The compounding effects of climate change are changing the ways schools operate, as they cancel classes on days with extreme heat or when wildfire smoke is clouding the air and contend with students’ anxiety about the future of the planet.
It’s a problem far bigger than schools, but there are steps school and district leaders can take, even in small ways, to offset some of the fallout from climate change.
Finding ways to reduce emissions and upgrade systems to be more efficient and climate-friendly should be a priority for school district leaders, experts say. But that’s often a massive, costly undertaking that can span many years.
In the meantime, districts can make smaller, more immediate changes—like better educating students about the climate, addressing emotional distress caused by climate change and natural disasters, and expanding professional development for teachers on the topic, according to Kristen Hengtgen and William Rodick, the authors of a new report from EdTrust, a nonprofit research and policy organization.
“Climate change and environmental justice are not niche issues, but directly affecting public schools right now, and climate change is impacting students’ daily lives and learning environments,” Hengtgen said. “We wanted to encourage educators to not think of this as someone else’s problem—there are things that educators and education leaders can and should be doing, starting today.”
Schools can infuse climate education into other content areas
One reason most students generally lack nuanced knowledge about climate change is that they receive little instruction on the topic in school—often less than two hours per year, the report says, citing a 2016 National Center for Science Education survey of science educators.
Few states explicitly include climate change education in their curriculum standards for public schools.
In a late 2022 EdWeek Research Center survey, nearly a third of teachers (32%) cited the lack of state standards for climate change instruction, or the lack of a district requirement for it, as a reason why they hadn’t addressed the issue with students. About the same portion (31%) said they were too pressed for time. Lower percentages said they didn’t believe climate change should be taught in school (9%) or feared parental pushback (6%).
An intentional, solutions-oriented climate change curriculum could spark students’ interest in STEM careers, including science, engineering, and investing, the EdTrust report said.
“Climate change education could be one of the most effective solutions for preventing climate disasters,” the report said.
The curriculum should focus on actions students can take to mitigate harm to the climate and adapt to inevitable changes, Hengtgen said.
If done well—by connecting the topics to students’ daily experiences—and started early in children’s education, such instruction can “help build curiosity and knowledge … as well as a sense of agency and hope,” the report said.
The key to a successful climate curriculum is providing educators with professional development and support to “teach these concepts confidently, ensuring that classrooms empower students rather than scare them into inaction,” the report continued.
Three quarters of teachers who participated in a December 2022 EdWeek Research Center Survey said they had not received any professional training or education on teaching about climate change.
About 60 percent of teachers across grade levels and subjects said they had addressed the topic in some capacity with students, according to the survey. But the way they talk about it varies. Less than a third of respondents said they talk about the science behind climate change, and only 22 percent talk about either job opportunities related to sustainability or environmental justice.
“If we can get teachers the kind of support that allows them to feel more comfortable engaging in the topics that kids are already saying, ‘We want to learn about this,’ then they can have instruction that is much more relevant to their interests,” said Rodick, at EdTrust.
It’s a disservice to students when schools don’t address climate change, he added.
“It would be false to have students living in environments that are subject to these climate consequences, and then have them come to school and not acknowledge that in any way whatsoever, and not use that as a platform for learning,” he said.
Schools can train staff on climate change and detecting signs of students’ climate anxiety
States and districts need to recognize that students’ mental health and emotional well-being are often affected by climate change and related natural disasters, the report said.
That builds on a late 2022 EdWeek Research Center survey that showed 37 percent of teens felt anxious when they thought about climate change and its effects, and more than a third felt afraid. Many also said they felt helpless and overwhelmed.
The fear of climate change is influencing young people’s lives in big ways, including decisions about where they attend college, whether they stay in their hometowns as adults, and even whether they have children, the EdTrust report says.
While climate anxiety—a term that encompasses feelings of anxiety, fear, sadness, grief, anger, helplessness, and guilt—is present in people of all ages, experts say, it’s most prevalent among young adults.
Students of color were more likely than their white peers to say the threat of climate change has affected their plans for the future.
“Climate change impacts the social and emotional well-being of students in several ways—including through extreme and inconsistent weather events; through enduring disruptions to the social, economic, and environmental conditions that shape children’s development; and through the general distress and anxiety students experience due to observable and future threats,” the EdTrust report said.
States and districts should ensure school leaders and educators—including school nurses—receive professional development to help them recognize students’ climate-related social and emotional needs and to learn how to mitigate any biases they may hold about student behaviors that may manifest as a result of climate-related distress, the report said.
Schools should also encourage and empower students to take climate-related actions they believe in, Hengtgen said.
“We can’t put it all on young people to solve a problem that they did not create, but I think we can do our very best to empower them with knowing that their voices and actions can make a change,” she said.
A recommendation to prioritize climate-related upgrades in at-risk communities
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has found that the effects of climate change—from extreme heat to flooding to severe storms—already disproportionately affect communities of color and low-income communities, and those impacts are projected to worsen.
Children in those communities are also more commonly than their white and higher-income peers enrolled in schools that lack adequate infrastructure to continue operating in severe heat or cold, amid wildfire smoke, and during other extreme weather conditions.
The compounding problems mean districts should prioritize schools in low-income communities when determining how to queue projects to switch to climate-resilient infrastructure, like solar panels and upgraded HVAC systems, the report said.
Districts can also strive to ensure that all students have access to safe, accessible outdoor learning spaces by developing schoolyards that replace asphalt and turf—which can get incredibly hot—with outdoor spaces that incorporate more grass, trees, and native plants. Schools can also consider adding edible gardens, rain gardens, or other elements that support hands-on learning about sustainability and the environment.
School closures caused by a combination of extreme weather and school buildings not equipped for it, “are no longer abnormal,” the report says, and “will only increase as climate change worsens.”
To be sure, in recent years, schools across the country have shut down for days at a time for extreme weather, including earlier this year during historic wildfires in California. More commonly, schools with inadequate or no cooling systems have to close when the weather gets too hot, which is happening both earlier in the spring and later in the fall—particularly interfering with the start and end of the school year.
“This is compromising the very mission that we want to do in education, in schools, which is to educate children,” Hengtgen said. “All of these issues—absenteeism, learning time, the climate, and so on—are very intertwined, so it’s about recognizing that and taking intentional steps to prepare and respond.
“School leaders can’t fix or address it all, but they can prepare their schools to be places that are safe and climate-resilient now and in the future.”
