Teaching Tomorrow: Vermont’s Climate Education Legislation and Youth Development
Dr. Joseph A. Henderson, University of Vermont, FWNI Board Member
A few years ago, I was sitting in a legislative office in Albany, New York with a group of middle-schoolers and a handful of elected representatives and their support staff. As members of the Climate and Resilience Education Task Force (CRETF) we were in Albany to lobby state legislators on the need for comprehensive statewide climate change education policy. One of the middle-schoolers told a story of sitting in school and wondering why the sky was orange and smoky, why her little brother was having an asthma attack, and why none of the adults in her life would explain what was happening. Children are naturally curious and love to ask questions about how the world works. Like the rest of us, they too can sense that the climate is changing and are looking to the adults for guidance. How we teach climate change will look different depending on the developmental capacities of our students, and as educators we need to be sensitive to those dynamics.
New York State recently passed educational regulations requiring comprehensive K-12 climate change education, and a similar effort is afoot in Vermont. Senator Anne Watson – a former science teacher herself – recently introduced S.175 [PDF] as a response to calls for climate change education in Vermont’s 2025 Climate Action Plan. If enacted, it would require the Secretary of Education to develop an interdisciplinary climate change curriculum and direct the State Board of Education to update elementary and secondary standards across Vermont. Vermont would then join New York and New Jersey as the only states requiring interdisciplinary K-12 climate change education. This legislation is an exciting opportunity to provide relevant educational experiences for our youth, and age-appropriate climate education already aligns with what great, place-based teaching looks like.
We know from a broad body of scholarship that environmental attitudes form early in life. Young children are innately curious about the natural world and can develop moral concern for the environment at an early age. Given their curiosity and care for nature, developmentally appropriate climate change education can meet young people where they are and integrates nicely with existing environmental education programs like those offered at Four Winds. While most climate change education happens at secondary and tertiary levels in the United States, it is feasible at the elementary level too, although with some important considerations.
Developmentally appropriate climate change education should emphasize joy and connection with nature and people and should not center fear. Educators can highlight making observations and developing wondering practices around topics like weather versus climate, seasonal changes, and caring for plants, animals, and their community. Older elementary students can engage with higher-order thinking processes around patterns and cause/effect relationships. Why do seasons change? How do humans impact the environment in positive and negative ways? What do all living things need to survive? In the later elementary grades, they can begin exploring systems dynamics by investigating the water cycle, ecosystem relationships, and energy resources, for example. Vermont is full of good teaching examples here: changes to the maple syrup season, shifting ice dynamics on Lake Champlain, increasingly intense flooding events and related forms of mitigation, changes to snow quality and the ski season, etc. Research on effect climate change education shows that the most effective programs center interdisciplinary place-based learning and emphasize hope and agency over doom. The North American Association for Environmental Education’s Guidelines for Excellence: Educating for Climate Action and Justice [PDF] is a useful starting point for educators wishing to design developmentally appropriate climate change education experiences for young people.
Finally, it is important to acknowledge that climate change is a distressing topic. Be aware of how you are presenting climate issues to young people, for they are always watching, always listening, and always learning from the adults in their lives. We know that kids are already picking up on climate stress in the broader culture and, like the student mentioned earlier, they deserve to understand the world they are inheriting in ways that promote flourishing. Carefully scaffolded and age-appropriate climate education should give young people the language, contextual knowledge, and, crucially, the agency to take both individual and collective actions toward climate adaptation and mitigation. You don’t need to be an expert to teach climate change, and Vermont’s own educational landscape already provides ample opportunities for professional learning. Senate Bill 175 would accelerate the growth of this emerging area of practice, and Vermont’s educators are well positioned to lead given the long history of effective environmental education in the Green Mountain State.