Keeling Curve

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Project Summary / Description:

SubjectToClimate’s founding team met at Harvard with a shared passion to leverage education to combat climate change. After surveying teachers, they learned that educators did not teach about climate change because 1) it didn’t fit into their curriculum, 2) they lacked time & resources, and 3) they were not confident they knew enough about climate change.  This led us to launch our Core Platform in August 2021 - a free platform with teacher-designed lesson plans, curated resources, and professional development opportunities to enable all K-12 educators to easily integrate climate change into what they already teach. Our resources span grade levels K-12 and address all disciplines. Starting with New Jersey, states began to approach us for help supporting systemic climate education; we enhance a state's environmental education efforts by coordinating cooperation and unified action among various education partners, adapting our core platform to facilitate place-based learning, and providing training for educators. We launched our New Jersey Hub in 2022, which was followed by Hubs in Maine, Oregon, and Wisconsin in 2023. In 2024, we will be launching Hubs in New York, California, and Connecticut.

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Our thorough repository of credible climate education resources will increase the likelihood that teachers will teach about climate change. A peer-reviewed study published by PLOS One journal found that a year-long community college course about carbon emissions and climate change decreased the students’ individual yearly CO2 emissions by 2.86 tons. After using StC materials in an elementary classroom, the teacher reported increased student knowledge of climate change, greater concern about climate change, as well as behavioral change (i.e. one student told a peer to turn off the faucet after use, citing water is a scarce resource).

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We do not charge teachers for our resources. Most students of color, those from low-income families, and English language learners do not have equal access to high-quality, grade-appropriate assignments, let alone resources about climate change (TNTP, 2018). To help bridge this gap, we have committed to providing all our resources for free. 
Second, our teacher review team provides teaching tips on how to adapt resources to learners with different needs-- from English Language Learners to students with learning disabilities. 
We also create lesson plans about racial, economic, indigenous, gender, historical, and intergenerational justice. From looking at the distribution and density of trees in low-income communities vs. wealthier and predominantly white cities to exploring how lithium mining in Chile affects Indigenous people of that region, our resources share the stories of marginalized communities to ensure that environmental justice is taught alongside climate change.