"Historically, the central role of education has been to socialize the young and to ensure continuity in society, whether indigenous, pre-modern, or modern. In stable conditions, this reproduction function is sufficient. But not in volatile and uncertain times, when the future will not be a linear extension of the past and when social innovation, creativity, and experimentation is critically important. The contradiction now is that the more we try to ensure continuity by doing more of the same, the greater the prospects for a discontinuous and chaotic future become." -Stephen Sterling - Educating for the Future We Want(opens in new window), May 2021
In Spring 2022, Faculty Development will be supporting a Teaching Climate Change & Resilience (TCCR) Faculty Learning Community (FLC) where participants are invited to think about teaching and learning with a focus on climate change and resilience. Our goal is to support teaching across the disciplines by creating a workshop that does not require you to leave your existing subject matter. We will come to you with class materials that are well researched, relevant, and relatable! Our conversations will be driven by the questions that emerge from participants’ existing classes. What is keeping you from discussing climate change more in your classes, and how can we solve it together?
This FLC requires a commitment to be prepared for and actively participate in seven of the eight 90-minute sessions scheduled, with some reading and projects expected between sessions. Participants will also engage in consultation sessions in smaller teams where faculty can present ideas and receive feedback on course design related to their specific content. These small groups will support each other in course design and revision.
The FLC will meet on the following Wednesdays, 9:00-10:30 a.m.
Meetings are both in-person (Arts & Humanities 106) and virtual on Zoom via hyflex technology.
Wednesday, Feb 9: Introductions and Goals
Wednesday, Feb 23: Science and Policy Solutions
Wednesday, March 9: Class Assignments and Activities
Wednesday, March 23: Global and Civic Engagement
Friday, March 25: Climate Justice in Higher Education Keynote Panel
Wednesday, April 6: Climate Justice
Wednesday, April 20: Campus as a Living Climate Lab
Wednesday, May 4: Redesign Presentations
In addition to consultation meetings (coaching sessions) with small groups of participants, there will be sessions held at the This Way to Sustainability Conference(opens in new window) (March 24-25) focused on specific climate change and resilience issues. The conference sessions will be open to all faculty on campus, and FLC members are strongly encouraged to attend.
Participating faculty are expected to redesign significant portions of a course (assignment sequence, assessment, syllabus, course activity, etc.) to integrate climate change and resilience into student learning outcomes. Deliverables include: a completed Model Course Redesign portfolio and a recorded “lightening talk,”. An alternative option to those deliverables is to write a paper on the course redesign and submit it for publication in The CSU Journal of Sustainability and Climate Change.
Faculty (T/TT and lecturers) who complete the FLC, including the deliverables listed above, will receive $500 in taxable income.
Applications closed on January 21st.
Applications will be reviewed by a subcommittee of the Faculty Development advisory board. Preference will be given to new faculty (faculty in their first 5 years of teaching). Selection decisions will also be mindful of the need for cross disciplinary discussions.
Dr. Mark Stemen is a professor of Geography and Planning at CSU, Chico, where he teaches environmental courses in sustainability and civic engagement. He and his students recently assisted in preparing a climate vulnerability assessment for the City of Chico and Butte County. Dr. Stemen has hosted over a dozen faculty development workshops on integrating sustainability in the college curriculum as part of the annual California Higher Education Sustainability Conference. Dr. Stemen will receive assistance on this FLC from educational staff at SEI, including Dr. Elizabeth Bagley (formerly of Project Drawdown).
Contact Mark Stemen (mstemen@csuchico.edu) for questions related to this FLC or Chiara Ferrari, Director of Faculty Development, for questions related to FDEV: cfferrari@csuchico.edu
A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety(opens in new window)
Drawing on a decade of experience leading and teaching in college environmental studies programs, Sarah Jaquette Ray has created an “existential tool kit” for the climate generation. Combining insights from psychology, sociology, social movements, mindfulness, and the environmental humanities, Ray explains why and how we need to let go of eco-guilt, resist burnout, and cultivate resilience while advocating for climate justice. A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety is the essential guidebook for the climate generation—and perhaps the rest of us—as we confront the greatest environmental threat of our time.
Communicating Climate Change: A Guide for Educators(opens in new window)
Starting with the basics of climate science and climate change public opinion, Armstrong, Krasny, and Schuldt synthesize research from environmental psychology and climate change communication, weaving in examples of environmental education applications throughout this practical book. Each chapter covers a separate topic, from how environmental psychology explains the complex ways in which people interact with climate change information to communication strategies with a focus on framing, metaphors, and messengers.
Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming(opens in new window)
One hundred techniques and practices are described in Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming--some are well known; some you may have never heard of. They range from clean energy to educating girls in lower-income countries to land use practices that pull carbon out of the air. The solutions exist, are economically viable, and communities throughout the world are currently enacting them with skill and determination.
Facing the Climate Emergency(opens in new window)
Drawing on facts about the climate, tenets of psychological theory, information about the climate emergency movement and elements of memoir, Facing the Climate Emergency includes:
Making Climate Change History(opens in new window)
This collection pulls together key documents from the scientific and political history of climate change, including congressional testimony, scientific papers, newspaper editorials, court cases, and international declarations.
Resilience for All: Striving for Equity Through Community-Driven Design(opens in new window)
In an effort to overcome power imbalances and ensure local knowledge informs decision-making, a new approach to community engagement is essential. In Resilience for All, Barbara Brown Wilson looks at less conventional, but often more effective methods to make communities more resilient.
Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World(opens in new window)
Increasingly, cracks are appearing in the capacity of communities, ecosystems, and landscapes to provide the goods and services that sustain our planet's well-being. The response from most quarters has been for "more of the same" that created the situation in the first place: more control, more intensification, and greater efficiency. "Resilience thinking" offers a different way of understanding the world and a new approach to managing resources.
Teaching Climate Change in the Humanities(opens in new window)
This book highlights how humanities disciplines can mobilize the creative and critical power of students, teachers, and communities to confront climate change. The book is divided into four clear sections to help readers integrate climate change into the classes and topics they are already teaching as well as engage with interdisciplinary methods and techniques. Teaching Climate Change in the Humanities constitutes a map and toolkit for anyone who wishes to draw upon the strengths of literary and cultural studies to teach valuable lessons that engage with climate change.
Teaching Climate Change in the United States(opens in new window)
This book highlights best practices in climate change education through the analysis of a rich collection of case studies that showcase educational programs across the United States. Framed against the political backdrop of a country in which climate change denial presents a significant threat to global action for mitigation and adaptation, each case study examines the various strategies employed by those working in this increasingly challenging sociopolitical environment.
Teaching Climate Change to Adolescents(opens in new window)
The book illustrates climate change fitting into existing courses using already available materials and gives teachers tools and teaching ideas to support building this into their own classrooms. A variety of teacher and student voices makes for an appealing, fast-paced, and inspiring read. Visit the website for this book for additional information and links.
Teaching When the World Is on Fire(opens in new window)
A timely collection of advice and strategies for creating a just classroom from educators across the country, handpicked by MacArthur Genius and bestselling author Lisa Delpit'A favorite education book of the year.'—Greater Good magazine Is it okay to discuss politics in class? What are constructive ways to help young people process the daily news coverage of sexual assault? How can educators engage students around Black Lives Matter? Climate change? Confederate statue controversies? Immigration? Hate speech? In Teaching When the World Is on Fire, Delpit turns to a host of crucial issues facing teachers in these tumultuous times.
Teaching climate change for grades 6-12 : empowering science teachers to take on the climate crisis through NGSS(opens in new window)
Looking to tackle climate change and climate science in your classroom? This timely and insightful book supports and enables secondary science teachers to develop effective curricula ready to meet the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) by grounding their instruction on the climate crisis.
The Climate Change Playbook(opens in new window)
The simple, interactive exercises in The Climate Change Playbook can help citizens better understand climate change, diagnose its causes, anticipate its future consequences, and effect constructive change. Adapted from The Systems Thinking Playbook, the twenty-two games are now specifically relevant to climate-change communications and crafted for use by experts, advocates, and educators. Illustrated guidelines walk leaders through setting each game up, facilitating it, and debriefing participants. Users will find games that are suitable for a variety of audiences―whether large and seated, as in a conference room, or smaller and mobile, as in a workshop, seminar, or meeting.
The Community Resilience Reader(opens in new window)
The Community Resilience Reader offers a new vision for creating resilience, through essays by leaders in such varied fields as science, policy, community building, and urban design. The Community Resilience Reader combines a fresh look at the challenges humanity faces in the 21st century, the essential tools of resilience science, and the wisdom of activists, scholars, and analysts working with community issues on the ground.
