The irony is that the education field knows what works. Forty-nine states have adopted science standards emphasizing the exploration of natural phenomena that develop critical thinking, evidence-based decisionmaking and problem-solving skills. But too many middle and high school science courses still prioritize memorization over inquiry-based learning. Schools are teaching science as if it exists in a vacuum, disconnected from the mathematical, technological and ethical questions that give it meaning.

The literacy field offers a different approach. The science of reading movement transformed instruction by identifying research-based teaching practices and high-quality resources in specific states that became proof points for wider change.

The nation needs an equivalent “science of science education” strategy.

Just as science of reading research revealed the importance of phonics, fluency and comprehension working together, in shows that students learn best when they engage in designing investigations, analyzing data, constructing explanations and solving problems that are relevant to their lives.. The key is districtwide implementation of high-quality instructional materials and curriculum-based professional learning that integrate these practices with rigorous science content.

The supply of high-quality instructional materials for science remains limited, with validating only a handful of middle school programs and even fewer high school options. The lack of materials that meet expectations, coupled with the scarcity of funding available to districts to purchase science teaching materials, has contributed to the popularity of adopting high-quality open educational resources like , which are freely available. One of the benefits of choosing such materials is that it allows districts to devote more time and funding to help teachers use the materials effectively through curriculum-based professional learning.

I spent the last eight years to teachers around the country talk about their use of high-quality curricula like after receiving curriculum-based professional learning — in other words, experiencing the materials as “students” before using them in their classrooms. These educators fundamental shifts in their teaching philosophy and practice. They move from delivering content to guiding students in making sense of the curriculum materials, from providing answers to supporting productive struggle, from preparing lessons on their own to solving problems collaboratively with colleagues.

These teachers also report that their students demonstrate striking behavioral changes: They stop seeking quick answers on their cellphones and instead engage in substantive discussions with peers and teachers. They bring real-world connections to science concepts, continuing conversations beyond school hours and seeing the relevance of scientific phenomena in their own lives. Most importantly, all students — not just high achievers — contribute meaningfully when investigating questions and designing solutions with their classmates.

Many districts discovered that traditional professional development approaches fail when they try to implement phenomenon-based science curricula. Generic workshops about teaching strategies cannot prepare educators to teach using well-designed inquiry-based science materials.Instead, professional learning needs to actively engage educators using the same instructional materials and ways of teaching that their students will encounter.

This approach can create resistance at first — experienced teachers often hesitate to engage in curricula as students. However, districts that persist find this discomfort reveals exactly why the approach is necessary. Teachers who experience productive struggle develop empathy for students’ challenges and learn to give them time to work through challenges and help them persist.

This approach also addresses content knowledge gaps that traditional professional development misses. Hands-on investigations deepen teachers’ science knowledge in ways that lectures do not. This engagement with content gives teachers more confidence using the curriculum materials with their students.

Overall, districts find that transformation in science education occurs when professional learning engages teachers as learners first, addresses specific implementation challenges and provides ongoing support for shifting teaching practices rather than one-time training sessions.

What actions should district and school leaders take to make an immediate impact on science education? District leaders need to adopt high-quality instructional materials and invest in sustained, curriculum-based professional learning from certified providers, rather than generic workshops. They must also help principals understand why it’s important to give teachers permission to try new teaching approaches, prioritizing learning how to effectively use new curriculum materials over immediate test results.

School leaders should provide teachers with high-quality instructional materials, adequate planning time and ongoing curriculum-based professional learning for phenomenon-based instruction. It’s also critical that they signal to the educators, students, families and other sin the community that science education is important by enabling students to address local problems and present evidence-based solutions in ways that demonstrate their scientific knowledge.

Science education isn’t a luxury — it’s fundamental to America’s economic prosperity and civic health. The question isn’t whether science education can be improved, but whether education leaders have the collective will to implement what works: high-quality instructional materials paired with curriculum-based professional learning that treats both teachers and students as active thinkers and learners.

Despite hopes for a rebound, students’ reading progress , with academic growth in 2023-24 again falling short of pre-pandemic trends. The gap between pre- and post-COVID reading scores has widened by 36%, and at the current pace, the average student needs nearly five more months of learning to catch up. The struggle is even greater for historically marginalized students, who remain the furthest behind, making it clear that pandemic recovery has a long way to go.

Science achievement has , with uneven recovery across grade levels. While students in grades 3 through 5 have largely returned to pre-pandemic performance, middle schoolers are still struggling — particularly eighth graders, who remain more than three months behind. The setbacks are especially pronounced for Hispanic and Black students, highlighting persistent gaps that could have long-term consequences for STEM readiness. Without targeted support, these disparities may continue to widen, limiting opportunities for students already most at risk of being left behind.

Education leaders have limited avenues for addressing these challenges, especially now that federal recovery funding has expired. One underutilized approach is the integration of literacy and science instruction in elementary schools, which creates a mutually reinforcing learning experience. Students read, write and discuss real-world scientific phenomena while building background knowledge, strengthening their ability to understand complex text and information, and engaging in meaningful conversations — all factors in literacy success. Plus, integration means literacy and science instruction don’t have to compete with each other on the school schedule.

