Many children live through extreme weather but rarely learn the science behind it at school. How can teachers ground that science in what their students have lived through?
University researchers worked with four 4th- and 5th-grade teachers, two coaches and a principal at two New Orleans schools, with 64 students aged 9 to 11. In the first year of the partnership, they designed and taught a five-day climate science unit together. The researchers studied the process using recordings of lessons and planning meetings, interviews with teachers, field notes and students' work.
The researchers found:
- Lived experience counted as expertise. The researchers told teachers and students that they had not lived through hurricanes or having to leave home, but many of them had. One teacher, who was in the city during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, said that although he was no expert on the science, he had been there.
- Early ideas were mixed up. When the researchers asked students what they knew, many linked environmental change with trash, pollution, smog and bad weather. Some teachers did too, and one asked the researchers to explain what environmental change actually is.
- Teachers chose the starting points. At a full-day planning session, teachers decided the unit should open with events students remembered: smoke from marsh fires, extreme heat, having to drink bottled water, moving away after hurricanes, and flooded streets. Each lesson opened with slides of these events. The unit set out to answer what causes these changes and how communities can come together to respond to the hazards they bring. The researchers designed the hands-on science. Students modeled how the products of a burning candle go into the air, used models to show how more carbon dioxide traps heat, and ran experiments on melting ice and on warm water taking up more space than cold water. The lessons on heat and sea level were linked back to students' own experiences of extreme heat and flooding.
- A story tied the unit together. The team turned a picture book, When the Saltwater Came by Wendy Wilson Billiot, into a Spanish-English graphic novel, because many students were learning English. In it, an otter family must move upriver when salt water spoils its freshwater marsh. Teachers wrote a hopeful next chapter in which the school and wider community create a sanctuary for the otters, based on a real local marsh sanctuary. They left the final panel blank. On the last day, students wrote the ending in small groups. Some groups restored the marsh; others had the otters forced to leave.
- Teachers wove in their own stories. While teaching, one teacher compared the otters to New Orleans families who moved to Houston after Katrina, only to be hit by another hurricane there. He used it to show both how neighbors helped each other and how uncertain the future can be. Another teacher invited students to share; one boy said his family could not return to their flooded house. She told the class that sharing these stories mattered.
- Teachers led the sharing. Teachers said they ended the unit understanding more clearly how environmental change differs from pollution and weather. All four chose to present the unit at a national science teaching conference, and insisted that their Gulf Coast experiences be part of it.
What this means for your practice:
- Start with what students have lived through. Teachers chose remembered local events as the way in (finding 3). Open lessons with images of local events and ask students what they remember and wonder.
- Treat your own experience as expertise. Teachers' stories became a key part of the lessons (findings 1 and 5). One teacher said mixing his stories with the science "actually kind of worked out well."
- Check early ideas first. Students and teachers often mixed up environmental change with pollution and weather (finding 2). Ask students to write what they already know and what questions they have, then use that to shape the unit, as the researchers did.
- Adapt texts to your place and students' languages. The team reworked a picture book to include a local sanctuary and to appear in Spanish and English (finding 4).
- Leave the ending open. The blank final panel let students bring their own experiences and outlooks, and their endings ranged from hopeful to bleak (finding 4).
- Hold hope and uncertainty together. Teachers showed how communities help each other while being honest that outcomes are not certain (finding 5).
- Ask to co-design. If you work with researchers or curriculum writers, ask to choose the opening examples and write parts of the text yourself. The teachers' choices shaped the unit (findings 3 and 4), and they went on to present it themselves (finding 6).
The Bottom Line
Researchers worked alongside four teachers and their 64 students, aged 9 to 11, at two New Orleans schools. Teachers led the design. They chose to open the unit with local events students had lived through, and helped turn a picture book into a bilingual graphic novel with an ending left for students to write. While teaching, teachers spontaneously shared their own stories of past hurricanes and drew out students' stories, holding hope and uncertainty together. Teachers said they finished with a clearer grasp of the science of environmental change, and chose to present the unit at a national conference. For educators, the study shows that their own and their students' local experience is real expertise, and that stories can tie climate education to students' lives.