By Ashira Morris for Reasons to be Cheerful.
Broadcast version by Eric Tegethoff for Washington News Service reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

In science teacher Ali Coker’s sophomore biology class, students became farming activists attending a G7 summit. Coker wove in facts about food insecurity, and by the end of the week, her pupils were writing plans for local crops. The role play was all part of a lesson on food justice and the impacts of climate change on agriculture in the state of Washington, where Coker teaches at Camas High School.

Though Camas High is in a semi-rural region of the state, the topics were new to her students. Still, Coker says, she saw the exercise “activated something inside of them.”

She crafted the lesson based on a year of professional development with Washington state’s ClimeTime. The state education program helps high school teachers introduce climate change and environmental justice into their classrooms by focusing on how the issues are playing out in their backyards. Through seminars and in-person sessions, teachers (who participate voluntarily) become the students — soaking up knowledge from climate scientists, activists and science education professors. 

Before enrolling, Coker says, “I honestly didn’t know what climate justice even meant. I knew about climate change from a scientific perspective. But then learning about the societal systems that go along with that and how different groups of people are impacted disproportionately by climate change — it was a really eye-opening experience.”

With ClimeTime, Washington is the first state in the US to explicitly put money toward K-12 climate change education. But nationally, at least 11 states have pending bills related to climate change education, according to the Campaign for Climate Literacy. Experts say preparing teachers will be key to successful implementation. Washington offers a model for how to fund and carry out that professional development. 

Keeping up with the information

There is no federal mandate to teach climate change, but Washington state follows the Next Generation Science Standards, which has climate science learning benchmarks like monitoring human impact on the environment and connecting climate change to availability of natural resources that teachers must cover. A national assessment of climate education gave the national standards a B+ grade on addressing climate change.

But Washington Gov. Jay Inslee — who has been in office since 2013 and made climate change a central issue — wanted to expand the state’s capability to teach climate topics to students, says Ellen Ebert, Washington’s director of secondary content who started the ClimeTime work. 

Meetings with science education leaders eventually led to state legislators approving $4 million per year starting in 2018-19. Going forward, the funding is one of the many items that must be approved as part of the state’s biennial budget, but it was renewed in 2021 at $3 million annually. It will be in front of legislators again in March. (The funding is shared between the state’s K-12 education network and nonprofit community-based partners working in the climate space.) All resources created with the state dollars are shared on an open education platform — nothing is proprietary. 

ClimeTime’s programs have been successful at boosting teacher confidence on climate topics: Of the nearly 1,000 educators who participated in programming during the 2021-22 school year, 98 percent agreed or strongly agreed that it prepared them with the necessary skills to try something new or different in their professional practice.

The climate justice series Coker participated in started in southwest Washington; in 2022, it expanded statewide. The popular STEM Seminars brings local scientists and other climate leaders to speak with teachers. Coker attended one about flooding in Kelso, which is about 50 miles up the Columbia River from Camas High. Organizers have also brought in researchers from the University of Washington’s Climate Impacts Group, which collects and disseminates local climate data such as changes in streamflow, snow pack temperature increases, and length of heat waves. 

“A lot of the information that’s available now didn’t exist five years ago, 10 years ago,” says Ebert. “So how is the teacher supposed to keep up with all of the information? When we present it this way, they develop their own toolboxes — and then that’s what they bring back to their colleagues in their schools.”

Coker has stayed involved, helping develop lesson plans and resources to share with other teachers. “I just feel much more supported doing this work,” she says. 

Centering teachers, local impacts

Another key to ClimeTime’s success is its ability to connect climate change impacts to teachers’ and student’s daily lives. 

“One of our most important learnings about creating programs and offerings for teachers with the idea of impacting classroom learning is that it has to be local and relevant,” says Stacy Meyer, a regional science coordinator. “Washington, like many other states, has an incredible amount of diversity just in terms of the landscape and the ecosystems. But that also plays out in terms of political climates and the types of issues that are going to resonate in a particular community.”

In Meyer’s district alone, the terrain ranges from the Pacific coast to the Columbia River Gorge to the Mount St. Helens area. There are large urban centers around Vancouver and rural, agricultural areas, some along the coast, and some up in the forested mountains areas.

She helped organize STEM Seminars on coastal hazards along the ocean, on wildfires in the part of the gorge that had recently suffered through the Eagle Creek fires, and on agriculture in an area full of vineyards. 

People working closely with the program also cite its localized approach with keeping political pushback out at bay. 

Many teachers recognize challenges in talking about climate change in their community but report that the ClimeTime program has given them tools to feel more confident in navigating those conversations, Meyer says.

It also acknowledges the lived experience of students and their families, whether it’s the impacts of poor air quality or changes in agriculture patterns. This is especially true for the ways that climate change and social justice intersect, says Becky Bronstein, a program manager for the nonprofit EarthGen. The organization collaborates with the schools on programming, including the climate justice one that Coker completed. 

“It’s quite evident that in the communities we work with, they are dealing with these issues, their students are dealing with these issues,” Bronstein says. “It’s front of mind and impactful for their livelihoods, for their ability to teach and to learn in a safe and healthy place.”

Climate hope, not climate anxiety

The local focus also helps teachers approach climate change in a way that shows local solutions. For Aubrey Wilson, a science teacher at Wy’east Middle School in Vancouver, ClimeTime has helped her present climate change in a way that makes it relevant to the students, explaining how it’s impacting their local environments — and examples of how local activists are working to take on the problem.