Our dug into the research on the benefits of blending these two subjects in elementary school and found that who received integrated literacy and science instruction retained more reading skills over the summer and performed better, by nearly 8 percentage points, on science-related reading tasks than their peers who did not. By building knowledge through thematic lessons and extensive reading of a broad range of informational texts on various topics, this approach helped students transfer what they learned to new reading challenges. 

Similarly, third through fifth graders participated in a study where instruction in reading and writing comprehension were woven into science lessons. The students read scientific texts, analyzed data, discussed key ideas and wrote about their findings, strengthening both their literacy and science skills. By the end of fifth grade, students in the study scored more than a full grade higher in science and more than a half-grade higher in reading on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills than their peers in traditional classrooms. These gains persisted into middle school, with students in grades 6 and 7 continuing to show higher achievement in both subjects.

Another study focused on integrate science, reading and math into daily instruction. In these classrooms, students explored scientific concepts through books, engaged in hands-on investigations and applied math to interpret their findings. As a result, they scored higher on early literacy, reading and math assessments than those whose teachers did not receive the training. Notably, students whose teachers participated in the professional development demonstrated reading achievement levels equivalent to an extra half-year of instruction compared with their peers.

To do integration well, four components needed to be present:

• Engaging students with real-world phenomena that spark curiosity and drive deeper learning. When using everyday occurrences to anchor science instruction, students begin to see science all around them.
  
• Strengthening academic vocabulary by immersing students in the specialized language of science to enhance their reading and writing skills.
  
•  Supporting sustained and structured learning with science instruction that builds over time, with each lesson connecting to the next to help students develop understanding.
  
•  Encouraging scientific discourse that involves students in planning investigations, making hypotheses and debating evidence to deepen their understanding of science concepts while reinforcing literacy skills.

Implementing integration successfully means schools must allow time for collaboration among literacy instructors, science teachers and school librarians. It may also mean rethinking the master schedule, including the planning time needed. School leaders also need to acquire high-quality, phenomenon-based science materials, like science journals and texts, and ensure students have access. For schools with a limited budget, it might be useful to partner with a public library or identify . Lastly, schools must invest in sustained professional learning, including how to incorporate real-world science phenomena, leverage academic vocabulary, build structured instructional plans and sequences, and foster coordination between subjects to engage students.

To help educators bring these components to life in the classroom, we developed a that provides concrete strategies, lesson ideas and examples of integrated instruction in action. The guide illustrates how teachers can engage students with real-world phenomena, build academic vocabulary, support structured learning and foster scientific discourse — all while strengthening literacy skills.  

The challenge of unfinished learning remains urgent. Everyone from teachers to superintendents to education researchers must rethink approaches to how students learn and what can drive greater academic growth. Integration of literacy and science instruction in elementary schools is one untapped approach for driving greater student outcomes. Doing both together can drive greater academic growth than either subject can do alone.

A science class for middle school students at Panorama Middle School commonly involves a trek out to the prairie behind the school, a sketch of native seeds under the microscope or a homework assignment to track the progress of a backyard bluebird from its birdhouse.

Teacher Mark Dorhout created an outdoor education program at the middle school in Panora to “connect (students) to the natural world,” foster environmental stewardship, and give students a real-world application to the science they learn in the classroom.

Dorhout, who has a degree in wildlife and fisheries sciences, spent the majority of his career teaching or administering at middle schools and has been teaching sixth through eighth grade science at Panorama Middle School for four years.

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He started the outdoor education program by taking students out to a recently restored prairie behind the school, and using the school’s backyard in his lessons as much as possible.

“This has been a long-standing passion of mine that has become more and more apparent as we move along in this society,” Dorhout said. “And really the main thrust to that is that kids are out less and less into this environment.”

Now the class and its non-traditional classroom has a reputation among the middle schoolers — all of whom will go through the project, make a birdhouse, and get to meet Dorhout’s Labrador retriever, which never misses a field day.

Dorhout said he’s thankful the school district has been very supportive of the program and works with him to supply materials and promote the course in newsletters to parents.

“They get it,” Dorhout said of his district. “They understand the value of a program like this.”

Dorhout said the 11-acre prairie behind the school has been there for over 20 years but really fell out of use until seven or so years ago when the local members of the Izaak Walton League worked to “grub out” some of the trees that had overtaken the area, and replant it to prairie.

Each grade has a different project. Seventh graders build either a bluebird or a wren box that they take home, hang on a tree, and monitor through the rest of their time in middle school.

“They never knew that there was the whole other thing going on … and then all of a sudden they’ve started paying attention to the birds in the neighborhood,” Dorhout said.

Eighth grade students get to work in the greenhouse as part of their curriculum on genetics and climate change. Last year he added sixth graders to his docket and uses the prairie for their lessons in water quality and chemistry.

Dorhout said going out and conducting water quality tests gives the students a real life application of the chemistry they learn in the classroom.

And all of the students get about 50 field days over the course of their time in middle school. Throughout the program, Dorhout has his students gather seeds, add plants into the prairie and analyze what makes one section of the prairie better than another. All of it leads to pretty “rich conversations” around soil quality and biodiversity.

