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Bringing Climate to the Classroom

Kathryn Williamson, kewilliamson@mail.wvu.edu

Teaching Associate Professor and Planetarium Director

West Virginia University

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Guiding Principles

“The most important thing you can do to fight climate change is to talk about it.” – Katharine Hayhoe.

“Science alone will not save us. Civic engagement might.” – Michael Mann

We have a voice as astronomers. Astronomy has an important history in helping us to understand climate change and provides a big-picture perspective of ourselves as Earthlings.

We must move beyond individual action towards collective action. Our approach must be intersectional and equitable.

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Resources

Forrest, S. and Feder, M.A. (2011), “Climate Change Education: Goals, Audiences, and Strategies: A Workshop Summary,” National Research Council, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C.

There are 4 challenges to effective climate change education

The science is difficult to comprehend
It requires a cross-disciplinary approach
Organizations may duplicate efforts without coordination
It’s become politically polarized

Pg. 11 - important! “Matthew Nisbet (2010), which argues that increased public understanding of climate change will not by itself lead individuals to consider climate change impacts in their decisions and actions…..

The goals of climate change education should be broad, extending far beyond technical understanding of climate science alone.”
New communication structure and participatory culture
Knowledge is a two-way street with the public

Pg 12: a great deal of information does not reach any audience because it was created without serious attention to audience needs or information seeking habits

KW thoughts: and you can learn these along the way if you have an open attitude and take the approach of improvement science. I don’t think it’s good to sit back while you do a study of audience needs without also taking action. Iterate!

Pg 15 The question of how education can create behavior change has not been clearly resolved. Most educators feels uncomfortable engaging in advocacy or being viewed as advocates, but all education includes some level of advocacy. Be careful, though.

KW: I’m careful to not advocate for one particular action over another or policies. My goal is to provide space for people to have a conversation and to show to approach their questions with data

Subgoals identified by breakout groups pg 15-16

Increase stewardship
Decrease fossil fuels
Increase energy efficiency
More green consumer choices
Increase preparedness

All subgroups agreed we need to have a better understanding of what influences behavior change
Move away from the deficit model of education and move toward funds of knowledge model

“Climate Change Education: Effective practices for working with educators, scientists, decision makers and the public”, Climate Change Education Partnership Alliance (2017) - highly recommend this document

It’s important to tailor education for your specific area and audience. This guide provides some examples of tested models for different situations. Case study examples include games, maps, tours, videos, place-based learning, etc.
Working with Key community and political leaders is different than working with general public and community members.

Key Influencers:

These people are busy. “To be effective with this audience, information about climate change impacts and solutions needs to be embedded in the context of their concerns.” May be useful to provide maps. KW - I have noticed that our elected officials are very interested in the Yale Climate Opinion Maps. The Yale website also breaks down the data by congressional districts. Many people are shocked to see that many West Virginians care about a variety of climate change issues.
Provide PR opportunity. Ex: CEOs may want to boast about their organization’s effective environmental strategies.
They like knowing scientists

Working with formal K-14 educators

Important to approach with an attitude of continuously improving, assessing, and communicating about student learning
5 key elements that prompt success

Shared systemic vision
High quality professional development
Multi-level communications and dialogues
Roles and structures (fostering partnerships across stakeholders)
Data-driven decision making

“Must have a strong place-based, local focus.” Important to be sensitive to local needs and respect the difficulty of challenges. Co-create the experience with educators and listen.
Important to teach from a systems point of view, ex: social science component is critical, as are activities that investigate solutions

Pg 9 - From professional development workshops, collaborative mini-grants, informal gatherings allow people to come together and engage.

KW - don’t underestimate power of a Facebook group or Google Group listserv.

Diverse evaluation - interviews, pre-surveys, post-surveys (both paper and electronic), live polling, voting with stickers and favorite content
Offer KIs “ambassador” opportunities to publicly assert their case and knowledge about cc

Helps shifts perspective of norms

Useful to have a database of contacts/organizations

KW see WV Sustainability Network

“Lunch & Learn” event
Tours on wildfires and drought (KW in WV could be ex: glass crushing facility)
Importance of multi-disciplinary teams! Ex: communicators, social scientists, activists
Games in classroom increasingly seen as valuable tools for cc ed (Wu & Lee 2015, Eisenack & Reckien 2013, Mendler de Suzrez et al 2012)
Informal Settings;

Most people in the US were never taught about climate change in school.
Higher interest in learning by those who choose to visit informal settings, ex: zoos, museums, etc --- KW: what about planetariums?!
Inviting curiosity, fun challenges & competitions
Embed climate change learning in multiple settings

Reference local organizations working to reduce waste and help the community -- KW ex: guest speakers from local Sunrise Movement, Coalfield Development, WV Citizens Climate Lobby
Focus on groups working for collective action and civic engagement
Shift focus from individual-level responses
Share examples of hope and self-efficacy

Most interactions are only seconds to minutes

Why K-12 Should Feature in American’s National Climate Strategy -- Report

North American Association for Environmental Education

April 2021

“The need for ambition has never been greater… Education has been identified as currently underutilized and a key social tipping point”
“While our K-12 schools are responsible for a modest share of overall building and transportation emission in the US, the sector is positioned to catalyze increased awareness, public support, workforce development, innovation, and most critically, the shifts in mindset that form the foundation for any success we might envision.”
“With a school serving every community, America’s public K-12 schools are highly visible and cherished components of our public infrastructure.”
“Making climate change about people (not just ‘emissions’) is key to garnering broad public support and engagement.”
“We must be intersectional in our approach; in other words, we must link the climate crisis to human rights in all their forms including -- racial justice, indigenous rights, women’s rights, immigrant rights, disability rights, and LGBTQ rights.”

