How can educators empower students for a climate-changed future?

Another point regarding disciplinary teaching is that we will need to understand that knowing “Climate Science” alone will be insufficient for climate action.

An education that instills hope for climate action will involve helping children and young people see that, as future voters, they can demand structural and paradigmatic transformations in their communities, informed by climate science.

While it is important to understand the global impacts of climate change, the most impactful changes will come from localized solutions. As educators, we will need to take note and understand climate change phenomena in our geographies and look for stories of mitigation, adaptation, and resilience and incorporate them into our classrooms in developmentally appropriate ways.

These would be places for dialogue, co-creation, exchange, reflection on teaching practices and much-needed support spaces for educators.

On this Teachers’ Day, let’s take the next step together and make the bold foray into teaching about a crisis that affects both us and our students.

(Pallavi Phatak is the Programme Director for Climate and Education at Asar Social Impact Advisors Pvt Ltd. She is an educator with over 18 years of experience spanning teaching, curriculum and pedagogical development, teacher training, school improvement and educational research. She leads the strategy at the Climate Educators Network. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed above are those of the author. The Quint (Does not endorse or take responsibility for them.)