The Best Way to Teach Environmental Education

6 Strategies for Including Climate and Environmental Education in Your Curriculum

By Beth Rush

Knowledge is power, and teaching young people ecological principles is one of the best tools at humanity’s disposal to protect the planet. While educators have varying ideas about the best way to teach environmental education, the proper techniques let you integrate it into any classroom, whether you teach English, physics, or tiny tots. The following six strategies can inspire your instructional approach.

What Is the Best Way to Teach Environmental Education?

Professional educators have varied ideas on the best ways to teach environmental education. Combining multiple approaches and marrying them with the unique needs of your student population is a solid strategy to follow.

In determining the best way to teach environmental education, you must consider multiple factors, including:

Nearby resources: Look beyond the department budget. What resources are available in your local community? For example, is there a nearby park in need of a cleanup that you could help, combining a lesson on community service with environmental stewardship? Are there graduate students in environmental science at a nearby college who might guest lecture, combining career exploration with planetary consciousness?
Free educational resources: The internet abounds with free lesson plans and learning apps, many of which teach about the environment.
Your student’s age and grade level: The way you would educate high school students about environmental stewardship varies greatly from how you teach kindergarteners.
The prevailing cultural and political milieu: Depending on where you live, the law and community opinion may have a marked impact on how you can teach environmental education.

The Challenges of Teaching Environmental Education

Teaching environmental education can be challenging because the problem lacks a simple solution. People have varying opinions on how to tackle the many interconnected issues causing the devastation, and feelings can easily become hurt and things heated.

Additionally, managing children’s emotions around climate change requires a delicate touch. One 2022 poll revealed that 75% of those aged 14 to 24 have experienced at least one mental health-related condition, such as anxiety, because of fears about the future environment on Earth. Framing discussions in optimistic lights and focusing on what you can do to spur action means choosing your words carefully in lectures and class discussions. You must also manage your own fears, which may bias your approach.

6 Strategies for Including Climate in the Curriculum

Mastering the best way to teach environmental education is easier when you apply the following six strategies.

1. Collaborate With Colleagues on Cross-Curricular Projects

Climate change is an intricately interwoven issue with many moving parts. For example, some people might call for building solar panel-covered bike lanes on interstates or wind farms on vacant land. However, such structures don’t magically appear overnight. They require the coordination of a huge team of individuals, including:

City and state officials who must approve the project and its details, obtain the necessary funds, hammer out issues such as how to redirect traffic when construction causes shutdowns, and keep workers and drivers safe.
Construction crews who must develop the most efficient way to complete the project with minimal environmental impact.
Media and information services, which must compile public notices and design broadcasts and podcasts informing the public about the project and what to expect.

However, such a project can become the fodder for a fabulous cross-curricular unit, tying together science and engineering, civics and government, math and accounting and communication. A multidisciplinary team of teachers moving through such a unit at the same time can help students draw parallels and understand the many moving parts of the climate change puzzle. It also drives engagement by focusing them on a real-world problem.

2. Honor Special Event Days

You can also bring climate and environmental education into any classroom by honoring special events, such as Earth Day. For example, this year, the Earth Day End Plastics campaign is on a mission to reduce plastic use by 60% by 2040. Teachers can navigate to Earthday.org for lesson plans and activities to encourage their students to reduce consumption, especially of single-use plastics.

Other days you can take advantage of to sneak in a lesson on the climate and environment include:

World Wetlands Day: February 2
International Polar Bear Day: February 27
World Wildlife Day: March 3
Global Recycling Day: March 18
International Day of Forests: March 21
International Day of Zero Waste: March 30
Arbor Day: Last Friday in April
National Honey Bee Day: August 22
World Cleanup Day: September 8
International Day of Climate Action: October 24
International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict: November 6
World Soil Day: December 5

3. Take Your Class on a Field Trip

Learners of all ages love field trips as a break from the norm. While they take a group effort to coordinate, doing so can significantly enhance learning, letting students see the real-world applicability of what they learn in class.

Where should you go? It depends on what’s nearby and your budget, but ideas range from a nearby manufacturing or recycling facility to an overnight trip to a national forest. Consider these ideas:

Volunteering at a local cleanup or tree planting
Visiting a nearby organic farm that uses sustainable techniques to raise food
Exploring an apiary or aquarium
Traveling to a state or national park or wildlife refuge for a ranger-guided tour

4. Connect It to Other Lessons and Themes

School teams and curricula vary. However, even if you don’t create a cross-curricular unit, you can tie environmental education into the themes of other works you study in class. For example, if you’re an English teacher reading “Oliver Twist,” you can discuss how the conditions created by the Industrial Revolution combined to create mass poverty while also tying in how this period initiated many of the climate change problems we face today.

5. Use Print, Digital Media and Games

Depending on where you teach, you may face restrictions on which materials you can use in the classroom. However, there’s a wealth of free print and digital media designed to raise environmental awareness available today. You can also explore the following games to make learning about climate change more fun and interactive:

Nature’s Benefits: The Card Game
Generate: The Game of Energy Choices
Reducing Food Waste Activity Book
Climate Kids: NASA’s Eyes on the Earth
Particulate Matter Sensor Kits
Recycle City
Smokey for Kids

6. Adopt a Portfolio-Style Assessment System

You can also encourage students to do independent environmental research and projects by implementing a portfolio-style assessment system. It can complement or replace your traditional year-end exam and represents how students synthesize what they learned in class with their own independent ideas and outside learning experiences throughout the year.

You can give students considerable leeway. For example, some might prefer to write a formal paper on a particular aspect of climate change or the environment. Others might prepare a PowerPoint or Prezi to present to the class, while still more can get hands-on and build a more energy-efficient lightbulb. Let kids impress you with what they can do, like developing a system to filter microplastics from water.