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Our Models
Climate Teach-In Models
A climate teach-in is a bottom up educational event, focused on just solutions to the climate crisis in local communities and globally. This event creates real dialogue. Teach-ins can be anywhere people come together; at colleges, universities, primary, middle and secondary schools, museums, or in faith or civil society communities.
The resources here make it easy to attract audiences beyond those already talking about climate. And our professional development sessions every Wednesday will help you expand your own skills on talking about climate change from multiple subject matter perspectives.
For schools, Teach-Ins can be all-campus events outside of class in the afternoon or evening. Or they can ask and support teachers to discuss climate in their classes (or both). How to do this? Our in-class model for all climate-concerned faculty is called #MakeClimateAClass. This reaches the most students, engages the most teachers, and can be self-sustaining. Our basic all-campus event is the #ThreeHourTeach-In.
Read all about the many different types of Teach-in's held in 2022 here. Review our models below. Plant a flag for your event. We will get you the resources and updates to make your event a success!
#MakeClimateAClass (University / Grades 8-12)
In Class Teach-Ins: #MakeClimateAClass
This model is for climate-concerned teachers, not climate specialists, to talk about climate in their classes from their own disciplinary perspective. This approach engages students with the idea of pursuing work and careers in solving climate. It can be done by a single climate-concerned teacher, or a group. And if teachers do it once, they are likely to keep doing it year after year.
(1) Devote 15 minutes to talking about how their discipline– artists, or biologists, or engineers, or psychologists or sociologists– are helping develop climate solutions.
(2) The have an alumus working in the field (or a local expert, or specialist colleague) working in climate join and discuss their work.
For grades 8-12, teachers can find detailed lesson plans from many disciplines at SubjectToClimate.org , and the resources at the National Wildlife Federation’s #Teach10HoursForClimate.
Done!
This is a 30-minute carve out. Given lead-time, all climate- concerned faculty will be able to find a spot in the semester for this. And students can lead in getting this Teach-In to happen by asking their all their teachers to #MakeClimateAClass in this way.
To scale this up, four faculty can do it together, reaching over a hundred students with multiple perspectives on climate careers, a model we call #Co-TeachForClimate.
#MakeClimateAClass #Co-TeachForClimate
Click to download letter to invite Faculty to #MakeClimateAClass
#ThreeHourTeach-In (University / Grades 8-12)
Campus-Wide Events: #ThreeHourTeach-In
In 2022, over 350 organizations around the world held Teach-In events, organized by students, sustainability staff, faculty and administrators. We have a database with many different approaches and examples. Join our weekly on-line sessions as well to learn about more variations.
The core model we recommend to maximize student engagement is the #ThreeHourTeach-In. This is an all-school event held in the evening, that is grounded in participation by climate-concerned faculty from multiple disciplines. It is an easy way to create interdisciplinary dialogue about climate solutions across your campus. and engage hundreds of students.
Add Climate Theater and Climate Comedy to Your Teach-In
This year, we are sponsoring a global competition calling for short climate plays, 5-7 minutes, that can spark discussion about climate solutions and climate justice. We will be featuring the top entries, and you can reach out to campus theater groups to produce these plays during your teach-in! The call for contributions is here.
In addition, we are working with Inside the Greenhouse at the University of Colorado, to create a 15-minute best of climate comedy video that can anchor a session. More to come on this option.
K-8 Interactive Teach-In
K-8 Interactive Teach-In:
K-8 Schools are encouraged to participate in the Teach-In! To best engage K-6 students in climate education we recommend interactive teaching. Our goal is to avoid frightening students with gloom and doom, and instead to spark their curiosity.
We have found lots of great climate education resources for the classroom in English. Please send links to similar resources in other languages to solveclimate2030@gmail.com!
We will post them here: Spanish / French / Arabic / Portuguese / Russian / Japanese / Chinese / Korean / Hindi.
The National Wildife Federation has terrific resources as part of their campaign to #Teach10Hours4Climate
Also see SubjectToClimate.org for great curricular ideas for K-12 teachers.
Faith Congregation Teach-In
Faith Communities
Faith Teach-Ins help their members explore personal connections with nature and justice in the context of the climate emergency. Such events can be especially powerful if they take place partially outdoors. Make the Teach-In very interactive, limit one-way information delivery to 5-10 minutes. Community members should leave excited and energized to learn and do more. Our model is an easy-to-organize and engaging three-hour event.
To learn more about how world religions are addressing climate change, visit The Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology https://fore.yale.edu/World-Religions which links to resources such as the following:
Climate Comedy & Climate Theater
Add Climate Theater and Climate Comedy to Your Teach-In
We worked with Inside the Greenhouse at the University of Colorado, to create a template for a 60-90 minute Climate Comedy Night, challenging participants to rethink how they talk about climate change. Including the four best climate jokes on the internet!
Talking About Climate – the juried competition of The Worldwide Teach-in on Climate and Justice is now complete. The competition involved two rounds of judging. We received 40 entries. One set of judges selected 10 semi-finalists. Another set of judges selected the 3 winners. The judges included playwrights, actors, professors and students.
The selected plays are:
All the Way Back by Donna Latham, Mask'd Feminist Playwright, Chicago, IL
In "All the Way Back”, Donna Latham, a feminist playwright from Chicago, IL writes about the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey where emotions run high as Houston residents seek refuge and come together for a common goal. Latham writes an interesting dialogue of a diverse set of strangers facing the same crisis, where themes of climate denialism and conflicting viewpoints set the characters apart, though we are reminded of their shared humanity towards the end. Read the full play here, and visit this link for a Q&A with the writer.
Donna Latham’s a feminist playwright in the Chicago area. Her plays have been produced coast to coast in the US and in Northern Ireland, Ireland, England, France, Scotland, and Indonesia. They’re
anthologized in Best American Short Plays 2016-2017, Best American Short Plays 2014-2015, 2016’s Best Ten-Minute Plays, and She Persisted: New Plays By Women Over 40, 2021, Laughter Is The Best Medicine: Short Plays From The Days of the Coronavirus, The Covid Monologues: 52 Playwrights Respond To The Pandemic, Best Women’s Stage Monologues 2022, and WE/US: Monologues For The Gender Minority. A resident playwright at Rising Sun Performance Company in NYC and member of Honor Roll! Playwrights, Donna’s a proud member of the Dramatists Guild.
View on Google Drive
What Lies in the Fire by E. Salvador Chapman, student, Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico
View on Google Drive
When Birds Fly Away... (in Urdu) by Maha Hasan, Environmental Engineer and trained theatre/screen actor, Pakistan
Maha Hasan is a trained theatre artist, actor and an aspiring writer. She graduated as an Environmental Engineer from National University of Sciences & Technology (NUST) in Islamabad and later decided to pursue her passion of performing arts. Hence, she sought training in Theatre Arts from National Academy of Performing Arts (NAPA), Karachi and since then has acted in various theatre plays, TV series, web series and cineplays. Some of her recent works include the titular role in the Urdu adaptation of Jean Anoulih's Antigone and a cineplay, Maya, for the Embassy of Netherlands. She has worked with some veteran directors of the performing arts industry in Pakistan such as Khalid Ahmed, Mehreen Jabbar, Ehtisham Uddin and Kanwal Khoosat. Maha aims to now explore writing alongside her acting endeavors. Her focus is on creating awareness on environmental issues through the power of her pen, with stories rooted in the local context of Pakistan and South Asia.
View on Google Drive