What If Climate Education Was Not Another Thing to Teach?

Ask educators what they need more of and very few will say another thing to teach. Teachers are already navigating standards, assessments, changing technology, student needs, district priorities, and the simple reality that there never seems to be enough time. So as climate education becomes a larger part of what schools are being asked to address, the question cannot simply be how we add climate change to the curriculum. We need to ask how climate education can become part of the learning that is already happening.

At the Deeper Learning Conference at Ulster BOCES in Kingston, New York, Thinkering Media sat down with Rachel Arbour, CEO of Gaia Scholastic and the New York State lead for Subject to Climate. Our conversation came at an important moment for climate education in New York, but what stood out was not simply the growing attention being given to the subject. It was Rachel’s belief that climate education should not live inside a single classroom, grade level, or discipline.

Climate is science, but it is also history. It is government, mathematics, art, writing, engineering, economics, community, and culture. Students can collect and analyze environmental data in math. They can explore the historical decisions that shaped our relationship with natural resources. They can use writing and art to communicate what they are experiencing. They can examine policy through social studies and design possible solutions through engineering.

The opportunity is not to create another isolated subject. It is to help learners recognize connections that were already there.

Rachel believes that process can begin before students are old enough to understand the complexities of climate change. With young children, the work can simply begin with nature. Let them play outside. Give them magnifying glasses. Let them examine leaves, insects, soil, water, rocks, and the ecosystems surrounding their schools. Help them become familiar with the place where they live before asking them to understand the threats facing it.

That foundation matters because we cannot expect young people to become environmental stewards of a world they have never been given an opportunity to experience.

There is also an emotional reason to begin this way. Climate change is serious, but introducing young learners to the natural world primarily through fear can create a very different relationship with it. Children do not need to begin with everything that is going wrong. They can begin by noticing what is there. They can begin with connection.

As learners grow, the questions can become more complicated. Why is this ecosystem changing? Where does our energy come from? What happens to the things we throw away? How has human activity changed the environment? What can our community do differently? The complexity increases, but it is built on a relationship with the world rather than simply anxiety about its future.

That shift from fear toward action became an important theme throughout our conversation. Rachel introduced the idea of a carbon shadow, which expands the way we might think about individual environmental impact. Our choices do not only affect our personal footprint. We exist within communities of people who influence one another. When one person learns something, changes a behavior, starts a project, or tells a story, that action can move outward through their relationships. Schools are uniquely positioned to create that kind of ripple effect.

Rachel shared an example from a school community that collected soft plastic, including materials like bread bags that people often do not realize can be recycled through specialized programs. Together, the community collected a thousand pounds of it. The material was sent away for recycling and eventually became a bench that returned to the school. At first glance, it is just a bench. But when you know the story, it becomes something entirely different.

It represents students learning that a material they previously considered waste could have another life. It represents families changing their habits. It represents a school community working toward a shared goal. It represents an environmental concept becoming visible, physical, and useful.

That is the kind of learning students remember because the evidence of the experience remains in front of them.

Storytelling matters here because some of the most meaningful learning cannot be completely represented by a score. You can assess whether a student understands recycling, but the story of an entire community collecting a thousand pounds of material tells us something else. It tells us about collaboration, persistence, communication, civic participation, and the ability of young people to influence the behavior of people around them.

At Thinkering Collective, we have seen the same thing happen when educators are given space to turn environmental questions into real projects. In one of our outdoor learning fellowships, fifth grade students began with a question about the technology they used every day. What if the cart used to charge their Chromebooks could be powered by the sun?

That question led to building, testing, failure, redesign, and collaboration. The students discovered quickly that charging more than two dozen computers requires a significant amount of energy. Their first ideas did not simply work because they were good ideas. They had to continue solving the problem.

Eventually, outside partners became part of the process. The local energy company became involved. Additional technology helped make the concept possible. What began as a classroom question became a project involving engineering, energy, sustainability, community partnership, and persistence.

The students learned about solar energy, but they also learned something potentially more important. They learned that they could have an idea about the world around them and attempt to make that idea real.

That is the difference between teaching learners about problems and allowing them to participate in solutions.

It is also why professional development for educators has to reflect the kind of learning we hope teachers will create for students. Rachel described Gaia’s approach as beginning with what educators are already teaching. Instead of walking into a school and announcing an entirely new collection of climate lessons that teachers now need to fit into their schedules, the process looks for the intersection between climate and the existing curriculum.