“Kids that you wouldn’t think would like doing prairie work, just totally get into it,” Dorhout said.

Brody Steenblock, a ninth grade student at Panorama High School who went through Dorhout’s program, grew up hunting and farming and said he considered himself outdoorsy, but that Dorohout’s class was “a next level of outdoors.”

Steenblock said he persuaded his parents to plant multiple acres of the prairie grasses he learned about in the class, as part of the Conservation Reserve Program on their farm.

“I don’t think we probably would have planted it, if it wasn’t for the outdoor ed,” Steenblock said.

Steenblock said the class “sparked” a lot of interest in him and he recalls that it was the favorite class for many of his peers as well.

“There was just a whole bunch of kids that either just were not doing the best in school, and couldn’t pay attention in school, and then, you get to Mr. Dorhout’s class, and … kids were just like a whole different person,” Steenblock said.

Cross curricular

Dorhout spoke about his class during a Watershed Talk with the Dec. 17.

Mike Delaney, a member of the league and a prairie advocate who lives near Dorhout, called the outdoor education program “phenomenal.”

“I’ve been thinking about prairie as a teaching tool, and I’m not sure there’s any limits to what you can get into,” Delaney said. “Anything you want to do you can use prairie as an example, and that’s what you’re doing.”

Dorhout doesn’t teach just science in his classroom, but engages students across disciplines.

The middle schoolers each keep a journal where they take down field observations and are encouraged to draw diagrams and doodles of what they study.

Dorhout has also posted the cardinal directions on each of the four walls of his classroom with a corresponding theme. The north wall, for example, faces the prairie and is labeled with “environment”, the east wall faces town and says “community,” South is recreation and West is legacy. He has students write notes about each of these elements and post them up on the wall.

“I always try to get them to understand where we’re at in this world,” Dorhout said.

Students also get about 25 minutes of moderate exercise every time they walk to the prairie, and on days where the school has an unusual schedule, he’ll take his classes to do longer hikes at Lake Panorama, which is walking distance from the school.

Dorhout has also been known to turn a blind eye to some of the fun – like perhaps a friendly snowball fight – that inevitably takes place between 20-30 middle schoolers in the open air.

“Just enough organization so we can have a meaningful lesson, and just enough goof around time that the kids think that it’s awesome,” he said.

Lasting impact

Dorhout said one of the coolest things about the prairie is its visibility from the school and to the community. This means as the students get older, they can still see it and remember the work they did to improve that land.

“I just see that as a really powerful thing, when you look at the life of a prairie and what it looks like now compared to what it did six years ago when you guys first started this reconstruction,” Dorhout said.

This was also Steenblock’s favorite part of the class.

He started seeds in sixth grade and throughout his time in middle school he got to watch them develop through the prairie.

“We can still go back to this day and then see what we had done because we were part of that,” Steenblock said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com.

, released Tuesday by the nonprofit testing group NWEA, serve as more evidence of a trend that has stood out in earlier data: Students who were still in elementary school when the pandemic began are experiencing particularly worrisome setbacks as schools try to chart a path to academic recovery. Meanwhile, today’s elementary schoolers have nearly returned to the levels of learning last seen in 2019.

This summer, NWEA circulated scores from their widely used of math and reading. The results, which included the performance of nearly eight million American students from grades 3–8, revealed that today’s eighth graders were a full year behind 2019 learning in both subjects. By contrast, learning delays for third graders were only about one-quarter that size. 

In general, learning loss in science has been less significant than for core disciplines like math and reading because STEM instruction is comparatively limited in the early grades. In a 2018 survey, elementary teachers said they spent only 18 minutes each day focusing on science, compared with about an hour on math and 1.5 hours on reading. 

Susan Kowalski, an NWEA senior researcher who worked on the report, said the scores showed that students who experienced their foundational years of STEM instruction in 2020 and 2021 were now struggling to cope.

“If science is taught at all in elementary school, it’s in the fourth and fifth grades,” Kowalski reflected. “So in 2021, those were the kids who were hardest hit in science, and they are now seventh and eighth graders who have never really rebounded.”

The latest data is drawn from 621 public schools that consistently administered the MAP Growth Science test to the same grade levels between 2017 and 2024. This ongoing sample allowed the research team to measure students this spring against not only those in the pre-COVID period, but also during the initial phases of the pandemic, when tens of millions of students were receiving virtual instruction. 

Those results show that, by the spring of 2021, students across all tested grades had fallen significantly behind in science, with especially sizable learning losses mounting in grades 4 and 5. But elementary schoolers have since recovered the most ground compared with their same-age predecessors of three years ago, with learning gaps reduced by 50% for third graders, 82% for fifth graders, and 33% for sixth graders. Fourth graders, whose performance dropped the furthest during the early stages of the pandemic, have now fully returned to their 2019-era achievement levels in science.

But the gaps for older students — essentially, those who saw the biggest dips three years ago — have grown with time. In 2021, NWEA estimated that seventh and eighth graders would require 0.9 and 1.7 months of additional science instruction, respectively, to catch up to where similar students had been in 2019; by 2024, the projection for students in that grade had grown to 1.7 and 3.2 months of supplemental learning, respectively. 

