On February 14^th Teach the Teacher was invited to attend the Sustainability in Education Conference, hosted by the University of Bedfordshire, to co-deliver a climate education workshop alongside Reach2 and SEEd. The conference was run by STEM Learning, whose goal is to improve lives through STEM education, with a focus on delivering continuing professional development for teachers in STEM subjects and to bring STEM role models into schools. The day was well attended by a range of primary, secondary, and further education leads, teachers, school improvement directors, and operations/facilities directors from across the South East.

Our Workshop

Alongside the charity SEEd (Sustainability and Environmental Education) and the academy trust REAch2, we delivered a workshop for attendees exploring the topic of climate education.

·      SEEd spoke passionately about their young changemakers partnership programme for schools, and included some fun interactive elements for the audience

·      REAch2 spoke about the work they’re doing to integrate climate in their written academies’ curriculum. It was great to hear from Tim and Rachael about the incorporation of sustainability and climate into the work of their academies, and all the work and policies which take place behind the scenes to support this classroom learning.

·      And as part of this session we got to speak about what students want from a climate curriculum and how we can use education to address eco anxiety. For this we explored firstly where climate currently exists in the secondary curriculum, noting there is no current requirement for young people to be taught about climate justice or how to take climate action, and the topic of climate change tends to only be referenced in key stage 3 science and geography. We spoke with attendees about the need for climate education, with a majority agreeing that school should be a place where young people are prepared for climate change. We also discussed how we can use the different types of curriculum – formal, informal, and subliminal – to deliver climate education creatively. Our session ended on a discussion about eco anxiety and how attendees believed we can address these feelings through school, with answers ranging from simply discussing climate in lessons to organising larger climate action projects for young people to get involved in.

We loved having the opportunity to talk to educators about the simple and impactful ways they can champion climate education in their schools. If you’re a secondary school looking to embed climate into your school, why not register to bring Teach the Teacher to your school and empower your students to lead on the climate revolution!

For primary schools, we’d love you to attend Teach the Future’s upcoming Tracked Changes Sustainability Review of the Primary National Curriculum, to hear about how the primary curriculum could be reframed around climate change.