How does your teaching promote Earth Action?

Action Learning is a teaching modality that enables teachers and students to act on the climate crisis.  While it can be challenging to integrate Action Learning into your teaching, we should remember that our schools are an untapped resource for Earth Action.  We can mobilize our campus, our students, and our communities and tackle the climate crisis through Action Learning.

Here are some ways to integrate Action Learning into your curriculum:

Turn your students’ passions into Action Learning.  Ask your students what they are passionate about.  Then have them research the connections between their passions and the planet and ask them to create a project that leverages their passions in service of the earth.  If they are passionate about filmmaking, have them create a film on the climate crisis.  If they are passionate about music, ask them to compose and record a song about the planet.  

Investigate your students’ majors.  Ask your students to research how their majors are connected to the climate crisis.  Your students can research specific companies and interview employees from them to learn they are making their businesses more sustainable. You could host a green jobs fair in the form of a knowledge carnival.  Or you could lobby the companies that aren’t responding to the climate crisis.    

Share the knowledge they’ve gained.  Ask your students to choose one topic or concept they learned from the class that they think others should know about.  Have them create an interactive presentation, game, activity, etc. that teaches people about the topic or concept.

Create a social media campaign.   Have your students create TikTok videos or Instagram posts to increase awareness of the climate crisis.  You can invite other classes to participate in the campaign. 

Treat your campus as a Living Lab.  Our campuses can be an example of sustainability and justice.  Investigate your campus and find opportunities to make it more sustainable.  You can partner with your colleagues across all areas of the campus.  Find areas to plant a garden or native plants.  Measure how much food is being wasted.  Write a proposal to ban single use plastics on campus.  

Assess your city’s Climate Action Plan.  Ask your students to review and assess their climate action plans.  They can compare their city’s climate action plan to national and international frameworks (30x30, Drawdown, the IPCC report, etc.).  Have students email and call their elected representatives to share their thoughts on the Climate Action Plan and to voice their concerns about the climate crisis.  

Partner with a local nonprofit.  There are many organizations working to address the climate crisis.  Have your students compile an inventory of the local organizations.  As a class, you can partner with one of them to support their work.

Engage your community.  Have your students interview community members about their concerns and awareness of the climate crisis.  They can record the interviews, trend the data, and present the results to their elected representatives.   

Build on previous Actions.  It may take several semesters to complete an Action.  The actions one class starts can continue in another class.  If one class plants a garden on campus, the next class can tend to it.  If one class collected data on how much food is wasted on campus, the next class can write and present a proposal to start a food recovery program and composting on campus. 

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