Reimagine our future, starting with schools
Recorded at Climate Con 2021 on November 9, 2021
Reimagine our future, starting with schools
The education system is complicated, and often the target of eye rolls and frustration. But there are climate opportunities for parents, kids, and teachers. Learn why education is a critical solution to preparing the soil for change. Explore what it might look like to educate and empower the next generation inside and outside the classroom.
A conversation with:
Madigan Traversi (Schools for Climate Action)
Nancy Metzger-Carter (Sonoma Academy)
Keith Desrosiers (Thorne Nature Experience)
Eugene Cordero (Green Ninja)
Jonathan Schorr (Be Clear)
Transcript
Jonathan Schorr: As adults we're supposed to make a secure future for our children and planted wise my generation, isn't doing a great job. Hope is that our children will save us from our own mistakes. And if you've been watching glass scours, a lot of honesty and clarity coming from young people. So the question we're going to take on today is what would it look like for our schools to support the growth of an environmentally aware and active next generation?
We have a numerous richness of talent among our panelists and a scarcity of time, 30 minutes. So this is going to move very quickly, introduce myself briefly and then our panel. And we're going to get going real fast. My name's Jonathan Schorr, I'm a founding partner at Be Clear. Which is a communications consulting firm that supports organizations that seek to make a better and more progressive world.
I'm also the father of two daughters who are used to spending the summer finding a smoke-free part of California to be in. And who I believe in hope will be part of this next generation of climate activists, and really excited to learn from the four folks who are here with us today. Go around and ask each of our panelists to start by saying one thing on their climate wishlist in three words or fewer as I introduce each of you, and then we're going to dig in. First is Nancy Metzger Carter, who is the sustainability curriculum coordinator at Sonoma academy in Santa Rosa and the education leader with schools for climate action, Nancy what's what's on your climate wishlist.
Nancy Metzger-Carter: Just big picture. Reduced emissions reduced half by 2030.
Jonathan Schorr: Awesome. Also here is Madigan Traversi? She's a junior at Sonoma academy in her third year of volunteering to work with schools for climate action. And as you can probably guess she's Nancy's student Madigan. What's what's on your way.
Nancy Metzger-Carter: I think Madigan's having a little trouble with her video. I'm going to go grab her really quick. Can you come back to her, Jonathan?
Jonathan Schorr: We'll come back to her. And Keith Desrosiers is the executive director of Thorne nature experience, which was named the top environmental education provider in the country. Keith what's on your list connecting to nature. Keith, we're having a hard time here.
It's connecting to nature. There's some way you can get your volume up a little bit. It was a little quiet and finally Eugene different former client scientist from NASA who founded green ninja, which aims to reach a million students and empower environmental leadership through a deep understanding of science, Eugene, what's on your list?
Eugene Cordero: I think staying hopeful.
Jonathan Schorr: That is a perfect lead in to this conversation. So I'm going to start with an individual question for each of our panelists, and then we're going to get to some broader questions for everyone. Here's Madigan. What's what's on your wishlist.
Madigan Traversi: I think one of the things on my wishlist right now is required climate education.
Jonathan Schorr: Love that and want to say somebody said to me before this panel, that of all the rest of us shut up the entire time and you talked the entire time, that would be the win. So we're going to see how close to that we can get the in, in Glasgow and in a lot of places it is people closer to your age.
Who's going to keep with people, giving people our age, a little more honest about this. So really excited to have your voice here. So gonna start with a question for you, Keith. You've done really exciting work about taking students into the outdoors and then they become active about climate and wondering what happens.
What is there a tipping or a turning point or. What turns it from going outside to becoming a client activist or steward
Keith Desrosiers: The magic ingredient is love for nature. It's so simple. I will give an example. My life story. I've been an environmental leader non-profits for 25 years and one day I was like, why do I do this? Ms. Darwin, third grade she lived two blocks from my house in two blocks from the pollywog pond. And she brought us there. We watched this magical thing happened where the tadpoles transformed and metamorphosized and like playing in the mud and being in the sun and just, and she encouraged us. We'd go there on our own.
