Sometime this fall, in a classroom in New York City, second graders will use pipe cleaners and Post-it notes to build a model of a tree that could cool a city street. They’ll shine a lamp on their mini trees to see what shade patterns they cast. Meanwhile, in Seattle, kindergartners might take a “wondering walk” outside and come up with questions about the worms that show up on the sidewalk after it rains.

This summer, teachers around the country are planning these lessons and more, in professional development programs designed to answer a pressing need: preparing teachers to teach about the climate crisis and empower students to act.

“I believe that the climate movement is the most interesting movement in education,” said Oren Pizmony-Levy, associate professor of International and Comparative Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. (Disclosure: The Hechinger Report, which produced this story, is an independent unit of Teachers College.) Schools have to address student climate anxiety, provide them knowledge and skills, including the ability to recognize misinformation, and empower them to act, while schools also “clean up their act” by decarbonizing their physical infrastructure.

Teachers don’t necessarily feel prepared to lead this work yet, said Pizmony-Levy.

“We’ve been doing research with New York City Public Schools for the past 6-7 years. About a third of teachers say they teach about climate change in a meaningful way. Those who don’t, give the following reasons: 1) It has nothing to do with my subject; 2) I don’t know enough about it; 3) I don’t feel comfortable talking about it; and 4) I don’t have the right materials,” he said.

National polls by Education Week and the North American Association for Environmental Education bear these views out. Three-quarters of teachers, and 80 percent of principals and district leaders in NAAEE’s poll agreed, “Climate change will have an enormous impact on students’ futures, and it is irresponsible not to address the problem and solutions in school.” Yet only 21 percent of teachers felt “very informed” on the topic and only 44 percent said they had the right resources to teach it most of the time or always.

Read the full article about climate education by Anya Kamenetz at The Hechinger Report.