In classrooms across the US, fossil fuel interests and political pressure are shaping the science - and leaving key facts out. Meet two teachers fighting to keep climate education honest, local, and alive.
Jeff Grant: "You'd be surprised at how many kids don't know how to grow something, which is wild to me. You know, you give them a packet of seeds and, 'oh why are we putting 'em in this bag?' And 'What's germination?' Right? 'Yeah. We're just trying to pick the winners to put 'em in the soil.' Right. 'And how often do I have to water? I know. Yes. We gotta talk about that'. Right."
And those are seniors, those are 18-year-olds going off to college next year and they've haven't had very many experiences doing that sort of stuff.
So it's very empowering for them I think sometimes, because they'll just run to the back of the classroom and check on their babies. That's what they call 'em. They check on their babies every day. Oh my, oh, it's growing, you know?
And that could be an 18-year-old boy, that's all football, football. And he's going back there looking to see if his coneflower is growing, which is fantastic. But they don't have those experiences, so I think as long as you put them in front of them... You know humans are inquisitive by nature. We just gotta show them that it's okay to be inquisitive still. Right?"
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Igniting sparks of curiosity in the next generation is a large part of Jeff Grant's life. And something he remembers from his own childhood.
Jeff Grant: "We were a family that would go outdoors a lot, so exploring and playing around... We would sit down as a family and we would be watching nature shows, watching Marty Stouffer's great outdoors and things like that... So I'd try to emulate what those scientists are doing. I can remember specifically being a little kid and going out to the rivers, back behind our house and pretending like I was finding fossils and wrapping them like palaeontologists would with newspaper.
And we would go fishing as a family and my dad would be there to discuss what was going on with the fish. We were just an outdoor family. So I think that was probably the initial spark. And since then it's just been burning."
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If you're wondering what it was the spark for, the answer is... science. Welcome to Living Planet. I'm Neil King and in this episode, we're looking at vital role of science teachers in helping the next generation understand climate change. And how, against a backdrop of a climate-denying administration, under-funding and fossil fuel groups with deep pockets, educators sometimes have their work cut out for them.
Jeff Grant originally planned to study medicine, but after he began helping out at a nature center, he had a change of heart. He switched to follow in the footsteps of his father, who was a science teacher for more than 30 years. Now, after more than two decades of teaching high school science in Illinois, he's earned a reputation for igniting young minds.
Science truly is his thing. Even when he is not at the front of the class, he immerses himself in his subject, reading papers and books, and taking note of what he can share with his students. In recent years, that has come to include information from a very clear publishing trend.
Jeff Grant: "For the last, I would say decade and a half, I've just seen more and more of the things that I grabbed to learn, so textbooks -- sorry, I don't read textbooks on a fun basis. Let's put that on the record. I'm not that much of a nerd -- but when I go to like a Barnes and Noble, I always browse the science section. To grab books that I wanna read, right. So I read a science book every morning reading a fantastic one right now by Kate Marvel, which is, it's very good... just seeing more on the shelves that are connected to climate change stuff."
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Books aside, the volume of papers related to rising global temperatures has risen so exponentially in the past decade that even dedicated individuals like Jeff would struggle to keep up. Some research estimates there are now more than 85,000 studies published on the topic, and a quarter of them were published in just the past five years. But Jeff is relying on his own senses, continuing his own childhood tradition of spending time in the big beyond. He has been observing the impacts of climate change firsthand.
Jeff Grant: "Being outdoors all the time, just seeing the ripple effect on different types of communities that I've always been looking at. You know, from aquatic ecosystems to forest ecosystems, to prairies to even invasive species. It all kinda connects together with climate change stuff."
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He says he has seen the topic trickle into the curriculum in his state off the back of discussions in classrooms. But he personally has taken a very resolute approach to making sure his students learn about the climate crisis.
Jeff Grant: "I bake it in, so to speak. My game plan is to start really big, go way down to the cells and then come back out again with evolution at the very end. So they're seeing climate connected to ecology, but then they also see it connected to things like evolution later on in the school year."