She taught us how to go there. And we'd stopped by her house on the way, and she'd give us chocolate. And so I had this nature mentor and she helped need to develop a love for nature. And without that, there is no action. That's going to follow up.
Jonathan Schorr: Thank you. Nancy, I want to come to you next. And so I'm going to ask you to take up the first piece of this story, and I think we might hear a second piece of it for Madigan. But you've had a lot of success. Seeing your students turn into political actors. What caused that to happen?
And I'm going to ask you both the question of what do you hear about how that feels to them?
Nancy Metzger-Carter: I've been teaching about climate change since about 2004. And the main way I did that is through having students calculate their carbon footprints. I'm looking at turning out lights when they leave the room.
I'm talking about electric cars, maybe looking at campus sustainability. And then in 2018, the UN IPC report came up and I was devastated. Honestly, I just was like what I've been doing for this long as not working. And I took a bunch of steps back and said, what we really need right now is political will for change.
And I partnered with a local teacher here in Northern California with a campaign called Schools for Climate Action. And we started asking school boards to pass climate resolutions that call on Congress to act on. Once the school boards pass resolutions, we then hand delivered them to every single member of Congress and held we're up to 75 meetings with congressional members, calling them to act on the science and bringing young people into their.
To tell their personal stories and how they're already impacted by the climate crisis and how they will be in the future and how they need to be considered in decision-making and even brought into the decision-making process. And what does that mean for them? I feel like you teach them about climate science. It's a crisis. This is the first generation that's heard of. Since they were in kindergarten. And then you tell them the solution is to calculate their own carbon footprint. It's blaming them a little bit. Like it just, it didn't feel right to me. And so I feel like my students appreciate the fact that they don't have to be 100% carbon neutral in their own lives.
Number one, that's a huge equity issue, of course. But being able to go right to the political decision makers and seeing that they have a voice and their voice matters I think has been really empowering.
Jonathan Schorr: That's a good cue to come to you, Madigan. Want to start by asking you I was struck as I was preparing for this Googled you and came across a story about you in rolling stone.
When you were, I think, 14 years old and talking about the emotional impact. Of the climate crisis on young people. And you can talk through what you've experienced, but really interested in understanding. So one of the things that was mentioned in his article is that every summer you take all the things that you could never replace and you put them in a laundry basket in case you have to evacuate, forget a third time and interested in understanding How has school supported you and maybe more important?
What is it that you want adults to be doing to support students in a time of climate change and threat?
Madigan Traversi: Yeah. Just to give a little bit of context here in 2017, I lost my home in the Tufts fire which was a pretty significant wildfire. And ever since then, I have. Gotten evacuated. I think three times I'm out of my new house, which is about 15 minutes away from my burned property.
But the way that the school has supported that when I lost my home, I was actually not at this school Sonoma academy yet. But as soon as I came to Sonoma academy, I immediately saw a really huge amount of support from the administration and from the faculty, from the community, because this is something that we're all going through.
This is a huge climate issue in our area. But more important. And how adults can support us. I have a really wonderful mentor here. And something that she has always said is that as a teacher she has to work out for our safety. She's a mandated reporter and she knows that we are all suffering this and we're going to continue to suffer this more.
So I would say that. It's the thing that I would like more adults to really practice because I know that I'm privileged to have a mentor who is so incredibly involved and educating me and my classmates on this issue, but it's not quite as common. And I'm really grateful that I've been so empowered to be able to talk to Congress members and demand my rights and the fact that I should not have had to lose everything I own and my property and watched my family suffer through a wildfire, but not everyone has those resources. And I think that it really is the responsibility of the adults to empower us and we shouldn't have to take that responsibility on ourselves.
So just all adults having that same mindset of their mandated reporters and we, as a generation are suffering through the climate crisis and it's only going to get worse. So yeah, just following Nancy's mindset.