The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels(opens in new window)
For decades, environmentalists have told us that using fossil fuels is a self-destructive addiction that will destroy our planet. Yet at the same time, by every measure of human well-being, from life expectancy to clean water to climate safety, life has been getting better and better. How can this be? The explanation, energy expert Alex Epstein argues in The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, is that we usually hear only one side of the story. We’re taught to think only of the negatives of fossil fuels, their risks and side effects, but not their positives—their unique ability to provide cheap, reliable energy for a world of seven billion people. And the moral significance of cheap, reliable energy, Epstein argues, is woefully underrated. Energy is our ability to improve every single aspect of life, whether economic or environmental.
What We Think About When We Try Not to Think About Global Warming(opens in new window)
In What We Think About When We Try Not to Think About Global Warming, Stoknes not only masterfully identifies the five main psychological barriers to climate action, but addresses them with five strategies for how to talk about global warming in a way that creates action and solutions, not further inaction and despair.
Farming While Black : Soul Fire Farm's Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land(opens in new window)
In 1920, 14 percent of all land-owning US farmers were black. Today less than 2 percent of farms are controlled by black people--a loss of over 14 million acres and the result of discrimination and dispossession. While farm management is among the whitest of professions, farm labor is predominantly brown and exploited, and people of color disproportionately live in "food apartheid" neighborhoods and suffer from diet-related illness. The system is built on stolen land and stolen labor and needs a redesign. Farming While Black is the first comprehensive "how to" guide for aspiring African-heritage growers to reclaim their dignity as agriculturists and for all farmers to understand the distinct, technical contributions of African-heritage people to sustainable agriculture.
All We Can Save : Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis(opens in new window)
Provocative and illuminating essays from women at the forefront of the climate movement who are harnessing truth, courage, and solutions to lead humanity forward. There is a renaissance blooming in the climate movement: leadership that is more characteristically feminine and more faithfully feminist, rooted in compassion, connection, creativity, and collaboration. While it's clear that women and girls are vital voices and agents of change for this planet, they are too often missing from the proverbial table. More than a problem of bias, it's a dynamic that sets us up for failure. To change everything, we need everyone. All We Can Save illuminates the expertise and insights of dozens of diverse women leading on climate in the United States--scientists, journalists, farmers, lawyers, teachers, activists, innovators, wonks, and designers, across generations, geographies, and race--and aims to advance a more representative, nuanced, and solution-oriented public conversation on the climate crisis.
Reframing the Curriculum: Design for Social Justice and Sustainability(opens in new window)
Reframing the Curriculum is a practical, hands-on guide to weaving the concepts of healthy communities, democratic societies, and social justice into academic disciplines. Developed for future and practicing teachers, this volume is perfect for teacher education courses in instructional design, social foundations, and general education, as well as for study in professional learning communities. The author outlines the philosophies, movements, and narratives shaping the future, both in and out of classrooms, and then challenges readers to consider the larger story and respond with curriculum makeovers that engage students in solving problems in their schools, communities, and the larger world.
In Spring 2021, faculty from all disciplines were encouraged to attend the workshops, network with peers, and be inspired to integrate climate change and resilience into their course materials. The workshops were facilitated by Dr. Richard Widick (University of California, Santa Barbara) and Dr. Mark Stemen (California State University, Chico) and were held via Zoom. Video recordings are available below for you to view.
Climate Change and Resilience in GE Courses
Wednesday, February 10 - 4:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. | Video Recording(opens in new window)
Climate Change & Resilience Research and Instruction
Friday, February 26 - 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. | Video Recording(opens in new window)
Climate Change Locally and Abroad
Tuesday, March 9 - 4:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. | Video Recording(opens in new window)
Workshop Reflection and Networking
Friday, March 26 at This Way To Sustainability Conference(opens in new window)
Guide: "A Teacher's Guide to UC-CSU NXTerra" by Richard Widick (UCSB) (PDF)
Investigator Katie Worth(opens in new window) grew up in Chico, California, just a few miles from Paradise, site of the most damaging wildfire in California history. Katie wrote the book Miseducation: How Climate Change is Taught in America(opens in new window), the alarming story of how climate denialism was implanted in millions of school children. During her reporting for Miseducation, she returned to her old middle school to find that climate change is being taught there as the subject of a scientific dispute, not a proven reality.
"I'd like for people to read [this book] and be surprised and start asking questions about what's happening in their kids' schools and their state legislature." -Katie Worth
View an accessible version of the Teaching Climate Change & Resilience Poster (PDF).
Watch the video playlist(opens in new window)
Interested in offering this FLC on your campus? Read these guidelines (PDF).
