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New Jersey’s public school teachers are preparing to add climate change lessons into their classrooms by September.
To help, the New Jersey Schools Boards Association and Sustainable Jersey, an organization that assists municipalities and schools with environmental sustainability, A new 36-page report has been releasedMonday will be a guideline on how to get ready.
“Education means preparing students for the future,” Lawrence S. Feinsod (executive director of the New Jersey School Boards Association) stated during A livestreamThe report. “Many of those children who enter kindergarten in September this year will likely live to the 22nd Century.”
By 2100, today’s kindergarteners could see sea level along New Jersey’s coast rise by as much as 8.8 feet in a worst-case scenario, though scientists say increases between 1.7 and 6.3 feet are more likely, according to climate and emissions projections by Rutgers University’s NJ Climate Change Resource Center. These results could prove to be devastating for New Jersey’s coastal communities.
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Educators, politicians and environmental activists said giving today’s students a well-rounded understanding of climate change and the tools to craft future solutions to its related impacts — shifts in animal migrations, increasing flooding, toxic algae blooms, to name a few — are critical for the future.
“Achieving a sustainable future, collectively, is our greatest challenge,” said Randy Solomon, executive director of Sustainable Jersey.
Solomon stated that without a large-scale educational initiative, the solution to climate change problems is not possible for humanity.
He said, “We live and work in a democracy. The basic condition to address any critical issue is for enough people to understand it and to support us taking meaningful steps to address them.” “The goal is to give the leaders of tomorrow the full breadth of what they need to know to find and implement solutions as members of society.”
Preparing yourself for the future
New Jersey was the first state to require schools to teach climate change when the state Board of Education adopted it. New curriculum standards in June 2020. The standards required climate change lessons be included across seven subject areas: career and life skills, health and physical education, computer science and design thinking, science, social studies, visual and performing arts, and world languages.
Lauren Madden, a professor of education from The College of New Jersey and co-author of the new education report, said that many teachers still don’t feel comfortable teaching climate change. Madden found in a survey of 164 New Jersey teachers that many felt uncertain about their ability to teach climate change content and several teachers held misconceptions on the subject.
“We want to make sure teachers feel fully prepared to integrate climate change education across all grade levels and content areas,” Madden said during the School Board Association’s livestream. “We also want school communities to be aware of the scientifically correct information about climate change. This will ensure that our schools foster a sustainable future as well economic prosperity.
A 2019 survey of teachers by Ipsos and National Public Radio found that most teachers (82%) firmly believed the climate was changing, while 86% felt climate change should be taught in schools.
For comparison, 74% of Americans in 2019 believed the world’s climate is changing, according to the polling group.
The new report aims to guide school officials on how to help their teachers prepare to teach lessons on climate change, through professional development, free online resources, and connections with environmentalists and “green” career professionals within their communities.
Madden stated that climate education cannot be reduced to polar bears on the icebergs. “We have to look at what’s happening right now in our state.”
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Amanda Oglesby hails from Ocean County and covers Brick, Barnegat, Lacey, as well as the environment. She has been working for the Press for over a decade. Reach her at @OglesbyAPP, [email protected] or 732-557-5701.
