Resilience
“I didn’t realize how much climate change affected. It helped me learn that parts of the world may be slowly being affected and [that] over time the whole world might be affected. It’s slower because it’s such a big area. And so, in the biospheres, we saw that over a week they were almost completely destroyed unless they were resilient.”
– Thomas, Surry Village Charter School 7th -grader
A system that is resilient is able to absorb stress, recover from it, and prevent further changes from spiraling out of control. During the resilience challenge, students randomly pick a “fate card” (See Appendix A.), each of which describes a major disturbance that will be imposed on their biospheres at the end of the class period. Within moments, students are out- side gathering materials to prepare for disturbances ranging from heatwaves to rainstorms to deforestation. At the end of the week, after collecting post-disturbance data, student pairs make an argument for why or why not their system was resil- ient in the face of their chosen disturbance.
rience the empowerment that comes from taking action in the face of great challenges. In the words of Greta Thunberg, Swedish teen activist on climate change, “When we start to act, hope is everywhere. So instead of looking for hope, look for action. Then the hope will come.”
Effective communication
Of equal importance to the core concepts of climate change is the social experience of engaging in the Biosphere Challenge in class. One 5th
/6th -grade teacher who used this challenge in
her Massachusetts classroom shared, “
...this is an activity that brings everyone together.
SIP [Social Intervention Program] kids who were deathly afraid of outdoors were cared for by the kids
that were all over finding the insects and let themselves be directed by them. A Level 1 ELL [English Language Learner] was paired with a non-Spanish speaker and they communicated just fine.” – Kristin McLaughlin, 2019
Getting ahead of deforestation
In preparation for deforestation, a pair of Surry Village Charter School students removed a portion of their nutrient-rich soil. They anticipated that when plants were removed from their biosphere during deforestation, nothing would be able to cycle carbon dioxide out of the air. So, they chose to intervene on the front end and reduce the source of carbon dioxide. Pairs who prepared for heat waves, rainstorms, and increased cloud cover all added more living plants to their respective biospheres, thinking that the benefits that plant life provides to the carbon and water cycles would offset the negative consequences of the disturbances.
A resilient system can adapt to the impacts of climate
change. We can learn about resiliency from natural systems and apply what we learn to human-made systems, making sure that everything we build has the ability to absorb the stress of climate change and recover from it. For our students participating in Wild Treasures: Cli-
mate Change, they turn their attention to applying these core ideas to designing original research about their school’s resil- iency, so that by the end of the year they can take measurable actions to enhance their school’s preparedness for the local effects of climate change. Some may choose to localize their food system by starting a school garden and composting system, some may design a series of purchasing criteria to encourage their school to reduce the carbon footprint of their school purchases, and some may add to their school emer- gency procedures to account for more frequent and severe weather events. Across the board, students are able to expe-
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The Biosphere Challenge is engaging for all kinds of learners. It encourages collaboration and effective communication in the problem-solving process. It gives students an opportunity to be and feel successful in solving a problem with another person. In recent years, it has become clear that being able to communicate and collaborate across differences of all kinds (including identity, opinions, and biases) are as important as having a basic understanding of climate change science. The Biosphere Challenge is a curriculum that promotes the devel- opment of these skills in a fun and supportive environment. Depending on where you are located and what kind of
background your students come from, the climate change knowledge in your classroom might vary quite dramatically. We encourage you to jump into the challenge of teaching cli- mate change head-on, bolstered by the simplicity and integ- rity of the five core concepts of climate change and the intrin- sically-motivating structure of the Biosphere Challenge. The
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