Jonathan Schorr: And can I just stay with you Madigan for one more question? That same question of, as you and many of your fellow students have made this journey to climate activism how has that felt for you? How has it felt for other students who have.
Madigan Traversi: I personally have been so incredibly inspired to be able to do the work that I do. I've been working with schools for climate action for, I think I'm going into my third year and I have learned so much, and I've gotten so many incredible opportunities, including the rolling stone article that you mentioned earlier.
And I think a lot of my classmates feel the same way. A lot of the community that I work with. But at the same time, I, it does really anger me as a child to have to spend so much of my time fighting for this thing that is not my fault. It's not my responsibility and I shouldn't have to. But I want to. I feel like I owe it to everyone else in my generation.
So I'm really grateful. Like I said before to meet, to have all of the resources that I do. And I think it really is fun to be able to meet with Congress members and talk to them about what I want and what my friends want and what my family want and this whole generation, but it is very frustrating.
And I know a lot of my classmates feel this way to have to do this. Because it shouldn't be our responsibility.
Jonathan Schorr: I just want to say editorially, I think your moral compass is totally right about that. Our job as parents is to make things right for you not to ask you to clean up our mess. And you're right.
That shouldn't be your job. I agree with you, the gene, when it come to you, you did a fascinating study and you learned about what happens to students when they learn about the environment. Will you tell us what.
Eugene Cordero: Yeah. We I'm a professor at San Jose state and I teach classes and I'm also a climate scientist, but I was curious like what do students get out of my class?
And so we started, I started to do these surveys, beginning and the end of class. And realizing that it's not really the intention of what I had hoped to, that they would see the climate change and the Gordon and there's things they can do and feel empowered. So we, we designed a specially designed, we went into the education science education, literature and designed a class that's much more.
Oriented around connecting with people, emotionally, giving students empowerment opportunities to go and do things a much more solutions oriented, less sciency. Not that we didn't have the science in there, but it was, and it was multidisciplinary. And when we did that appropriately in a special class, that was one unit one year.
Nine units of instruction with multiple professors involved, we found that the students were impacted by this and not just our research showed that not just immediately after the class, but even more than five years later. And that their behaviors differ compared to the average California. And for example they drove different cars, more energy, efficient cars.
Different foods. They chose different careers and we were able to quantify this and get it published in peer review literature to show that if you had a high quality climate change education experience, like the one that we created that that the carbon trajectory of those individuals was about 2.9 tons of carbon, less than the average California.
And that if we scale this appropriately, And the type in the same way that we're going to scale electric vehicles and solar and wind that education, the education that we're advocating for here is just as impactful as these other climate change mitigation strategies, and yet typically absent and And at the organization that I'm part of green ninja.
I have a youth advisory panel of high school students and they tell me the same thing. Like I have to learn all this stuff on my own. Like it's not happening in my school. I'm not learning anything about real climate change in my school. And so that's why we started our own company, a middle-school science provider, green ninja because it's just not being done.
And if you wait for Pearson and McGraw hill to do that, you'll be waiting a long time. I'll tell you that.
Jonathan Schorr: So I think each of you has offered a really powerful one. One announced, start a conversation. And these are going to be questions for all of you about the, how as everybody knows, we have a short time, but if folks have questions in the audience, please do feel free to put them in the chat.
And we're just going to get to as many as these as we can get to. So I wanna start with a question. Nancy, I appreciated that you brought up the question of. And want to start with a question about clearly this is a movement that needs to do more to engage the voices of the people who are bearing the greatest impact of climate change. And want to start with a question? How do we do that?
Nancy Metzger-Carter: Since this scope here is we're talking about climate education. What I find is that if you make climate education programs and after school type ad-on to curriculum, you're going to weed out the kids who have to watch the. Or go to an after-school job.
So for me, it's super important to include those voices and have them be able to participate in this type of education advocacy during the school day. In even beyond lunch period or a free period, so actually built into academic classes there's incredible opportunity there that can bring in.
The voices that, we really need to hear in our community. We see how the climate change disproportionately affects students of color through the wildfires floods. But it's really challenging in education, if it just becomes something else that students have to have on and maybe give up to we don't want them to give up a sport.
