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It was spring 2019, and I had been investigating what American kids learn about climate change, so when I traveled to my Northern California hometown for a visit, I reached out to local teachers to ask how they approach the subject.Del Real in the 400 wing, preparing a lesson about geological time.She also reminded me of teachers I’d met all over the country.It was March, and her class wouldn’t learn about global 11 warming until May, but unbeknownst to her students, they were already preparing to grasp it.Her lesson on geological time would set them up to understand Earth’s natural cycles.Then she would bring in legume sprouts to demonstrate how rhizomes pull nitrogen from the air and turn it into soil nutrients.That would lead to lessons on the atmosphere, solar radiation, the greenhouse effect, and weather systems.Once all those pieces are in place, when we get to global warming, the kids will just get it, she said.For the month of May, her students would work in groups, inventing ways to solve the planet’s greenhouse gas problem.Children are so perceptive.They understand things aren’t necessarily great, and it frightens them, she said.The solution projects help dispel that fear, reminding them that humans are amazing at innovation and invention when we have to be, and the time for that is now.Three years earlier, her students had been in the middle of their solution projects when they started showing up crabby.Usually, she said, they were excited to get to work.Now, they thought their projects were dumb.Why are we even doing this? they asked her.Her students had been leaving her lab and walking into history class, where the teacher was showing them YouTube videos alleging that global warming was a hoax, that it was caused by natural solar cycles, and that it was nothing to worry about.The next day, she walked to the 300 wing and confronted the history teacher about undermining her curriculum.She explained her lessons and methodology, the evidence she has her students examine and analyze, and the California science standards the curriculum fits into.I said, ‘They’re eleven.We need to be really mindful of when one adult they trust says one thing and another adult they trust says, Don’t worry about it.’ He said, ‘Well, I just want them to know both sides.’
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