Students in Nauset Middle School’s Changemakers class engage in the Climate Mixer, taking on identities that help them to develop a nuanced understanding of the effects of climate change on individuals and communities. After studying their carbon footprints and foodprints, students broaden their perspective through the role play, discussing the ways in which a changing climate presents opportunities for some, but also how the majority of the world’s populations will suffer from a warming planet.

This is an important lesson that asks students to think deeply and engage in respectful discussion about an issue that can be polarizing and that may lead to arguments based on superficial beliefs. By asking students to unpack  their understanding of climate change, and then to discuss different perspectives, we are offering them the tools critical thinking and civil disagreement that lead to an engaged democracy.  Students enjoy their interactions during the mixer and come away with a more complex view of the world and their place in it.

This year my 11th grade English classes are reading The Grapes of Wrath. I teach in Albuquerque and I wanted to find engaging ways to make John Steinbeck’s beautiful and angry novel come alive for my students and connect to issues of farming, climate change, and unionizing that we are still experiencing today.

Basically, I wanted this unit to answer the question, “Why are we reading this?” as this is a question I try to ask myself every time I assign a text.

Luckily, the Zinn Education Project had my back!

I used Food, Farming, and Justice: A Role Play on La Vía Campesina to show the struggles and triumphs farmers across the globe are facing today, as well as the Stories from the Climate Crisis Mixer, to give students more breadth and depth on or current climate crisis around the globe. Both lessons connected perfectly with The Grapes of Wrath. Read more.

One of my primary goals as a science teacher is to offer global perspectives and culturally relevant material for my students. I recently created a climate justice unit using several different lab experiments and resources from the Zinn Education Project — the Thingamabob Game, the Climate Crisis Mixer, and the Climate Crisis Trial.

The Thingamabob Game allowed my students to authentically understand how prioritizing profit harms the environment in a fun but impactful way. The Climate Crisis Mixer allowed my students to make real, personal connections to the people most impacted by the climate crisis, which then empowered and encouraged them to care about what is happening to our global climate. During the Climate Crisis Trial, students who typically have a hard time engaging with material were fully present, showing more interest than I have seen with any other resources.

Throughout our climate justice unit, the resources from the Zinn Education Project had my students thinking, engaging, and truly caring about the climate crisis. They also helped me in my preparation by knowing I had trusted, high quality resources to lean on.

As a teacher candidate, I am often encouraged to reuse seasoned teachers’ lesson plans during my practicum placements as I slowly build my own catalog of material. Unfortunately, when teaching a 9th grade geography class last year, the existing materials induced severe climate anxiety and disempowered students. The content was outdated, neoliberal, and never named racial capitalism as one of the root causes of the climate crisis. I was convinced there was a community of educators out there that were generating resources that satisfied my desire to teach to transgress.

When I came across the Zinn Education Project I felt I had found the rad teacher mentor I needed to enact a critical pedagogy in the classroom. I did the Climate Mixer with my students and saw the gears in their brains shifting in real time. We turned climate anxiety into anger and directed our strong feelings towards the global structures maintaining capitalism, colonialism, and white supremacy. My students were engaged, critical, and curious. It felt great to bring movement into the class and learn through such wonderful storytelling. Thank you for these incredible resources!

I’ve used both the Stories from the Climate Crisis Mixer and the Climate Crisis Trial role play learning activities in my 8th grade language arts class to introduce students to our argumentative unit at the end of the year. I wanted to introduce students to a relevant and complex topic at the start of the unit to get them thinking about the spectrum of perspectives that make up all different sides of an argument.

The climate mixer activity was easy to implement, got my students talking, and made the climate crisis personal by focusing on specific individuals impacted by climate change. Including perspectives of people who benefit from climate change really pushed my learners to consider who might benefit from any issue.

The mock trial format for the climate crisis role play also pushed my students beyond simple answers to complex questions by demonstrating how multiple parties hold responsibility for the current crisis. In the end, many agreed that several parties were to blame, some more than others, but that assigning blame did not lead to a solution to the crisis. The argumentative work we did in our writing moving forward reflected this solutions based focus for argumentative writing, acknowledging responsibility for current issues while focusing more on ways to solve complex issues. The topic of this role play was complex, but the engaging format of a trial kept my learners engaged and many noted the mock trial as one of their favorite learning activities from the year.

Last year, I used the Stories from the Climate Crisis: A Mixer resource with my seventh grade Geography students. It was really interesting for students to hear real people and their experiences with climate change’s impacts. I felt that this resource had a greater impact on building empathy rather than simply watching videos or looking at charts. When students are able to see and hear how real people are affected, it’s more impactful and meaningful.

After using this lesson as described, students used the statement of one of the people to represent them at a mock UN Climate Summit. Students were able to research more into the countries and locations that these people came from and specifically how these places and people were affected by climate change. It was also really helpful to have people on “both sides” of the climate fight because it offered students a chance to see why some people would be motivated to perpetuate the crisis and have a meaningful conversation about the morality of it.

I teach a year-long environmental science course and we spend about a month (or a little more) on a climate change unit. Earlier in the year, students learn about environmental justice as part of the sustainability unit. So, it’s only natural to also include climate justice as part of the climate change unit. Within the unit, students learn about the causes of climate change, earth’s climate history, how climate change is impacting humans, animals, and ecosystems, and the many possible solutions.

I find the Zinn Education Project resources to be invaluable for bringing in real stories of people impacted by climate change and involved in climate change solutions. The Climate Crisis Mixer is a great activity for the students to take on the perspective of another individual. For my students, the stories give connection and meaning to the science that they are learning. I look forward to also incorporating the Climate Crisis Timeline this year to provide more context for historical events and movements.

Thank you, to the Zinn Education Project, for providing such a contemporary and fun resource in the Climate Crisis Mixer lesson! My students loved taking on all the various personas.

For the past two years, I have been using the Climate Change Mixer as part of the case study on climate change for my environmental justice unit. It has proven to be an extremely engaging and effective simulation. The first time I utilized it was in the Spring of 2020, when we were teaching remotely during the lockdown period. While I was hesitant to try it on Zoom, the activity proved to work very well in distance learning with good planning as to the use of breakout rooms.

In the Spring of this year, we were fortunately able to do the simulation in person and it worked even better. The students really played their parts well and after writing their post-activity reflections, they asked if it would be possible to do it again playing different roles.

I would really love to see this turned into an online game similar to the ones I have found on iCivics. If that were possible, students could engage in this activity not only in class, but by themselves online, playing different roles and gaining the value from that. However, even as is, it is an extremely effective, well structured simulation.

Connecting climate change to Middle School can be a real challenge. Students often ignore the impacts their choices make and see everything as happening in a far off future. During distance learning last year I attended a virtual conference hosted by the Zinn Education Project regarding their “Stories from the Climate Crisis: A Mixer” lesson. The lesson does a great job of getting students to not only understand personal impacts but to discuss them as well.

My 7th grade Washington State History class used the materials towards the end of our Humans and the Environment lesson. We had been discussing drought and agriculture in our state, as well as the impacts of pollution and human expansion, (one of the stories even discusses this directly). Students were able to understand how the things they do not see everyday can still be happening and how it does not take much to offset the balance of nature.

As a follow up activity, we looked at our own community and students worked in small groups to list everyday actions that teenagers can do to make an impact. This was followed up by a class discussion on what the best solutions are to climate change and how we can all take actionable steps to prevent it. I plan to keep using the lesson in future classes and even to incorporate it into my Creative Writing course.