They love in order to engage in advocacy.
Eugene Cordero: Yeah. The, I think that's, it's a great point. We want it for everyone. We don't want it just for people who can afford to go to a summer camp or afterschool thing. Just for folks who say, oh, I'm interested in that. So a couple of approaches. One is that you require it and the standards it is in the next generation science standards and K-12, but it's when you look at the other publishers, it's.
It's really light and a teacher could avoid it and miss it because at the end of the weather and climate unit or we're going to study stuff, but we're not going to talk about empowerment. We're not going to give students opportunities to do things in their own community. We're not going to make it real for them.
Then the other approach is what, which is what we took is that we were going to offer it in place of a science program. So it's not, oh, I'm going to study environmental studies. I'm going to take this class. This is I'm learning science. And in our middle school program is just normal science.
We teach earth science, life science, physical science engineering, but through the lens of environmental solutions and tourism. And that's I think another approach that can work and. For example, New Jersey did something interesting with their standards. They embedded climate change, not just in science, but in all their fields.
So you learn science, you learn about climate and you learn, you could talk about justice, you can talk about history, you can talk about a lot of different fields. And then another key piece of. And Keith mentioned, this is that if you don't have that empathy and our research showed this, that, that empathy for nature.
So you do need, some of these other partners are critically important too, but you can do that from the school or with help from outside partners.
Keith Desrosiers: And so when you think about that heart and you think about the pollywog blonde I've lived two blocks from an or four blocks from it.
Most kids live within walking distance of their school. Most low-income neighborhoods are devoid of parks and vegetation or safe ways to walk to their school. If every school was a nature area, if every school yard had trees and we didn't have to look at the maintenance of those trees as being an expense that comes at the cost of books, we can address access to nature for all children across the entire country and create the opportunities for those heart connections to.
Jonathan Schorr: I think this kind of naturally builds on those good answers surveys show that most kids mostly know what climate change is. But majority of students feel no power to make a difference in it. And really interested and Madigan. And I'm going to put you on the spot at some point in the answers on this to come in on this one, but really interested in hearing from you all about what is it going to take to give students the support, the skills, the training, so that they don't just understand that climate change is a problem, but really feel like they can move this solution.
That's it. Can you unmute so we can hear that again.
Nancy Metzger-Carter: Oh, sorry about that. So what do students need is your question. Sorry, you cut out just a little bit, so we can hear you. Oh,
Jonathan Schorr: so sorry about that. What do schools need to do so that students see, not just the concern, but a path to being able to change.
Madigan Traversi: I agree with what Nancy was saying earlier, as well as this is something that we learned about constantly in our classes with her in that kind of education should be mandatory. But in addition to that, I think something that's been really helpful for me is getting. Number one public speaking resources, learning how to do that.
I loved speaking in public and being able to, put my thoughts out there because I think that I represent the way a lot of people in my generation feel also resources to be able to write, to be able to do outreach. Like all of these things are so important. And I think I think it would be wrong to say that there's just like one way to go about fighting climate change. And we also talk about this all the time in schools for climate action. We have artists, we have graphic designers. We have people who manage social media. We have people who do outreach. We have people who go and talk to Congress.
There really is like a place for everybody. So I think more than just having a class where you learn about environmental science and that's mandatory. I think learning how to work this topic into anything, because there's not one way to go about it. And I think any interest or passion that people want to like surround in like the topic of climate change is going to be really helpful. So just working into all parts of education.
Keith Desrosiers: Rip off that for a second. It's it's pre-K to high school. It's backyard back country. It's whole child that's head academic, heart, empathetic hand service. Place-based that's you need, we need, it's not just climate education. It is an education about being a steward of the earth and then climate change will get addressed by those students.
Jonathan Schorr: Following on that path. So the flip side of that is that we are increasingly seeing students leading us in solving these problems. And again, we, we saw that quite a bit in Glasgow this week. We're seeing kids also getting their parents involved in climate change action. What does it mean to equip them properly for the journey that they will be on as they are leading active.