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Evolution can be a hot-button teaching topic in some US classrooms according to Glenn Branch. He is deputy director the non-profit National Center for Science Education founded in the 1980s to prevent creationism from being taught alongside or instead of science. But over the years, the NCSE has witnessed a growing need to protect another scientific discipline.
Glenn Branch:"About 15 years ago or so, we noticed - and other people noticed - that there were attacks on climate change education beginning to emerge. We were monitoring them because they often travelled with attacks on evolution education. Eventually we decided that the problems and the solutions were similar enough that we should take on the task of defending climate change education as well."
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That takes the form of providing professional development to teachers across the country, offering science teaching resources and investigating what students are being taught. He sees it as an imperative that young people should understand the world they are living in.
Glenn Branch: "Today's students are tomorrow's consumers, workers, and voters, and they're going to be faced with a series of challenges due to the disruptions caused by climate change. And in order to deal with these challenges wisely, they'll have to have at least the basic understanding of climate change and its impacts and solutions."
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Which takes us right back to education. A report published this year by the values-based leadership non-profit Aspen Institute found that US teens don't have a confident understanding of climate change. Only 12% said they felt they know "a lot" about its causes and over half of those asked regarded recycling as being the solution with the greatest impact.
But the often complex and abstract nature of climate science can turn young minds off. So the key to plugging the knowledge gap says Glenn Branch, is making the topic relatable.
Glenn Branch: "Teachers who are teaching climate change well, will work to make it relevant. One way to do so is to make it local. Practically everywhere in the United States is being affected in one way or another. Climate change isn't just something that's happening to polar bears in the Arctic of people who live on tiny tropical islands in the South Pacific. It's in your backyard."
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For Jeff, that means introducing his students to things like range maps to explore how invasive species are spreading further north now that the winters are no longer as cold as they once were. Or even just looking at unusual weather on the doorstep.
Jeff Grant: "So it's great to talk about, 'oh, here's what's happening with flooding on the coast of Florida,' but it's not as powerful as 'well, here's why we're starting to get more tornadoes in Illinois.
That is more impactful and they see that, you know, and 'oh, why did we have this massive hailstorm in June?' What are the possible implications of that? How frequently has that been happening over the last three decades? That's stuff that they can look at and they can see it because it happened to them or around them."
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Climate education at school has the broad backing of older Americans. According to Yale University research, three-quarters of adults in the country want to see it incorporated into the classroom. But not all science teachers bring climate into the classrooms. And because US school system is highly decentralized, there is no unifying curriculum that must be adhered to. Decisions about what to teach are made not at the federal or state but by the local school district. And with some 13,000 across the country, Glenn from the NCSE says it can lead to wildly different approaches to education. But add that there are other issues at play.
Glenn Branch: "Because climate change is relatively new to American science education, today's teachers are being asked to teach material that they never had the opportunity to learn themselves. Teachers are professionals, like lawyers and doctors they undergo continuing education all the time, learning new material and being able to package it for their students is nothing new, but it's still an uphill battle."
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Which might be a good moment to remember those 85,000 studies -- and counting. In other words, it is easy to be over-faced by the sheer volume of available information. Not to mention sort it from the growing body of climate misinformation and disinformation, which is also out there in no small quantity.
The leading avenue for intentionally spreading inaccurate or misleading narratives about human-caused climate change is social media. But research published this year also highlights the role of conservative think tanks, industrial lobbies and scientific hired hands in spreading scepticism. And the situation has been exacerbated by the Trump administration's climate denial policies and strategies.
Glenn Branch: "The federal government used to have a website called climate.gov, which was sort of the hub for all of the federal government's education and outreach efforts in climate change. Most of the staff has been laid off... the result is that a lot of the content from climate.gov has gone missing."
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There are concerns that more will information go missing or be replaced by climate change denial propaganda. So with the help of donations from the public, the staff of the climate.gov website have now regrouped to bring the site back as an independent non-profit. Now called climate.US, it's planning to reinstate classroom resources designed by teachers and reviewed by scientists.
