Guest post by Carla Shanahan, 6th Grade Science Teacher at Robert Adams Middle School in Holliston, MA

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Teaching Climate Change is critical to preparing the generation that is inheriting the world after we’ve hit the tipping point of the problem. As a school, we have embraced the U.N.Sustainable Development goals, and students have been incorporating them into our learning throughout the year. In addition,I have incorporated the impact of climate change into the Geologic Time Scale and exploring past mass extinctions in coordination with the 6th grade Massachusetts Science standards.

This was a natural place to make this connection because many mass extinctions are connected with rapid climate change. Organisms living at those times simply could not adapt to quickly enough to survive those changes.  We explored the trends of past mass extinctions, and then looked at the current extinction rate vs, normal background extinction rates. We also look at the fact that scientists are proposing a new era, The Anthropocene, as a result of the impact human activities have had on Earth and its various systems.

In this way students discover for themselves the correlation between the rise in CO2, temperature, human activities, and the loss of biodiversity. Howard Hughes Medical Institute has amazing resources for this lesson including the pdf Poster I’ve linked here.  We culminate with watching Racing Extinction, a film that is not easy to watch, but ends on a note of hope and faith that we CAN do something to improve conditions for life on Earth. The film’s  accompanying website is also a great resource for actions that students can take to make a difference.

The impact this had on students was instantaneous.  They are young and motivated, and want to do something now. I channeled this energy into a class search for actions.  Students were asked to take two small personal actions, and an action that goes beyond themselves to make a change. From this exploration, we discovered the National Wildlife Foundation’s Schoolyard Habitat initiative, which is about creating habitat on school grounds for local species, while simultaneously enriching students academics with a space for outdoor learning. We have a lot adjacent to our building where an older building was removed, so we had the perfect onsite opportunity. Students who felt strongly about the issue chose to write letters to the principal explaining the current extinction crisis, the on-campus opportunity we have, and the benefits this resource would bring to both the school and  local species. We are currently taking it one step further, and students are producing a video with similar information about the human impact on biodiversity to pass on to the 7th and 8th graders to garner school wide support for their plan for the empty space.

I found empowering students to act in real ways and facilitate change in the present is how we as teachers can create responsible stewardship of the Earth in the future.