Extreme weather events like those that plunged huge swathes of the United States into freezing temperatures, darkness, danger, and fear in Feb. 2021 are becoming increasingly common.
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Film Clip. Pacific Climate Warriors. 2019. During the Global Climate Strike on Sept. 20, 2019, the Pacific Climate Warriors in Portland showed up at their rally carrying their identity with pride and speaking their truths as Pacific islanders fighting for their homes.
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Film Clips. Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner. Various years. Video poems by a Marshallese artist show the injustices and harm of environmental racism, nuclear weapons, and climate change around the world.
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Teaching Activity. By WorldOregon's Young Leaders in Action.
In this role-play, students explore the challenges and perspectives of people — climate refugees — who have "no option except escape" from homes devastated by climate change.
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Teaching activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca.
A lesson about multiple cohorts of climate activists: Indigenous leaders in the Climate Justice Movement, valve turners using civil disobedience to stop the flow of oil, and the legal team that uses the “necessity defense” in the courts.
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In early March 2020, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 threat to be great enough to warrant labeling it a pandemic.
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Film. Directed by Jan Haaken and Samantha Praus. Work in Progress. 58 minutes.
Pilot for a series on direct action for the climate, the film explores the work of attorneys, valve turners, and other water protectors in Minnesota.
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Teaching Activity. By Rachel Hanes. Rethinking Schools.
A 2nd-grade teacher shows how connecting a student's home to the classroom led to profound lessons for all her students — in this case, about pipelines and climate justice.
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Book - Non-fiction. By Naomi Klein. 2019. 320 pp. This collection of essays makes a case for a Green New Deal — explaining how bold climate action can be a blueprint for a just and thriving society.
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Article. By Bill Bigelow.
The story of how teachers, parents, and students in Portland, Oregon organized to demand that climate change be taught honestly and to pass a climate justice resolution.
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Article. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca. Rethinking Schools Blog, September 2019. A call to action for teachers to join students, whether in the streets or in classrooms, by using their voices for climate justice.
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Film. Trinkets and Beads. By Christopher Walker. 1996. 52 minutes.
This documentary reveals the funny, heartbreaking, and thrilling story of the battle waged by indigenous people to preserve their way of life in the Amazon, in the face of international capitalism and colonialism.
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Teaching Activity. By Flannery Denny. Rethinking Schools, Summer 2019.
A math educator brings data from a friend’s solar panels — and the story to win them in their community — into her 7th-grade classroom to build a bridge between math and climate justice education.
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Article. By Moé Yonamine. Rethinking Schools, Summer, 2019.
A high school ethnic studies teacher describes how students in the Pacific Island Club used poetry to refocus the narrative surrounding climate justice onto frontline communities.
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Article. 2019. By the Rethinking Schools Editorial Board. Rethinking Schools, Summer 2019.
The Green New Deal will only be brought to life by people who grasp the enormity of the crisis that humanity faces and the radical changes necessary to address it. This requires that we teach a climate justice curriculum.
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Film. By Lynne Cherry and Young Voices for the Planet. 2019. 6 min. This short documentary features the activism of Jaysa Mellers, a young adolescent girl who rallied her community to challenge local air polluters.
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Poetry. Edited by Melissa Tuckey. 460 pages. 2018.
A collection of poetry about colonial dispossession, the environmental crime of war, food and culture, resource extraction, resistance, and the Global South.
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Book - Non-fiction. By Winona LaDuke. 1999.
Native American activists provide testimonies to indigenous efforts to resist oppression and fight both cultural and environmental degradation in the face of U.S. colonialism.
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Teaching guide. By Richard Beach, Jeff Share, and Allen Webb. 148 pages. 2017.
This book offers essential resources for English language and literature teachers to teach climate justice.
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Read selections from our favorite classroom stories, written by teachers who have used climate justice lessons found at our website, and see how students respond to lessons about environmental injustice.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. Rethinking Schools.
The Thingamabob Game helps students grasp the essential relationship between climate and capitalism.
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Film. Narrated by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and illustrated by Molly Crabapple. The Intercept. 2019. 7 minutes.
The film flips the script on our future by illustrating one where we survive climate change and thrive because we took action today.
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Tell us your classroom story and receive three free books! Describe how you used one or more of our lessons to teach about climate change, environmental activism, and issues related to land rights to participate in the book giveaway.
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Teaching Activity Draft. By Matt Reed and Tim Swinehart. 2019.
Students learn the names and stories of dozens of climate justice activists.
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Film. 86 minutes. 1985.
Documentary about people who learned to organize, and received peer support, at the Highlander Center.
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