In addition, even if there is no unity, many states do have teaching guidelines. The Next Generation Science Standards were introduced in 2013 to set learning goals, some of which include climate change. But because they are not obligatory, they are not a fool-proof guarantee that the science of the subject will reach young ears. And in Jeff's eyes, the standards could go further.
Jeff Grant: "I know that Illinois has a state standard that somewhere in the 14-year-old to 18-year-old time range there has to be something in the curriculum that addresses climate change, right? And that it's human influenced climate change, that it's affecting what we see in front of us right now. But not every state has that as part of their curriculum. And even when you say 'right well, here's the standard', you have to cover, they don't give you explicit... this is how to do it... this is a lesson to do. It's kind of up to the teachers or the school districts to develop those things or find things to help them with that presentation to kids."
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Professional organizations such as the National Science Teaching Association and various other science education bodies have issued statements calling for more and better climate change lessons. And while they offer lesson plans, workshops and professional development opportunities themselves, they are up against some powerful groups with their own agendas.
Glenn Branch: "There are and have been systematic attempts to provide teachers with misinformation about climate change in the hopes that they will relay it to their students. And this has kind of two, two broad categories of sources. One is material from climate change denial think tanks like the Heartland Institute - they're very strongly ideologically motivated."
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The Heartland Institute, which describes itself as "a free-market think tank" with "deep expertise on education policy and environmental protection" is known for its scepticism of scientific consensus on human-caused climate change.
On one of its websites devoted to debunking climate science, it prominently states 'there is no climate crisis.' The organisation regularly produces videos to back that statement up, and has also made efforts to appeal to science teachers to educate their students along the same lines.
Glenn Branch: "In 2017, the Heartland Institute claimed to have sent packets of material to teachers across the United States. And with outright blatant climate change denial."
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Among other things, the packages included a book called Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming. And a cover letter asking teachers to let students know that the human impact on climate is debated.
The National Science Teaching Association issued an alert in response to what it described as an "unprecedented attack," and urged teachers to just keep on teaching science. But an NCSE study from around that time revealed the sometimes patchy understanding of climate on the part of educators. Which can leave space for yet other groups to get into the classroom. Including fossil fuel companies themselves.
Glenn Branch: "There is an industry funded branch of the Oklahoma State Government, for example, that produces supplementary material on fossil fuel use and climate change.
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The Oklahoma Energy Resources Board is an agency of the state founded over 30 years ago. Born, it says, out of a vision to restore land associated with historic wealth sites and to help support educators across the state, which includes glossy lesson plans and reading resources for teachers and students. Some research suggests the materials reach 98% of Oklahoma school districts.
Glenn Branch: "That material is less blatant than the ideological material, but it can still have a distorting influence."
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Oklahoma is the 6th largest oil and gas producing state in the country. It's a major employer and contributor to the region's purse according to data from a local economic research company. That same analysis says the fossil fuel industries invested $89 million into school districts last year.
Melissa Lau: "They provide curriculum and training and they give teachers... 'Hey, come to our Saturday workshop and it's all day, but we'll give you $50 and a free lunch.' And then you'll have all of these supplies and you just literally copy the lessons and you share them with your students."
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More on that in a moment. First, meet Melissa Lau. She has been an educator for over twenty years and currently teaches environmental science and biology to 13 to 18-year-olds at a school in her home state of Oklahoma. She is another science teacher who's passionate about what she does.
Melissa Lau: "What brought me into education was just investing in that next generation. I don't have children of my own. That is a personal choice that I made, but I still felt like as a member of society, I can make a difference and invest in that next generation."
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And in recent years, that has included making her students aware of climate change and the role that humans continue to play in it.
Melissa Lau: "In 2018, I had an opportunity to work with a project that paired teachers with researchers and they sent us into the field for a significant amount of time to work with research groups. And I worked with a team from Florida International University studying phonology and vegetation change in the Arctic. I spent 36 days above the Arctic Circle in Alaska working with this team.