In other words, kids’ whose initial encounters with science were thwarted by the COVID shock appear to be falling further behind, even as state and federal leaders have provided school districts with billions of dollars to lead recovery efforts. 

Heidi Schweingruber, the director of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s , said that students’ halting progress in science could constrain their life chances in the future. Adolescents begin to develop aspirations for college and career only a few years after they receive their first lessons in science.

“If they’re missing that foundation and can’t follow a strong pathway into high school science, are we closing doors for them in terms of what they might consider after graduation?” Schweingruber asked. “Middle school is the time when kids are starting to develop an identity of who they want to be.”

As other testing data have indicated previously, the pandemic also significantly widened achievement gaps separating students along racial lines. While middle schoolers of all racial and ethnic backgrounds had fallen behind in science by the spring of 2021, Hispanic students lost more ground than their white classmates. Among eighth graders, Hispanics required a projected 3.4 months of academic recovery in 2021 and 6.3 months in 2024; whites in the same age cohort needed 0.5 months of recovery in 2021 and 1.6 months now.

Black students, who have mostly bounced back from the science losses sustained in 2020 and 2021, are still, on average, between 10 and 15 months behind the average achievement levels for children in their grades. Hispanic students, whose progress has only stalled further since 2021, are almost as badly off. 

Erika Shugart, CEO of the , said in a statement that she wasn’t surprised to see negative impacts concentrated among middle schoolers, though she added that persistent gaps in STEM instruction could prove economically and socially destructive in the long run.

“The U.S. is already facing significant challenges producing a STEM-ready workforce,” Shugart wrote. “Science literacy is crucial for making informed decisions about health, the environment, and technology. Falling behind in science education can impair individuals’ ability to engage with and understand complex issues, affecting personal and societal well-being.”

To combat lost science learning, NWEA’s authors recommended different strategies to curb chronic absenteeism, entice students to participate in summer learning opportunities, and weave science instruction into middle school reading instruction, which could improve performance in both subjects.

Kowalski said that, more than any particular approach, educators needed to embrace a “mentality shift” away from remediation and toward learning acceleration. A former high school physics instructor, she argued that schools can’t get their pupils back on track simply by offering them what they missed four years ago.

“They can’t succumb to low expectations and say, ‘These students are behind, so I need to slow down.’ It’s more like, ‘These students are behind, so I need to accelerate.’”

Alaska’s Department of Education and Early Development released statewide assessment data on Friday that shows most students are not proficient in core subjects.

The scores are similar to overall, even though the state in January. Education Commissioner Deena Bishop said then that Alaska’s standards are still in the top third in the nation.

The Alaska System of Academic Readiness test, commonly referred to as the AK STAR assessment, evaluates student knowledge of grade-level standards in English language arts and mathematics for third through ninth graders and grade-level standards for science in fifth, eighth and 10th grades.

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Student scores fall into four levels of achievement: advanced, proficient, approaching proficient, and needs support.

Across grade levels, roughly 32% of Alaska students were proficient or advanced in both English language arts and mathematics. Nearly 37% of students across grade levels tested were proficient or better in science.

Bishop appealed to Alaskans to use the results for continuous improvement in a statement released on Friday.

“State assessments play a role in measuring how well our students meet the Alaska standards — standards shaped by Alaskan educators. By accepting the results without defense, we commit to using these data for improvement,” she said in a news release. “Alaska is not merely focused on the outcomes themselves, rather our goal is to build the capacity in our students’ foundational knowledge and ability for their future in work and life.”

Pre-pandemic comparisons to measure if students’ scores are improving after school closures are difficult because the state changed its assessment. Scores were in the 2018-2019 academic year, however. Then, 39% of students were proficient in or advanced scorers in English language arts and nearly 36% of students were proficient or better in math.

Fifth graders performed best on the 2024 tests. More than 37% met or exceeded state proficiency standards, which was a nearly 2% increase over the previous year. Nearly half of fifth graders, more than 47%, were proficient or better in science standards.

Eighth, ninth and tenth graders had lower levels of proficiency. The state said “efforts are underway” to support students in reading and offer career and technical education options.

Officials with the state Department of Education and Early Childhood did not respond to questions about how to understand this year’s scores in the contact of previous years and pandemic recovery.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew Kitchenman for questions: info@alaskabeacon.com. Follow Alaska Beacon on and .

CONWAY — Coastal Carolina students are working to send a satellite into space as part of South Carolina’s first university-run space program.

Around 80 science and engineering students are involved in the planning stages for a satellite expected to cost $1.5 million to build and launch. The faculty members leading the effort since last March are hoping to send the shoebox-sized satellite into space by 2027.

The satellite, which will circle the planet 15 times a day from roughly 1,200 miles up, will offer hands-on learning opportunities across a variety of academic programs.

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For example, cameras on the satellite will be able to detect changes in sea levels, flooding from hurricanes and erosion along coastlines. Students and researchers can use that data to find solutions to climate problems and natural disasters, said Wes Hitt, head of the university’s physics and engineering science department, who’s leading the effort.

