Northern Illinois Science Educators Conference and New Teacher Resources

Climate change: It's real. It's us. It's dangerous. We can make it better. -Dr. Daniel Horton

Our founder, Catherine Clarkin, and Youth Program Specialist, Julie Wachowski, used this quote to frame a presentation to teachers at the Northern Illinois Science Educators (NISE) conference in November at the Northern Illinois University Naperville campus.

Emphasizing "we can make it better," in particular, they shared activities to make climate change and climate solutions more tangible to students, including researching local climate impacts, talking to elders about climate change, and measuring the heat island effect. They shared the climate emotions wheel and the Your Place in Climate Action game as ways to help move students from climate doom to climate action. And, of course, encouraged teachers to share Accelerate Climate Solutions' Building Leadership Around Sustainable Transformation (BLAST) opportunities with their students.

As an outcome of the presentation, we created a teacher resource page on our website, which includes links to reliable sources of information and datasets that students can utilize, our NISE presentation, and a speaker request form.

Here are a few things we learned about climate education in schools:

• Science teachers feel pretty confident in the science of the causes of climate change.

  They encounter climate anxiety among their students and need tools to create a sense of empowerment.

• Many were unaware that Illinois had passed a climate education law and that teachers can access the Illinois Climate Education Hub to help them incorporate climate education into every classroom.

Next up: Catherine and Julie will be presenting again at the Climate of HOPE conference in February!