I think being in the environment, the ecosystem that was so fragile and the tundra and seeing the actual effects of a warming planet on the villages that were experiencing sea level rise. Just the changes in the ecosystem that you could tell from the data they had been collecting... it was something I was always concerned about, but... you know 'oh my goodness'. We have people think about climate refugees being something that's not happening in the United States, but it is. We have villages that are having to completely relocate. They're having to deal with infrastructure and how to survive surging sea water."
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Up until that point she had not gone deep into climate in her classes, but during her time away, something shifted.
Melissa Lau: "It just added a level of urgency that I thought I can't wishy-washy or, 'oh, well, you know, it's just a little too controversial, I don't want to attack this topic in my coursework at all. So I'm just going to, you know... we'll, we'll talk about it quickly and then move right along. It really did bring it home as far as these are real people's lives that are being impacted. I mean, it's urgent and it's happening now."
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But having made the decision explore the impacts of global temperature rise more profoundly with her students, she had to come up with a way to bring it home to them in her landlocked state. And that goes right back to making it something they actually relate to.
Melissa Lau: "Climate change looks really different where we are in Oklahoma, which is right in the middle of the country, and it's a grassland ecosystem, so it looks different here than where students were seeing the pictures of the ice falling into the ocean. And sea level rise means nothing to my kids, some of them have never even seen the ocean. So you know, it's been difficult to give them that sense of urgency."
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The year after she came back from Alaska, she says she "stumbled into" working on developing curriculum with Glenn and the National Center for Science Education. That, in turn led her to digging deeper into how the fact of climate change locally.
Melissa Lau: "It's a little bit more subtle, but it's still there. With agriculture, that was where you could see the biggest changes and the shifts farmers are having to make to adjust for the longer droughts, more disease prone species, like just the way that they're having to change their monoculture and soil conservation to adjust for climate change."
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In Oklahoma, most of the land is devoted to farming. Like many others, Melissa has relatives working in both agriculture and the oil industry. From personal experience, she knows just how challenging it can be to talk about the increasingly divisive issue of rising global temperatures.
Melissa Lau: "When you would have conversations with family members that are having to make these adjustments because of climate change, that cognitive dissonance, that not connecting the term climate change to how they're having to change the way that they make a living and the way that they've always done things because the climate is changing here... Just as soon as I use the term climate change, they would, they would shut it off. It's been politicized to the point where you can't hardly have a conversation about climate change. But I can have a conversation about the changing climate. So like that is different. As long as you don't use those trigger words, so to speak, those politicized hot topic words, you can have those conversations. They just don't want to hear climate change and that it's... it's frustrating."
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As frustrating as those conversations with her relatives can be. They've also helped prepare her to tackle the topic with her students.
Melissa Lau: "It does help for me to be able to have that conversation when we start getting into these more sticky topics, that I have that connection of my family cattle ranching and wheat farming. I have family members that drive fuel trucks for oil companies. And I think that puts them at ease. Because a lot of times it is, 'you know, my dad is just trying to make a living, we're trying to feed our family, keep a roof over our heads.' It gets personal. You know... your dad is, your parents are not bad because they happen to work for an oil company. Or they happen to have livestock or they grow crops. They're not, they're not the villains in this story. So that helps to put them at ease and they tend to be less defensive."
Narration: And once she does get into the material, she tries to teach in a way that doesn't only explain the problem. She also helps them to foster a relationship with the natural environment and maintain a sense of agency.
Melissa Lau: "I always joke with them, the first semester is, like, this is our beautiful planet, and then the second semester is like here's how we've messed it up. They realize, oh it is us. This can't just be a change in solar radiation or our position as we are moving around the planet. But it has to be balanced with a hopeful message that yes, humans are the cause of many of the things that are happening on our planet, but we are also the, the solution. Because climate anxiety, apathy is what I see a lot of. It's like, well, it's just too big and it's too late, so why are we even bothering?"