A social studies teacher has one entry point. A mathematics teacher has another. An English teacher will find another. Educators can begin with a question, connect it to an existing unit, work with colleagues, and eventually identify opportunities for interdisciplinary learning.

This approach recognizes something important about teachers. If we want educators to create experiential, collaborative, inquiry driven classrooms, their own professional learning should not consist entirely of sitting in a room while someone tells them to become more experiential, collaborative, and inquiry driven.

Teachers need to experience the learning too.

They need opportunities to build, question, test, collaborate, fail, revise, and discover connections. They need to feel what it is like when learning moves beyond a worksheet and becomes something they actually care about solving. Once an educator experiences that shift personally, it becomes much easier to imagine creating it for students.

Rachel shared an example from work with Albuquerque Public Schools where an algebra teacher connected mathematics to an environmental challenge. Students used the quadratic formula as part of designing seed pods intended to help address erosion. The project then connected with agriculture and the physical landscape surrounding the students. The quadratic formula did not disappear. It gained a reason to exist.

That distinction matters because interdisciplinary learning is sometimes misunderstood as moving away from academic rigor. In reality, it can demand that students use academic knowledge rather than simply remember it. Mathematics becomes a tool. Science becomes a tool. Writing becomes a tool. Art becomes a tool. The disciplines begin working together because that is how problems outside of school actually work. Real life rarely arrives organized into forty five minute subject periods.

One of the biggest barriers educators face when considering this kind of work is the fear that it will not map to standards. That fear is understandable. Teachers are accountable for what students are expected to learn, and time is already limited. An exciting project that feels disconnected from required learning can quickly become difficult to justify.

But Rachel’s approach begins with the opposite assumption. Start with the standards and look for the connection.

A teacher covering World War II might not immediately think of climate education, but the period opens questions about manufacturing, energy, industry, technology, resources, and the physical marks human activity can leave on the planet. Once educators begin looking for the connective tissue, climate stops appearing as an additional subject and begins appearing throughout the curriculum.

The same principle applies to professional learning. Rachel emphasized that the goal is not to make teachers responsible for doing one more thing. It is to help them slightly reshape what they are already doing so that students encounter more meaningful connections. Sometimes the most difficult part is simply beginning.

Educators can feel enormous pressure when they hear words like sustainability, interdisciplinary learning, civic action, or project based learning. The finished examples look impressive, which can make the starting point feel even more intimidating. But meaningful change rarely begins as a fully developed schoolwide program.

It might begin with one question. It might begin with taking a class outside. It might begin with changing one lesson. It might begin with one teacher who decides to try something different.

We see those educators constantly through Thinkering Collective. Often there is one person inside a school who sees what could be possible before everyone else does. They are willing to ask for something that does not exist yet. They hear no and ask someone else. They bring students into the process. They invite community partners to participate. Eventually, the project that once seemed unrealistic becomes visible enough that other people begin to understand it.

Rachel made an important point about finding common language when introducing this work to communities that may have different perspectives on climate. Nature connection can provide that starting place. People may disagree about politics, policies, or terminology, but it is much harder to object to children developing a meaningful relationship with the natural world around them. That relationship can become the foundation for deeper learning later.

Climate education does not need to begin by telling young children they are responsible for solving an enormous global crisis. It can begin by helping them notice where they are. It can teach them to ask questions about the systems around them. It can give them opportunities to participate in their communities. As they grow, educators can introduce greater complexity and help learners understand how individual choices, community decisions, industries, governments, and natural systems interact.

Most importantly, students can experience what it feels like to do something with that knowledge.

That may be one of the most important shifts climate education can offer. Young people already know they are inheriting complicated problems. They hear about them constantly. What they need are opportunities to discover that problems can also become invitations to think, build, collaborate, and act.

At Thinkering Collective, we believe those experiences do more than teach sustainability. They help young people develop agency. A learner who has helped build a solar solution, redesigned a system, restored a space, collected community data, or convinced others to participate in a project begins to understand their relationship with the world differently.

They are no longer simply learning about the future.

They are practicing how to participate in it.

Perhaps that is how climate education becomes something educators can embrace rather than another responsibility added to an already crowded list. We stop treating it as one more subject that needs to fit into school and start recognizing it as a context for making the subjects already there feel more connected to life.

Because the world does not need another generation of students who can simply explain the problems we face. It needs young people who have experienced what it feels like to work with other people, use what they know, try something that might fail, and discover that they are capable of helping build a solution.