Lawson, D. F., Stevenson, K. T., Nils Peterson, M., Carrier, S. J., Strnad, R. L., & Seekamp, E. (2019) Children can foster climate change concern among their parents, Nature Climate Change, 9, 458-462.

KW: I reference this all the time, especially in grant proposals. It’s such a powerful finding.

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Just say it. Whenever. Wherever.

How can we increase the sheer amount of time that climate change is in our collective consciousness? How can you get a lot of attention? Perhaps more important with the topic of climate change than what we are used to with other astronomy topics.

Slide I used at the end of a colloquium

One of Dr. Katharine Hayhoe’s Instagram posts

Sign on my office door for climate rally

This is a slide I included after my final slide of a colloquium I was giving about involving students in mapping the Milky Way, i.e. not a presentation about climate change at all. I had checked with my colloquium host ahead of time to see his thoughts, i.e. if thought it wouldn’t be too inappropriate, and to see if he had an idea of how the audience might react. He thought the audience wouldn’t like it, but that they probably wouldn’t mob me. So I kept it in my presentation, and made a game time decision after I reached the end of my presentation to click next to this very last slide and said it out loud. The audience ended up being mostly college students, so perhaps more amenable to hearing about climate change, but they heartily applauded! Some students came up to me afterwards and thanked me for saying this and wanted to ask about climate change.

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Outreach via the (College) Classroom

1-credit Book Club ⇒ WVU Climate Conversations Podcast
Astro 101 Assignment: Have a “Climate Conversation”

Students mentioned feeling nervous at first, but then being surprised that the person they talked to wanted to learn and/or actually agreed!
Students mentioned wanting to keep the conversation going, that they had more confidence to speak about climate change with understanding and evidence.
From this one assignment, ~200 students in West Virginia had an informed climate change conversation with their friends and family.

“Teach ins” - use your state’s recorded dialogues (from 2020 and 2021) from Bard Center for Environmental Policy and their lesson plans to do a Teach-In. Can be done in any subject. Use hashtag #MakeClimateaClass

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Connecting to K-12 audiences

West Virginia Science Public Outreach Team (SPOT) trains college ambassadors to deliver science presentations to schools. Feature presentation “Climate Change in the Mountain State” helps K-12 students learn how to talk about climate change here and now.

Presentation slide featuring a positive side of climate change in WV: more maple syrup.

Presentation slide showing 2016 flooding of Richwood, WV, i.e. the negatives outweigh the positives.

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Short Engagement Activities

Greenhouse effect with an infrared camera and plastic or gas.

Sea level rise with a hand boiler showing thermal expansion.

Community opinions with Yale Climate Opinion Maps.

Ocean acidification with purple cabbage juice as a pH indicator

Greenhouse Effect. An infrared camera can be used to show how infrared and visible light differ. Visible light can pass through plastic, glass, and air that contains greenhouse gases, but infrared light is blocked. The video in the slide uses a plastic sheet, but this YouTube video also shows a comparison of how transparent gases block infrared light. You can also use “canned air,” like that used to clean dust off of keyboards, which contains a potent greenhouse gas called tetraflouroethane. Pass around the infrared camera in class and at outreach events to engage audiences.

Ocean Acidification: Purple cabbage juice acts as a pH indicator. Before the demonstration, create the cabbage juice by pouring boiling water over some purple cabbage leaves and tote in a water bottle or jug. Use 3 cups: 1 control of only cabbage juice, 1 with vinegar added to show the extreme color change of acidity, 1 between the other extremes where participants blow bubbles with straws and add the CO2 of their breath to slowly create a reaction with the H2O, creating carbonic acid. The color change is subtle but noticeable, and it becomes more obvious as more participants get involved.

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Getting Attention

Campus Climate Rally during Global Climate Strikes 2019

WVU Society of Physics students tabling with posters and selling liquid nitrogen ice cream.

WV Science Public Outreach Team Ambassador being interviewed by the BBC with ocean acidification demo. They tried to take a political angle, but the student expertly steered the conversation back to science and education. The resulting article was also inaccurate. Be prepared for this!

BBC article: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49802038

They wanted to take a political angle and tried to get this student to talk about Trump. She expertly steered the conversation back to science and the importance of communicating climate change to younger students.

You can see they also didn’t care much to discuss the science that was actually featured at the booth and vaguely refer to “bright bubbling liquid to show how carbon emissions warm the atmosphere.” This demo was actually a cabbage juice pH experiment to demonstrate ocean acidification.