Other students can get involved in promoting the program, developing a website or finding donors, Hitt said.

Plus, the satellite should offer students a new, extraterrestrial way to take a selfie.

People will be able to submit photos and text to be displayed on the side of the satellite, which will feature a “selfie stick” to snap a picture of their image — with the satellite and outer space as the background — to send back down to Earth.

Exactly how that would work is yet to be decided. There may be a cost to the cosmic selfies, which could be a fundraiser to support the program, Hitt said.

“It’s going to function almost like a billboard in space,” he told the SC Daily Gazette.

These types of small satellites, called CubeSats, are often used for educational programs because they are relatively cheap and quick to build, . The CubeSat the university plans to launch, called ChantSat-1, is 10-by-10-by-30 centimeters.

Faculty mentors will head groups of students each working on a different aspect of the satellite. Groups will write flight software, create heating and cooling systems, and find ways to communicate with the satellite once it’s in orbit, Hitt said.

“Working on Coastal’s small satellite design has been an engaging and eye-opening experience,” Charis Williams, a junior engineering major, said in a release from the university. “It’s a whole world that I never knew existed, but it’s both amazing and scary to work on a project that goes far beyond a purely conceptual dream.”

Research uses

Once in orbit, the satellite will use cameras to see changes in drinking water that are difficult to detect from the ground. Near-infrared cameras able to see colors beyond the spectrum visible to humans will make it easier to tell how much sediment is in drinking water supplies or whether algae is blooming in a nearby river.

“That’s going to allow end-users to have that data to monitor the health and the quality of some of the Grand Strand and South Carolina’s most valuable water resources,” Hitt said.

Students studying marine science and oceanography will be able to monitor coastal erosion and sea-level rise, Hitt said.

And intelligence and security students can use the images to practice geospatial intelligence, which is a method of analyzing photographs and data from a specific location, said Bob Vipperman, chair of the university’s board overseeing its intelligence department.

“The project is going to be a place where students from diverse backgrounds and with very varied skill sets are going to learn to communicate with each other, learn to collaborate effectively with each other and solve those tough, complex problems that come with trying to get into space,” Hitt said.

The next step will be finding enough donors to fund the program, whether through grants, companies or individual supporters, Vipperman said.

The program has enough money to get started but not the full amount necessary, Vipperman said, declining to be specific.

He did say it could take $750,000 to launch the satellite into space.

CubeSats typically hitch a ride on a rocket already going into space for one reason or another, a bit like a ride share, he said.

Most often, the tiny satellites join SpaceX rockets carrying other cargo or people, but other services are designed just to launch the CubeSats. As the launch date grows closer, the teams will have to decide which rocket will carry their satellite.

In the meantime, Vipperman and Hitt said they’re hoping the program will act as a boon for the 10,000-student university.

Having the only space program in the state could help boost its image for science and technology degrees, Hitt said.

Plus, the selfie stick and social media campaigns can educate people beyond the university’s campus, he added.

“We see this project as making space and space technology and interaction with space technology more broadly accessible,” Hitt said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com. Follow SC Daily Gazette on and .

As a mentor to science teachers and an ambassador to a national social-emotional learning program that helps students realize the importance of relationships to learning and self-discovery, I tell teachers that when it comes to acceleration, there is only one way forward. The accelerating factor is student interest, which is built from relationships with teachers, classmates, learning, the larger world and themselves. 

This means doing what learning science, and science itself, does best — put students face to face with the rules that govern the natural world and the kinds of problems faced by professionals who help unravel them. Of course, this can, and should, be done in every subject. But science teaches every skill set. Through science, students can practice communicating, providing evidence to back up an argument and using data and numbers to verify and explain the phenomena they uncover.

Students from every background can succeed if teachers focus on building the same skills that help great scientists arrive at great discoveries. 

First, science helps young people build connections between themselves and the world around them. Students, especially those for whom the natural world feels unimaginably large, need to master content that transcends the walls of the school building. Whether comparing the radio frequencies transmitted from local radio stations or meeting scientists of color who visit classrooms for hands-on experiments, students can see that doing science is not something that happens somewhere else. They also can realize that they — like the scientists who visit them — can have an impact on their own environment.

Students also benefit from exploring current, real-world research conducted in their own community. They show enthusiasm and interest when, for example, the seismic wave data they are analyzing is from a recent earthquake that occurred nearby and they can question local geologists about their work. This makes science much more meaningful. Another important aspect is the way scientists use empathy, conflict resolution and listening skills when working as a team. Social-emotional learning programs help students know each other on a deep level through community-building lessons such as , in which they work together in pairs. Students learn how to interact in new ways, listen to each other’s diverse viewpoints, appreciate each other’s contributions to a team project and sort out differences when there is a disagreement.

Second, science teaches students how to be thinkers, innovators and world-changers. As students learn to use the scientific skills of data analysis, evidence-based explanations and problem-solving, they become empowered to follow their own curiosity, share what they know with confidence and take charge of what they study.

