As a young person, the climate emergency is effectively a personal emergency. It makes me anxious, and I am not alone in that. According to Pearson’s recent School Report: Schools Today, Schools Tomorrow, on which I was invited to give a student perspective, half of teachers have witnessed rising awareness among pupils over climate change in the past year – and a quarter have seen increased anxiety about it.
For my part, I have become increasingly interested in the actions we can take to live more sustainably, and education is definitely a big part of the solution. As teachers and school leaders, your strong sense of responsibility to help prepare me and my peers for the future invariably means discussing climate change.
But where do you start? How do you tackle a subject that bemuses even top-level scientists?
The best you can do
Sometimes, it feels like every time we make a change to be more sustainable, something else we could be doing cones along. This never-ending game of cat and mouse can make taking action very hard because we always feel like we are falling short of being ‘proper’ environmentalists.
The same is true of making curriculum decisions, especially as what we are taught is often based on certainty. So, it is important to first realise that doing your best is the best you can do. Not everyone has the same opportunities, and this can mean some actions are simply unachievable. But doing what you can with what you have is the very meaning of sustainability.
Speaking up
People can suffer from climate anxiety without even realising it. That feeling of dread you get when you read an article lamenting the looming ‘end of the world’? That sense of hopelessness when you think about the snail’s pace at which governments and corporations are acting? You are not alone. People of all ages feel anxious about global warming, but it has become increasingly prominent in young people.
What makes it worse for us is that we often already feel like we don’t have a voice in matters like this. That’s why it is incredibly important to help uplift our voices and support us to make the positive change we want to see. Starting green initiatives that centre your students enforces the idea that their voices matter; it teaches us that we can make change.
I was delighted to see that almost two-thirds of heads in Pearson’s survey are planning to make their school more sustainable and eco-friendlier by 2024. But how? Make sure your students have a say!
Openly talking about the ways climate change affects us, and listening to the responses, allows you to cater your sustainability initiatives to the things your students are most passionate about. For example, if there is a particular conversation about single-use plastic, you may choose to focus on reducing that first.
Fighting misinformation
Proper education around how to source information is key to helping young people too, and not just against climate denialism. Fake news and misleading headlines can lead some astray, but it can paralyse through confusion and debilitating anxiety too.
Providing us with the agency and skills to investigate and inform ourselves is one of the most important ways to battle this. Skills like fact- and bias-checking can empower us to educate ourselves – another perfect example of sustainability.
And finally, it’s important to note that not all students feel connected with the climate crisis. Classfuls of replica Greta Thunbergs are simply not plausible even if they were desirable. People will always have different interests and that is fine.
The aim is not to turn everyone into eco-warriors. Indeed, you may not be that way inclined yourself. But small changes like increasing recycling can feel more doable and less ‘full-on’ for everyone, and there’s never a downside to improving our environment – or to making young people feel more secure and optimistic about the future.
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