Reflections: 2023 Summer Institute for Climate Change Education

In July, my town Barre, Vermont experienced rainfall and flooding that the state hadn’t seen in nearly 100 years.

Seventeen water districts in Vermont were under a boil water advisory for over ten days. More than half of businesses in deeply affected areas are still shut down six weeks after the flood, and many plan to never reopen. Neighbors are still ripping out their flooring and drywall so mold doesn’t grow and threaten their family’s health, and there are piles of debris on people’s lawns and along the street waiting to be picked up.

I recently remarked to one of my colleagues that just 4 years ago—when I first started working at Climate Generation—we felt it was necessary and important to call attention to each major climate change-related event in our communications. This was right around the time of Australia’s Black Summer, the 2019-2020 wildfire season which destroyed over 3,000 buildings and killed at least 34 people. It seemed like major disasters related to climate change happened rarely enough that you could mention each one individually. Now, it seems that we are hearing about a new disaster every week, and it’s hard to acknowledge them all without inundating our audiences with devastating news.

96% of people in the United States have faced extreme weather risks since May 1, 2023 from flooding, storms, heat, or fire according to the new “Danger Season” tool from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The frequency of major disasters in the U.S. and the world has been trending upward for a number of years; at this point, all of us are seeing climate change in our day-to-day lives, from the extreme heat and fires in the western part of the United States, Canada, and South America, to the massive flooding in South Asia, to the heatwaves in the Southern U.S. and Europe. We can no longer ignore the truth. We are all experiencing the impacts of climate change now, and it’s overwhelming. 

I share my story here because I know I’m not the only one who has experienced changes to their daily lives from climate-related disasters. I also know that when we start discussing climate impacts as real and relevant to our everyday lives, we can begin to see the commonalities across differences, and what we have in common starts to become more important than our differences. Once we can see these commonalities, we can work together to create a brighter future. 

This was the essence of the overarching theme at the 2023 Summer Institute: Shared Purpose, Shared Future. 

The Summer Institute for Climate Change Education

At our 18th annual Summer Institute for Climate Change Education in July, we hosted a community of more than 330 educators, presenters, and cohort leaders alongside NOAA’s Climate Office, and 19 regional educational leaders. 

Our shared purpose is to thrive in our changing world to build a better, more sustainable and just future for all of us.

Leaders in climate change science, communication, climate and social justice, and climate change education from across the world joined us to present on the intersectional issues of climate change. Our goal was to increase educators’ confidence and competence in climate change education in their local area.

We dove deep into the systemic causes and consequences of climate change and explored ways to teach about solutions that address its intersections with other social and environmental crises. With over 60 workshops and discussion groups across 5 themes, educators were able to connect with peers, researchers, and practitioners to explore these concepts and to boost their teaching with lesson plans and activities.

Educators were asked to take this broad vision of what climate change education should look like and apply it to their local context with the support and guidance of regional cohort leaders.

Concepts maps created by 2023 Summer Institute attendees depicting their understanding of climate change education

The Summer Institute Community

Cultivating and supporting deeply connected communities with shared values and goals has been shown to lead toward greater climate change resilience, or the ability to prevent or bounce back from climate change-related disasters. Climate Generation believes that by partnering with organizations across North America, we can localize climate change education to different regions, connect educators to people doing high quality work in their areas, and celebrate the solutions and local community action taking place for climate justice.

“[The Summer Institute] has been helpful in that it reengaged me with the amazing community of teachers who are working on climate change education. It’s so helpful to see that we ARE a community, and we can support each other through the challenges.” – 2023 Summer Institute Attendee

Climate Generation brought together 19 organizations leading on climate change education as cohort leaders for the Institute. Over thirty leaders planned the Institute and led regional days focused on exploring local impacts and solutions to climate change with their educator cohorts. Cohort leaders participate in a series of collaborative working meetings to develop the themes, content, and structure of the Summer Institute and the following year of programming for the Teach Climate Network.

Over 40 presenters came together to share their wisdom and expertise. The dynamic, participatory sessions included practicing how to have meaningful discussions with people who have different views; addressing climate emotions personally and with students; and taking local climate action at school. Educators left the sessions feeling that they had fresh resources they could use immediately, that they’d learned to think in new ways, and that they felt connected to other educators. Presenters, too, felt part of the Summer Institute community and expressed gratitude for the enthusiasm of participants.  

Effective climate change action is collective, meaning it takes a lot of groups of people doing a lot of different things to make a difference. 

By creating opportunities where people can come together with a shared purpose, we can create opportunities for action that matches the size, scale, and scope of the problem.

“Being connected to other educators working on climate justice education made me feel more hopeful and less alone – and introduced me to many useful resources and ideas for how to implement climate change education in my classrooms.” – 2023 Summer Institute Attendee

View the full Summer Institute Agenda and keep an eye on our plans for next year. Educators will be engaging with climate change education throughout the year through our online Teach Climate Network. Are you in the network? Check it out and sign up!