A few years ago, my eighth-graders participated in the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program. Sponsored by the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education, it’s a national competition, a nine-month challenge requiring student teams to construct a research proposal for an experiment to be tested on the International Space Station. I encouraged the students to choose a topic that interested them and would make an impact on the science community. One student noticed an article about the high incidences of contaminated water in many countries, and the team constructed a proposal detailing a purification process for that would be used in the space station’s microgravity environment. My students were chosen as a , and their experiment headed to space. We visited the Kennedy Space Center to watch the experiment launch and created memories that will last forever.

Third, science creates enrichment opportunities that help students transition to a new phase in their academic journey. These are particularly important when a high percentage of students at a school have faced adverse childhood experiences, which requires practices that support trauma-informed teaching and a safe environment for learning. 

A few years later, working with a new group of students transitioning from elementary to middle

school, I suggested to my principal that we could best prepare the sixth-graders by establishing a two-week-long summer camp that integrated social-emotional learning into academics. I wanted to enable the students to connect with school staff and develop relationships with their peers. We focused on math, science and English Language Arts skills practice, as well as key factors of wellness: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationships and responsible decision-making. Taught by teachers from the school they were preparing to enter, the students experienced the value of community and positive peer and adult relationships as they worked on organizational skills, team building, goal setting, perseverance and deadline management to prepare for the increased workloads of middle school. 

These types of approaches encourage interest in STEM but also help students tackle rigorous work in any subject. Too many American students attempt to solve difficult problems by fumbling for answers rather than taking the time to wrestle with challenging work. This is true in life as well. Middle school is a time when students are sorting out who they are. By working together and building relationships with teachers and peers, they can learn about themselves, their interests and the skills of self-management. They need to know how to weigh alternatives, communicate effectively and look for help when they need it — all things that the science of learning says are crucial in solving life’s problems in and beyond the classroom.

While in orbit, he conducted single-cell genome sequencing demonstrations. 

“We were able to do so many great things, and have lots of fun — including making space habitat videos,” he said.

The video series, , is a collection of short videos focusing on STEM for K-12 students, while also showing what it’s like to live and work in space. 

The videos can be used as an element in a classroom, and teachers can build lessons around them. 

“Children and students, they all have a curiosity,” Shoffner said. “So through the richness of these videos, we want them to run across something that is of a key interest to them and start to explore that.”

But he says there’s also a lesson about how to make STEM fun. He says STEM “teaches us some great skills of communication, of creative thinking and problem solving.”

He hopes the videos will inspire both students and teachers to uncover their natural curiosity. “That will be really exciting to know that’s possible,” Shoffner said.

Though I teach teenagers, I often meet elementary teachers through my work as an educator and board member of a pre-K-to-12 curricula organization. I love hearing how they spark joy in their budding young scientists and bring engaging, real-world experiences inside the classroom.

During one such conversation, I heard about second graders who learned about the properties of matter by studying how birds build nests. The kids created model nests, studied the effect of heating and cooling, and tested which materials offer protection from the rain. In another classroom, I heard about forces and motion investigations in which third graders compared activity on Earth versus space and applied aspects of the lesson to engineering a tool to secure objects in space.

It’s rich experiences like these that students need more of. Younger children who engage in in-class learning in tangible ways, conduct lab work to investigate scientific phenomena and run their own experiments are ultimately better prepared for high school classes like the ones I teach. This type of learning helps ignite passions in science and clarify difficult-to-understand concepts. 

Student preparedness has been on my mind lately, because many kids need much more support than before the pandemic. Three years after COVID-19 disrupted education, students have knowledge gaps in biology, chemistry and physics that limit their ability to conduct fundamental and probing science experiments. Hands-on learning helps ignite passions in science and clarify difficult-to-understand concepts. If these shortcomings are not addressed, early learners will miss out on high-quality and engaging science instruction and older students will have difficulty accessing rigorous high school courses and STEM pathways in college and careers. 

This is an issue everyone should care about. If schools are not helping to train the next generation of scientists, how will the country safely emerge from future public health threats and address climate change, while developing new technologies and inventions that improve all lives?

One of the first things education leaders and policymakers can do is devote more time to science in schools. Elementary teachers have reported spending just , compared with 89 minutes on reading and 57 on math. In addition, only 17% of K-3 teachers say they teach science all or most days every week. It is the responsibility of education leaders to understand why, and how this is shortchanging students. Bringing simple experiments into the classroom setting and designing training modules for age-specific groups can increase learning and comprehension of science even when teachers lack a strong background in the subject. Science should be integrated into all class subjects, including general reading and writing. 

Another way teachers might engage students in science learning is by weaving real-world projects into curricula. Schools can run science fairs and invite members of the community, allowing students to deliver public presentations about their work. Local scientists can be invited for in-person visits, and those who are further away can discuss their work virtually. Meaningful field trips can also be engaging opportunities to bring what is happening in the classroom to life in novel ways.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many teachers learned to adapt to technology. Educators can build on that knowledge to incorporate stronger science practices and technologies in a post-COVID-19 pandemic classroom. 

