TEACH CLIMATE CHANGE WITH HELP FROM EARTH@HOME

A recent report (Zuo, Doan, and Kaufman, RAND Corporation, 2023) about a survey for teachers on professional learning opportunities found that “more than one fifth of teachers indicated that they did not have any access to expertise on subject-matter content; these rates are particularly high among science teachers (37 percent) relative to ELA (19 percent) and math teachers (19 percent).” While professional development workshops can be highly effective for teachers, not all teachers have access to workshops on climate change. Online resources can thus fill a need, one that is particularly acute for teaching about climate change. A 2016 survey (Plutzer et al., NCSE, 2016) by the National Center for Science Education found that “Prior training in climate science is limited. Fewer than half of all teachers had any formal coursework — even one class lecture — on climate change.”

Earth@Home (earthathome.org), the Paleontological Research Institution’s free portal for learning about the Earth, has recently expanded to include a dedicated section for climate change resources (climate.earthathome.org). These resources are intended to help educators and the general public learn and teach about climate change science and solutions. The resources include chapters from The Teacher-Friendly Guide to Climate Change, as well as activities that serve as the lab manual to this guide. Content on Earth@Home is intended to: increase educators’ confidence by deepening their knowledge of climate science; help educators understand social science issues related to climate change communication; expand knowledge of solutions; and make educators’ lives easier by providing classroom activities.

Earth@Home also includes substantial, regionally-focused introductory information about the climate of the entire United States, as well as overviews of the rocks, fossils, topography, energy, mineral resources, Earth hazards, and geologic history of most regions.