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These questions are answered in her classes. But she is aware of the Oklahoma Energy Resources Board trying to share the space. The OERB is just one of a number of oil and gas bodies operating in different states such as Kansas, Ohio and Illinois and offering educational programmes to teachers and students.
In Oklahoma specifically, they make an effort to appeal to kids from a very tender age. With a series of illustrated and now also digitized books, the OERB has its protagonist, Petro Pete, take young readers and listeners to Petroville . In one story, he finds himself in a world of no fossil fuels. Or anything made from them including as his toothbrush, the tyres on his bike or his comb.
Melissa Lau: "You know Petro Pete wakes up and, 'oh no!' all the fossil fuels have completely disappeared off the face of the earth. And how terrible is our life now? Which to me just goes to show how dependent we have become on fossil fuels and how urgent it is for us to start finding these alternatives because it's not just energy, it is so much of our lives are impacted and influenced by fossil fuel products."
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The books are just one part of a broader set of offerings, including full curricula that, if taught in their entirety, come with rewards like class field trips and workshops with names like Retroactive and Fossils to Fuel. These programs are incentivized with professional development credits and a $100 stipend. Melissa says these kinds of resources might resonate with teachers who feel underprepared to teach what can be an overwhelming subject.
Melissa Lau: "That's very appealing in many ways. If a teacher is like, this seems legit... I mean, there's not anything wrong incorrect with the science. It just gives the impression of, you know, look how good the fossil fuel industry is. It minimizes the impact."
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The literature paints them as the good guys, the ones to be trusted. Jeff Grant has noticed representatives of the fossil fuel industry at education conferences up in Illinois as well, but says the scale of intervention is less extreme than in Oklahoma. But he too understands why some teachers might opt to take part in professional development run by bodies like the Oklahoma Energy Resources Board.
Jeff Grant: "The hardest thing I feel like I have seen with professional development is the money piece. Right? I mean, heck. Teachers aren't exactly the best paid position in the country. And these companies they have a lot of money, so they can throw it that way to try to put their resources with these teachers and then they'll give them stipends too."
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And it is not helped by what Glenn Branch says is a systemic problem in the way schools get their funding.
Glenn Branch: "Some will come from the states, some from the federal government, but the majority is going to be local property taxes. And local property owners tend not to want to pay more taxes."
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He says the economic importance of the fossil fuel industry in states where its representatives actively court teachers and students, makes it difficult to dislodge the programs they offer. Even when parents raise concerns. That's why it's crucial to keep ensuring educators have access to scientifically sound materials and to involve them in helping spread accurate information.
And that is where Jeff has become very active. Noticing a gap in available programs, he pitched the idea of a day long climate education conference for Illinois science teachers to his department chair and got the green light. He teamed up with colleagues from the Golden Apple Academy to bring it to life, hosting the event at his school last year. To make it accessible, it was scheduled on a statewide professional development day. It was a major undertaking, but Jeff says it was absolutely worth it.
Jeff Grant: "So we ended up having about 400 teachers, middle school and high school teachers come to the high school. We had scientists flying in from different states. We had local organizations giving presentations, so it was a full day of learning for these teachers. They were learning nothing but climate change science-based stuff, from labs to presentations from great speakers. It was just a knock-your-socks-off fantastic day."
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And the feedback was so good that he's involved in planning another conference for early next year.
Jeff Grant: "The amount of people at the end of the day, they were like, 'oh, I really needed this. This was fantastic.' When you go to that conference and you talk with other science teachers that want to do more and you know they're going through the same frustrations, it's very empowering.
It's a hopeful thing. It's not, you know, gloom and doom. You can do this, the kids can do this. 2100 is is the year to shoot for, let's get on the correct trajectory."
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In an ideal world, Jeff would love to see the concept expanded into other states, reaching more teachers he knows would benefit from having the time and space to talk and hear about the topic. And how to integrate it into their lesson plans.
Jeff Grant: "We're hoping, we're really hoping, yeah... because we don't operate with a budget. I don't, I don't get paid. The other people that are doing this, they're not getting paid. The hardest part is, we're reaching Illinois teachers. How do you get started in Indiana? How do you get started in Washington? I don't know the answer to that but we're hopeful that it would be something that could be done in other places."