One strategy educators should consider trying is to help kids participate in science competitions. National Geographic featured my classes in the documentary “,” which shows how to build enthusiasm for learning through science competitions. Well-run, respected contests, like the Regeneron Science Talent Search and International Science and Engineering Fair, can motivate students and enhance their learning. There are others for a range of ages, too. Preparing for and participating in a science competition enables students to practice key skills, tackle problems they care about and connect with STEM professionals. 

Consider the example of one of my former students, who was skipping school and getting poor grades when he came to me as a sophomore. He liked my class and wanted to enter competitions. We had a heart-to-heart talk, and he agreed to start coming to school every day. Ultimately, he devoted himself to a research project on improvements to window glass that reflects and refracts light to better regulate the temperature of houses, depending on the season. He didn’t take the top prize, but he re-engaged in school and went on to graduate from a top university and become a successful entrepreneur. 

Other students I’ve had the privilege of teaching have been featured in prominent journals, gone on to medical school or Ph.D. programs and are shaping the sciences and industry. All kids deserve these types of opportunities, and all students should be trained to think and apply what they know toward addressing global problems. 

I wish this kind of teaching and learning were the norm. It is possible, but it will take a collective understanding that every child needs high-quality, rigorous science education from an early age, and that schools need to devote more time and attention to this critical subject. If education leaders, policymakers, and teachers commit to those principles, I have no doubt students will soar — resulting in bright futures and a better world for all.

Teaching science to young students should spark creativity and joy; to do so requires a well-prepared teacher who can engage kids effectively as well as deliver essential content knowledge.

Science education in the elementary grades is to encouraging young children’s interest in science-related careers, developing critical thinking and problem-solving skills and building reading comprehension. It is even more urgent for the nation’s most vulnerable students — Black and Latino children, English learners, students with disabilities and those living in poverty — who have disproportionately low rates of and are most likely to be to the broad curricular content that can help them establish the knowledge and skills they need for later grades and to succeed in the 21st century world.

But investments in new science equipment, curricula, textbooks and activities are moot if education leaders don’t also attend to the science preparation of aspiring elementary teachers.

There’s a lot of work to do. A found that only 31% of elementary teachers reported feeling very well prepared to teach science. When the survey broke it down to look at specific topics, the picture was even worse: Fewer than a quarter reported feeling well-prepared to teach any specific science topic, such as life science, earth science and physical science, and only 3% reported feeling well-prepared to teach engineering — despite the inclusion of these topics in state elementary standards for students.

A key reason is that, too often, teacher preparation programs do not explicitly require future elementary educators to take courses that cover essential science topics, even when those courses are available. A finds major gaps in required science topic coverage for future elementary teachers.

For example, every state and D.C. includes science topics in elementary student standards, such as “forces, waves and energy,” “Earth’s systems and processes” and “interdependent relationships in ecosystems.” Yet NCTQ found only about half of teacher preparation programs require future elementary teachers to take courses covering these topics. The good news is that since nearly all programs offer courses covering these topics as options, most teacher preparation programs don’t need to create new ones. They just need to direct future elementary teachers to the right science courses by making them mandatory.

NCTQ data show that aspiring elementary teachers are required to take an average of four science courses for graduation. However, teacher preparation and general education programs typically offer long lists of course options to choose from — with varying degrees of relevance to what the new educators will be expected to teach students. As interesting as “Calculus-Based Analytical Physics” or “Literature and Environmental Science” may be, surely a future elementary teacher should take “Physics: Forces, Sound, Momentum & Energy” and “Principles of Living Systems” instead. By guiding aspiring educators to courses that cover essential content, programs can make sure their graduates have a firm foundation in the science topics their future students need to learn.

The only key elementary science topic that NCTQ did not find available as an option in most teacher preparation programs is engineering design, although it is a critical subject in today’s world and appears in the elementary science standards of more than 40 states. We found only 10% of programs require future teachers to take a course that covers engineering design, and only 19% even offer courses in the topic. Fortunately, some programs, such as those at Castleton University, Drexel University and the University of Central Missouri, are specifically for future teachers. More need to follow suit.

It is vital to ensure all children have access to science content early in their education, and this can only happen if future elementary school teachers are trained to understand the science themselves. Individual results for the preparation programs included in the NCTQ analysis are available in the , with detailed course analysis, topic coverage and recommendations to guide programs in making improvements. We hope the national findings here will illuminate an urgent need and clear solution: By bridging gaps in science content requirements, the schools that prepare future educators can ensure teachers go into elementary classrooms confident and ready to provide our children with the science instruction they need and deserve.

Many parents have long seen youth sports as a conduit through which kids can learn and develop these key teamwork, collaboration, and problem-solving skills. But COVID’s disruptions exacerbated long-term trends showing some declining interest in youth athletics. A year into the pandemic, with kids in youth athletics said their child was no longer interested in playing sports and found a 32 percent attrition rate among student athletes in grades 8-12, with higher rates among those who are underserved and under-represented.

