Climate Mental Health: You Are a Climate Leader
Engagement Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences Center for Education
In this lesson, students will read brief biographies of youth climate activists and then reflect on how they can take climate action in their own lives. This lesson is best suited as the end of a unit or lesson on climate change as it requires some background knowledge on the causes of current climate change and potential mitigations or solutions.
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To help address equity concerns, it may be helpful to focus on classroom-level solutions so that all students can participate equally regardless of their personal or family resources. However, it is also powerful to help students consider their potential agency in the context of past and current climate activists. It may even be helpful to discuss this topic directly with older students. Teachers know their students and should keep the balance of individual vs. classroom vs. community action in mind when teaching this lesson. It may be helpful for teachers to do some research in advance to see what types of local climate hazards are happening that students could address through activism. It may also be useful to have a list of local and/or regional climate activists that students can research.