Climate Change Conference: students’ posters

Lucy’s Climate Story for Teachers

After finishing the ironing, I sat on the hall floor in my suburban house as my mother finished the dishes, my feet on the opposite wall.  “Well, what do you want to do, Lucy?” she asked.  I thought deeply—everything was in front of me as an excellent student. “I want to help people—materially. I don’t want people to suffer hunger, cold…” So I threw myself into activism, organizing in the anti-Vietnam war movement, the women’s movement, antiracist movement, etc. I dropped out of college to do it.

I was eventually chagrined by events to see that my group wasn’t leading much anymore and couldn’t predict major events. Fact is, I had worked at an EPA Superfund site and had no thought for the environment. 

I left the group. 

Later, after having my three children, while raising them, I decided to go back to college, study the non-human world. Upon studying ecology at UCLA, and after graduating magna cum laude in Biology, I became an educator to support my family. 

I taught science in a Title I public high school for eighteen years. The best thing I did for those students was to love them. The second best was to teach the process of science. 

For climate, I would have my students organize a community conference on climate change, which morphed under their guidance into the annual Green Festival--with 80+ poster presentations by students, science fair style; speakers, tables, and workshops from local agencies and organizations; and best of all, food, games, music, art, contests, etc. All of this, plus conference organization of set-up, registration, translation, childcare, extra credit, crowd-control, security, and clean-up was done by students.

I sponsored the Heart of Nature Club who organized with a non-profit to lobby the City Council to get off coal (successful) and gas (ongoing). They organized presentations by the Alliance for Climate Education. They spoke to every teacher about recycling in the classroom. They started and maintained for years both a native plants and a food garden. 

All this was supported by some teachers, many would bring their classes to our events, but there was little to no real teaching of it in most other classrooms—especially not where it most belongs, the Social Sciences, English and the Arts. I tried—I presented to each department a set of possible climate angles, based on their standards, to no avail. Life went on. 

At events I would meet other teachers who said, “I’m the green teacher at my school.” NO. No. No one should have to teach this alone. A school needs to take a decision. A school is usually the youth’s central experience. Let’s prepare them.

Full disclosure: I see the climate challenges as multifarious and critical, very deep—a challenge to the industrial systems we have made, the social systems that ignore nature. We must learn again to love the Earth. But not everyone who teaches climate change challenges will agree. And that’s fine.