,000 teachers have enrolled in the academy.
North of Tyne, a region in northern England, recently became the first place in the world to have a climate change teacher in every primary and secondary school.
By the end of 2020, the total number could have risen to 250,000, as many UK universities have said they are adding climate change as a mandatory subject to their teacher training programme, according to Melanie Harwood, an education specialist who helped launch the academy.
Harwood started the programme because she felt “the climate conversation needed to happen on a wider scale.”
Her aim was to integrate climate change into the national curriculum and ensure that children spent time exploring the subject outside of a few geography lessons.
It is crucial that teachers understand and can explain the basic concepts of climate change as they “don’t just teach kids, they teach entire communities,” Harwood said.
“We are encouraging kids to take action. Young activists can petition their governments and communities,” she added.
The global response to the campaign has been bigger than Harwood ever anticipated, with hundreds of teachers from Dubai to Italy signing up every week.
In Florida, 180 schools have joined the academy – a major step for a country where more than half of teachers revealed in a recent survey that they do not cover climate change in their classrooms.
But the tide is turning across the Atlantic due to growing awareness, according to Kottie Christie-Blick, a primary school teacher who launched Kids Against Climate Change, a website where children can talk about climate change with each other.
“Children play a unique role in helping to slow down climate change, not only because they can do their part to recycle and turn off lights, but because they can take the information they are learning at school to the dinner table each night,” she said.
The most effective way to empower children to take climate action is by providing educators with the necessary resources and strategies to teach this topic, she added.
“I know that every educator I empower to teach climate will reach hundreds or thousands of minds during a career of teaching,” she said.
In New York, various programmes run by City Parks Foundation teach children about climate change.
The initiative ‘Green Girls’ encourages teenage girls to become environmental activists, by organising bird-watching and canoeing trips, and encouraging them to take part in scientific projects.
Children living in Queens and the Bronx can join the ‘Learning Gardens’ programme where they are taught about biodiversity and how to grow their own food in community gardens.
Chrissy Word, director of education at the City Parks Foundation, said that it is important that children learn “the basics of climate change” and that climate education should focus on solutions rather than “fearful messages.”
“As an educator, I encourage colleagues to steer away from those messages, particularly with young children. They need to understand what climate is before they can understand how it’s changing,” she said.
Harwood agrees with this sentiment, stressing that preschools should also adopt a climate curriculum.
“All children should be empowered to understand climate change and the sustainable development goals (SDGs),” she said.
The ideas presented in this article aim to inspire adaptation action – they are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Global Center on Adaptation.