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Melissa Lau has been asking herself questions along those lines because there are, she says, some colleagues who don't accept the science. That was one reason why she got involved with the National Center for Science Education.
Earlier this summer she presented some of their climate change resources to the state's educators hoping it would help remove some of the obstacles to teaching climate change.
Melissa Lau: "There was probably 20 or 30 educators there which to me I felt like that was a huge success. And then the feedback that these were teachers that were excited about using that curriculum in their classrooms."
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She'd love to do more of that kind of work. And says her local school boards and authorities are supportive and interested in how her teaching can help prepare students for the future. But that same level of encouragement isn't coming from the state or federal level.
Melissa Lau: "As a teacher, I always felt like I need ed to hold myself to a higher standard on social media, just as an example for my students. But now, just about anything can get me on our state superintendent's radar. I'm not too concerned about that, but I know for a lot of teachers it's especially terrifying right now to speak out or say anything that can be seen as indoctrination."
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And that in itself could make bigger events that are open to teachers from across the state, harder to pull off.
Melissa Lau: "I think teachers right now would feel like it would put them on some sort of list. So I don't know how well that would be received. If they were starting to get into teaching climate change, but they're not as passionate about it. You know, this is my 26th year, I'm a union member. I've got lawyers, I'm good... you know, like... let's go. But there are others that are just starting their careers. This is not necessarily something they're wanting to get under fire and have to fight for 30-plus years of their career. I can see why that would be very disheartening and not want to speak out or to say anything. Which is why I'm always happy to do so."
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Ultimately, she says there is a need to change mind-sets about the climate crisis to and depoliticize climate so people can start seeing it as the health crisis, socioeconomic and social justice crisis that it is.
Melissa Lau: "It's not about vilifying individual humans. Yes, the oil and fossil fuel industry has misled us in the same way that the tobacco industry had done to us in the fifties. But this isn't a morality issue, this isn't an identity issue. This is a humanitarian crisis. And no matter what side of the political spectrum you stand on, this is our greatest existential human crisis that we have to be dealing with. It's not a right versus left crisis."
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Interestingly, and maybe encouragingly, she says her students tend to get understand the role of humans in the climate crisis in a way that adults sometimes don't. And that chimes with Jeff's own experiences in class.
Jeff Grant: "They just go with it. I mean, there's not a resistance. It's not, um, it's not something that they combat or that they say 'well, this isn't what I've been learning all my life.' No, it's not hard for them. Kids are very resilient. Kids are very smart."
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And they are also, as Jeff continues to witness, curious. Besides teaching, he also hosts a science club at his school and last year he took five students to a state competition around environmental knowledge. They didn't win but they did come away inspired.
Jeff Grant: "Those five kids were like 'we really need to do more stuff.' I was like, 'alright, well what do you wanna do?'"
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When he mentioned this enthusiasm to a contact from the American Geoscience group a couple of days later, she made a suggestion.
Jeff Grant: "She goes, 'oh, well, you know, we're trying to work with kids to develop rain gardens.' I'm like 'what's a rain garden?' And she told me, and I told the kids and they're like, 'we should make one at our school.' And I said, 'yeah.'"
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For clarity, a rain garden is not a wetland, but an area where native plants are dug into a small depression. The idea is that it can temporarily hold water that runs off from rooftops of paved areas. That water then filters into the surrounding soil.
Jeff Grant: "If you pick the right plants, they can clean up that water before it goes down there as well. So the rain garden concept is just decreasing an ecological footprint. It's not something that you need to tear up an entire big area to make a manmade structure. It's just using nature to try to help a problem that we've kind of made and we're living with. So the kids pitched it to the administration and guess what? We put one in. It was fantastic."
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He says teaching kids about science and climate change is about trying to help them understand and better navigate the world. But he also sees it as an opportunity for them to learn how to become aware of their role in it.