After participating in the climate justice series, Wilson updated her lesson planning to map out her units through the lens of identity, diversity, justice and action. For a recent lesson on the heat island effect, she used data from an actual study of temperatures in the area to show how richer, greener neighborhoods experience lower temperatures than poorer areas with more cement. She then tasked students with designing a city program to build energy-saving homes for unhoused people. 

“Education is an incredible way to combat climate change and issues associated with social injustice,” Bronstein says. “Ensuring that people have the knowledge and understanding of what’s happening is the first step for them to take action. So it’s really important for them to receive that information in a thoughtful way that’s empowering, that gives them agency.”

In the national assessment of climate change education, a lack of opportunities to teach hope was one of the primary critiques of programs that got the climate science right. ClimeTime guides teachers toward presenting opportunities for students to take action based on what they learn.

“We know that if teachers are not very intentional about how they teach about climate change and climate justice that it can lead to climate anxiety, climate grief,” Ebert says. “So we very intentionally wanted teachers to go into this work with a lens of supporting students in feeling empowered — and developing an understanding that action is necessary to feel empowered.”

School buses are getting cleaner in Washington state after this year's legislative session.

Lawmakers in Olympia passed House Bill 1368, which will fund the purchase of zero emission school buses.

Rep. Tana Senn, D-Mercer Island, said the program is getting off the ground quickly.

"As we work towards that long-term goal of all new school buses being zero emission, we're kick-starting this year with $40 million in grants to school districts in overburdened communities," Senn explained.

Going forward, Senn noted school districts will have to purchase zero-emission vehicles once the total cost of ownership is equal to or lower than the cost of diesel vehicles. The state is leveraging the state's Climate Commitment Act resources to fund the transition of its 10,000 school buses.

Devin Denney, director of transportation for Highline Public Schools in King County, which already has electric school buses in its fleet, said he has driven the electric buses and talked about some of their benefits from a driver's perspective.

"You're not competing against that engine noise, the kids aren't competing against the engine noise," Denney observed. "It's a much quieter bus all the way around. The major advantage, of course, is that there's no tailpipe emissions with an electric bus, so our kids' health is better protected."

Senn emphasized health studies have shown there are negative health effects from diesel vehicles for kids, and it is easy to understand why.

"If you think about kids waiting to get on their bus in front of an elementary school and you have this line of buses idling, letting out diesel fumes right at the height of a little child, it becomes obvious that this is probably not the most healthy thing for our children," Senn added.


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Today, in honor of Earth Day, climate advocates are asking California lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom to rally around a plan to put a $15 billion bond measure on the November ballot.

If passed, the bond measure would fund a range of climate resiliency measures.

Sam Hodder, president and CEO of the Save the Redwoods League, said March was the tenth month in a row to break monthly heat records.

"I think Earth Day is a terrific opportunity for the broader public to recognize how nature is critical for resilience, for our quality of life, for our mental and physical health, and for our communities more broadly," Hodder outlined.

Two similar bills to put a bond measure on the ballot are under consideration in Sacramento, Assembly Bill 1567 and Senate Bill 867, but they have been stalled since last summer. The bond would finance many programs, including some to restore wetlands that guard against sea-level rise, and to remove dead wood in forests to guard against mega-fires, which Hodder noted have killed 20% of the giant sequoias in recent years.

Opponents pointed out the state already faces a budget deficit and cannot afford to take on more debt. But only 5% of California's old-growth coastal redwoods remain, mostly due to aggressive logging many decades ago.

Hodder argued the giant trees can be critical ingredients in the fight against climate change because they trap so much carbon.

"Redwood forests sequester more carbon per acre than any other forest system in the world," Hodder emphasized. "We have the opportunity to transition the redwood forest from something that is vulnerable to climate change to something that is helping to solve and address the climate crisis."

Experts blame climate change for California's wild weather over the past few years, which has been marked by extreme drought, devastating fires and flooding rain.

A new report from the National Wildlife Federation warns that the effects of climate change in the Quad Cities, along the Iowa-Illinois border, will be severe.

But researchers got the public involved in studying to find ways to head off some of the most pressing concerns.

The report says climate change means a warmer, wetter future for the Quad Cities, which straddle the Mississippi River in Iowa and Illinois.

But rather than repeat what experts have already been saying about drastic flooding along the Big Muddy, Prairie Rivers Network River Health and Resiliency Organizer Nina Struss said researchers and Quad Cities residents brainstormed solutions to tackle the effects of climate change.

"Flooding and flash flooding were the top concerns," said Struss. "Extreme heat was also a big concern, as well as drought and other extreme weather events."

Researchers combined that information with hard science at the University of Illinois to create 3D models depicting what climate-induced flooding along the Mississippi could look like in the future.

The survey also asked people to identify which geographical areas and populations are most at risk from the effects of climate change, and worked with the community on solutions to mitigate some of them.

Struss said this research proposes what are known as nature-based solutions to combat the effects of climate change - restoring, preserving and even expanding existing ecosystems, like wetlands and tree canopies. But creating more eco-friendly infrastructure, too.

"Can we work to maybe have our pavements that we're putting in be more permeable, so that they can absorb that water and have that higher water-holding capacity?" said Struss. "Can we focus on areas to plant more native plants that have stronger root systems, versus ones that have shorter root systems, to help with that water-holding capacity?"

Struss said this research isn't a one-off. It will continue to change, she said, as the climate changes, the needs become more clear, and the effects more drastic.

She said progress in addressing climate change relies on more research, education and funding.




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