empathy and to find common ground with people who have different views than you. Overcoming polarization is key to moving forward on climate solutions.
Eco Schools Canada
The new Eco Schools Canada platform of- fers an abundance of resources.
• K-12, cross-curricular lesson plans from letter-writing campaigns to citizen science, building vermicompost, challenges to land-based education of Indigenous–set- tler relations and waste audit templates
• Campaign kits such as Great Gulp, Earth Hour, Food Matters or use the step-by- step “Designing an Effective School-wide Campaign How-to” for your own project
• External Grants & Awards divided by season provides a concise overview of funding available for your projects
• The Eco Calendar helps identify all the eco-related days throughout the year, many of which are UN days of sig- nificance. March 22: World Water Day,
April 16-22: Earth Week. April 22: Earth Day, May 3-9: International Compost Awareness Week, May 9: International Migratory Bird Day, May 25-29: Bike to School Week
Learning for a Sustainable Future
Register for one of LSF’s Youth Forums that provide outstanding grassroot support for eco teams. The full day of hands-on, practical learning always leaves my team with more skills and confidence to take on climate change.
R4R.ca
Resources for Rethinking’s goal is to pro- vide Canadian students with the experi- ences required for responsible citizenship. Their advanced search engine connects teachers to free lesson plans, action projects, books, videos and other materi- als from organizations across the country to explore the environmental, social and economic dimensions of important issues from K-12. Filtering by grade, province, theme, sustainable development goal or
resource type makes it easy to integrate cli- mate change education into your program.
Using the “What a Dump!” STEM series of lessons students learn about environ- mental, civil, and sanitation engineering by designing and building model landfills that hold the most garbage, minimize costs, and prevent trash and contaminated rainwater from polluting the nearby city. Teams test their landfills, graph and compare designs for capacity, cost and performance.
CONCLUSION
While climate change needs to be a conver- sation that we have in every class, we must be sensitive to the socio-emotional com- plexities of our learners, the content and ourselves if we are to move from knowledge and understanding to application and agency. So before describing the horrifying impacts of plastic pollution, Kelsey reminds us to “consider a hopeful framing around these dire issues, otherwise hopelessness emerges as a profound threat.” n Sarah Lowes is a member of the Halton Teacher Local.
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