Nancy Metzger-Carter: I'll mention something just briefly, because I know that we're tight on time. I think it's really important to acknowledge as they move through this, that it's going to be hard and they have anxiety and they have grief about this. And addressing that with young people, I think is really important if we ignore that piece.
I think that we're not preparing them for what lies ahead and what's ultimately going to fall on them.
Eugene Cordero: Yeah, I would echo that and. Also, there is this issue about, responsibility. It came up earlier about, who's responsible for this. And the research that we did in the, at the university was we were giving students opportunities to show. For them to see what is it like to be an activist?
And I would tell the students, you don't have to be an activist. Like you don't have to subscribe to this completely, but you can play this role right now for this assignment and see what it feels like, because you might want to act, be an activist about something else you might, but why not use the university as a foundation for doing some of that work and it's not easy.
So I remember students going out and handing out brochures and you know how, when you hand out a brochure and there's whole bunch of people they see you and they. They duct Claire. And you normally do that, but now you're on the other end. You're the one giving. And I, many of my students said, oh, that's a really unique experience.
And so giving students the experience of advocating for something for saying, I'm not just going to be on the sidelines all the time. I'm going to advocate for something. And like it was mentioned, there's lots of different ways to do that. I think that can be, something that's helpful to give students confidence that they could do that about climate or about other things that they feel passionate about.
Jonathan Schorr: I want to ask a question about curriculum and by the way, Eugene, I hope that while you were talking, you didn't miss a really beautiful tribute to your work in the comments, if you did, you should go back. When I was a high school teacher curriculum used to be a really boring topic. It is currently not a boring topic in this country mostly for not great reasons.
And that sort of leads into a two-part question for me. One. So it's really complicated to get new ideas, important ideas into curriculum especially ideas that have any sort of political valence to them. And so want to ask on the one side. Where what have you seen as the, the most hopeful aspects?
Cause we have seen, you mentioned New Jersey and other places where this really has become part of the standards. One, like what's worked best in making this part of the official school curriculum, but on the other hand, what are the ways that you see as becoming successfully becoming parts of the, not the mandated curriculum, but something that schools can adopt and do. Even if it's not a required part of a state or district.
Nancy Metzger-Carter: I'll just say and I know this is a hot topic right now, but engaged with your school board. I think that it's really important. We've seen the power of school boards. We've passed over 40 climate resolutions with sports that are calling on Congress to act and also committing to forming climate committees within the district.
And those climate committees can be really powerful as far as finding funding for programs. And really important I think is to make sure teachers are a part of that. Committee as well as students as well as administrators and then including community partnerships as well. My advice is to really engage with your school board different areas of the country. You're going to have different experiences when it comes to their school board. But ultimately they're like the first layer of elected official that can really have a lot of full on curriculum.
Keith Desrosiers: I've been excited in the last decade that Environmental education has moved from just being science education and that we partner across school districts and schools, and at a much broader way than we used to that said I do. I just want to come back to the super simple thing. Could we just teach kids outside lawn? Can we just get outside with kids more and teach them in that outdoor classroom? That, that would be one.
Eugene Cordero: And Keith, maybe the opportunity that pandemic has given us provides us with an avenue because we know that from a safety standpoint, being outside is a little bit safer. And yet we're not used to, many of our teachers are not used to that. But at least in the school districts we're working with at every school district, I pitched the idea of what about doing some outdoor ed they're much more receptive today, and I'm sure you're seeing this in your work than they were a couple of years ago.
So we use this opportunity as well for greening our schools because as the climate gets warmer, we need more trees on campus. We need. To help with the resiliency of our campus community. But I agree with you completely about the outdoor piece.
Jonathan Schorr: Was kind enough to give us five more minutes. I guess we're doing good. Get a little, we got a few more, we could read a few more minutes. And so I'd like to, I'd like to use that time to come to each of these. In any order you want and talk about two things.