The booth got attention, though, and that matters.

"those kinds of interactions are something people need to be prepared for, and should expect when talking about science that has been so politicized. The most I came to expect when doing astro outreach was pushback due to ages of objects or evolution, not gotcha political questions"

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Civic Engagement for the Classroom

Invite guest speakers from from your local climate organizations and citizen action groups (ex: Citizens Climate Lobby, Sunrise Movement), local legislators, etc.
Assignment: Letters to someone “in power” adapted from “Writing a Position Statement” Activity from Steger Foundation).
Positive: The students who chose to mail their letters got encouraging responses.
Drawback: Many students didn’t mail their letters. Some felt that it was a childish exercise. Generally not well-written.

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Civic Engagement Outreach

WVU faculty and student-led “Climate Education Day”

at the West Virginia State Capitol

How did this come about?

In 2018 and 2019 a group of faculty at WVU got together to discuss how we can take more action on campus. These were ad-hoc word-of-mouth meetings.
The Assistant Dean in the College of Science & Engineering cares about the issue and invited a core group to start meeting regularly.
Simultaneously, some of us were in touch with our local state delegate, who himself is a scientist and has his own business testing water quality. He’s also been pushing a solar power bill.
Our delegate invited us to come to the state capitol and have some meetings with legislators.
I sent out a Google Form gauging interest in going for a “Climate Education Day” to faculty and students. We can’t lobby, but we can educate.
I asked the Assistant Dean to see if he could get us a few thousand dollars to cover the cost of a bus and meals, but we started planning the trip without the funding commitment. He later committed his discretionary funding from an honorarium for a research presentation.
I had no idea what to expect. The bus could hold 50 people. Only 15 people attended, but the people who did attend were passionate and proactive, which was just what we needed for our first time trying this.

What did we do there?

I made a 1-pager (front and back) of WVU’s climate change research and education efforts for every legislator’s desk.
Our delegate host introduced us during the floor session and escorted us to different offices. Again, this was fairly ad-hoc and fast-paced. We tried to respond to the moment.
Fortunately our delegate was also able to reserve us a meeting room to invite legistors for a 2-hour drop-in session with climate change activities and demos. We had grad students showing their tree ring research. We had a computer open with the Yale Climate Opinion maps to show legislators the opinions of their constituents in their districts; an infrared camera with a bag filled with a strong greenhouse gas (from the keyboard cleaner gas cans); the cabbage juice demo with pictures to show ocean acidification; and a computer where they could calculate their carbon footprint.

What was the impact?

This was the first time a group of faculty and students have ever showed up at the state capitol to talk about climate change.
All legislators gained information about climate change research and education happening at WVU.
One student from rural WV who grew up baling hay was able to connect with his representative about how the uncertain rains made things difficult for him and his community.
One legislator called me later to get more information about the Yale Climate Opinion Maps.
The students were over-the-moon proud of themselves and excited to do this again.

Lessons learned:

Being present matters. Aside from content or expertise, visuals and numbers are important. There was another activist group there the same day as us. They had matching t-shirts and over 100 people in their group. We saw them in every hall, everywhere we went. It made me wonder how much legislators paid attention to their cause vs ours.
We should match students to legislators in their districts.

Thoughts and emotions we might not be used to when we do “regular” astronomy engagement or outreach:

Concern for the students experiencing backlash or negative comments from extremist climate deniers. You might need to have more conversations with students about safety and backup plans.
You might feel lonely and unsupported at first. Some people in power are afraid to touch the topic of climate change. I didn’t feel incredibly supported going into this. I think some people felt nervous about putting too much of an official rubber stamp of approval on this, so they were pretty hands-off and non-committal, and I felt like this was viewed as “Kathryn’s thing.” However, now that it was successful, I feel like people at WVU are very proud of this event and tout it as a “WVU thing” showing how we are taking action on climate change. This seems to be the nature of the beast. Don’t get discouraged if you experience something similar.

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WV Climate Change Teacher Professional Development Project

A collaboration of physical and social scientists, community activists, teachers, and students

Goals

Increase the collaboration and collective impact of West Virginia physical science experts, social science experts, community activists, and teachers.
Empower West Virginia teachers in a range of disciplines to work together to engage in data-driven climate change investigations.
Highlight, reward, and promote climate change engagement of WV teachers and students through civic action and public media campaigns.

Complete activities with students while receiving support.

2. Implementation & Coaching

Workshops/Webinars for teachers to build confidence teaching subject matter.

Professional Development

Student’s create regionally specific PSA’s (for radio & video) to submit for contest.

3. Public Service Announcements

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Virtual Webinars

Attended by ~100 WV teachers

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Public Service Announcement Competition

WV Climate Change Teacher Professional Development Project

Featured on a variety of news and media outlets, reaching an estimated 40,000 West Virginians.

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Start where you are. Try something and iterate. Think of the engineering design process.

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Please reach out!

Kathryn Williamson

kewilliamson@mail.wvu.edu