First of all, like to hear from you about something that gives you hope, as you think about students in our schools and their journey to climate activism. And second, I want you to make an ask of someone, maybe they're in our audience, maybe they're not, but I want you to make an ask for something that someone can.
To strengthen the kind of education, the kind of support that we give to our young people in that journey. So take your closing thoughts in any order.
Keith Desrosiers: My four year old nature boy gives me hope and take a kid outside.
Jonathan Schorr: And what you want people to do. That was the two of them.
Eugene Cordero: I'll start with what gives me hope is I do feel that the young people and especially I'll go out and live in space, especially females. Give me hope. And there's more females in. And there are males and and so it's a tough job to be a teacher.
Some of us know that it's not an easy thing. Teachers can be home. The ask for folks is is to write a letter to the superintendent of this local school and express your connection to the nature. You're concerned about the environment and climate and how you, maybe you believe in education, you believe that this is the right path, but that more can be done.
We're realizing in con 26. That it's possible. They can't do it. Like those folks, those large government things. It's just doesn't seem like it's, that's why we're having this. It may not work very well, but more localized systems may and the local system could be a school and a school has a catchment area.
It's small, it's localized. A lot of people who care about that. So the ask is key that a much more eloquently than me, but I'm long winded, but they ask is write a handwritten. Because those are those superintendents don't receive many of them to the local superintendent of a school. And if you have some personal connection to someone, use that and ask them to do more and to hold them accountable to that.
Nancy Metzger-Carter: I'll have to say, just my ask is I'm going to build off of you Eugene, is that please engage your school board. It brings students to speak at the school board meetings, and I think that it's. Powerful when the whole job of the school district is to protect students. And as soon as they're seeing that, like climate change is an existential threat and for almost all communities in the U S we're feeling it acutely already.
Engage with your school board. Schools are climate action has a bunch of template emails that you can hand write and deliver to your school board to get you started. And then as far as hope This gives me hope right here. They're way smarter than I could've ever imagined being at 16 and 17 and being able to see the issues and how they connect is really amazing to me, like being able to see the systems behind it.
And the way they talk about it is really inspiring. But also just big picture of the hope. There's such a possibility for an amazing transformation of our economy and really looking at like systemic issues that we can solve at the same time, like stack those functions. I really see it as an incredible opportunity and that is what keeps me in the fight and it gives me hope that appropriately
Jonathan Schorr: Madigan's going to get the last word.
Madigan Traversi: And then the other side of that like I mentioned earlier what gives me hope. I could talk a lot about my generation, such an important thing, but also the adults who are cultivating climate conversations and educating us and empowering us to speak up for ourselves. And that gives me a lot of hope because that's, what's really going to get this generation together to stand for what we need right now.
And then my ass. Would be something that this could really be a whole huge conversation. But adults nurturing the mental health effects. Of climate change. This is something that I see so much and it's really important to me. You don't have to live through a natural disaster to experience some extreme trauma and anxiety and depression due to the climate crisis.
I don't think that's acknowledged enough. And we are asking that of our representatives right now that it is acknowledged and that it's brought up. Everywhere. But yes, if you're a parent or if children, like this is something that we really are feeling. So I think that is a huge part of this movement is nurturing all of the negative mental effects because it's really difficult to fight for change.
And it has aware on our mental health and yeah, I think it's really important to bring attention to that.
Jonathan Schorr: So go outside. Build the connection that young people feel in their empathy to the problem that's in front of us and the opportunity and the reasons interweave, this kind of climate understanding and activism throughout the curriculum and throughout the day with a special particular eye to what that means for equity and for the opportunity of different students to participate.
Help students get involved politically at every level, from school board to Congress and help them know that's a thing that they can do when they can write a letter and they can participate in, they can have an impact and see their impact to their ability to make change and just love loving that the Madigan took us out on here.
Look for your opportunities to mentor and to nurture. Because it's so important. A bunch of great threads here, lots to think about and thanks so much for the opportunity and appreciate all of our panelists coming together. Lots of good thoughts about.