A new alternative, however, is rapidly emerging and offers students both hands-on experiences and opportunities to hone broader critical thinking skills: Robotics. Any parent who wants their child to have a clearer roadmap for an uncertain future should understand that youth robotics is the extracurricular that allows all participants to “go pro” and find pathways to career success. It gives students the best of both worlds — teamwork-derived skills and STEM competency development — while combatting a trend that has accelerated during the pandemic: the loss of in-person social connection and hands-on skills development.

When parents select extracurriculars for their students, they are, in part, looking for opportunities to teach the values required for responsible citizenship. They want their students to learn how to prevent and navigate conflict, encourage balanced participation and inclusion, develop social competencies, build bridges among peoples and challenge assumptions and stereotypes. At the same time, American companies and governmental organizations are hungry for STEM-capable talent as the global business landscape continues to shift. Despite the continued growth of U.S. science and engineering enterprises, the country’s share of global research and development has since 2000 due in part to factors such as increased overseas competition.

This is where robotics shines, as these accessible programs teach not only academic concepts but many valuable social skills and competencies students will need to contribute to something larger than themselves. Robotics actively encourages students to produce high-quality work while giving them space to “fail” safely, recognize the value of others and respect both individuals and community. Like most sports, robotics relies almost entirely on collaboration and recognizes that each team member brings individual strengths that, when combined, buoy performance and learning outputs for everyone.

Engaging students in active, hands-on learning — and giving them increasing levels of responsibility over their education – is critical to their development into values-driven adults. Mistakes are allowed and even encouraged in robotics, which provides a space for positive learning where failure does not equal defeat.

Robotics blends group-based activities with open-ended creativity: these programs often assign student teams a challenge which requires the construction and operation of a robot to complete it. The most effective programs outline the rules and basic requirements but allow great flexibility in design, fabrication, coding or other factors. Students will encounter lack of instruction and structure throughout their personal and professional lives, just as they will be asked to collaborate with peers, whether they are friends or new acquaintances, are from different backgrounds or possess varying levels of experience. Early exposure to this type of uninhibited team-based problem-solving allows them to learn from one another, believe in their ideas and recognize their own potential. These are all critical skills that students will need in future STEM careers, where being a well-rounded person is arguably as valuable as technical skill acquisition.

For teachers looking to incorporate relevant concepts into the classroom, robotics-based curricula should align with existing educational standards (Common Core, ISTE, CSTA, NGSS, CASEL SEL, etc.) but can be taught in untraditional ways. Robotics and lessons about its uses need not be reserved for engineering or coding classes – they can be integrated into existing courses such as career and technical (CTE) training pathways, beyond traditional science and math. With the right context, educators can help students understand robotics’ role in everything from automotive manufacturing and surgery to agriculture and shipping.

Educators can help students realize their own ability to solve problems in these areas by using current events and global challenges to inspire students to think creatively about STEM and discover its real-world uses, even theoretically. Teachers can assign their class a focus area – for example, recycling, animal health or water cycles – and ask them to brainstorm solutions to any problem under this umbrella. When elementary and middle school students competing in FIRST LEGO League were asked to think about transportation this past school year, they from an autonomous vaccine delivery drone to devices that sense fires in shipping containers.

Teachers do not need to look beyond their own communities for opportunities to inspire students to use their STEM skills for others’ benefit. Be it so a teacher’s husband can walk their newborn or in the pandemic’s early days, robotics students understand they do not need to wait for their future careers to make a difference: they are already solving real-world problems and proactively seeking ways to make a difference through education.

When it comes to instruction, teaching robotics should not feel intimidating and there are countless resources available to help educators introduce it in the classroom. There are available for educator use and many robotics programs offer designed to meet specific STEM learning objectives through connected learning principles; these programs can be integrated to provide STEM learning across many contexts. Code.org also offers of third-party professional development and curricula opportunities recommended by the Computer Science Teachers Association.

To empower the next generation amid a complicated societal present and future, educators and parents need to reevaluate students’ extracurricular commitments and existing educational structures today to put the next generation on achievable paths. While few students will go on to play professional sports, every student is capable of “going pro” in STEM.

But his latest project aims to solve a global problem: the unsustainability of electric car motors, which use rare earth materials that are nonrenewable, expensive, and pollute the environment during the mining and refining process. (Click here to watch more about Robert’s journey) 

To develop a solution, Sansone took inspiration from the synchronous reluctance motor, an electrical rotating machine that converts the electrical power into mechanical power. The motor is currently used in industrial applications, doesn’t utilize rare earth materials, but also doesn’t produce the power needed to propel electric cars. It took 15 prototypes for the teen to produce an engine that yielded sufficient power, and he’s now on to working on the 16th iteration of the motor, which he hopes can produce even more energy.

For his work, Sansone won a $75,000 scholarship in the 2022 Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair. He says he’ll use his winnings to help pay for his bachelor’s degree.

In this 74 Interview, Sansone talks about the obstacles he faced and the breakthroughs he achieved on his journey toward building the world’s first sustainable electric vehicle motor.

That is why science education must be a national priority. 

As a nation, America needs to get serious about improving the state of science education through strategic policies and investments. A 2021 report from the National Academies details the systemic improvements needed to ensure science is taught in ways that make it relatable and relevant to all, and to ensure that students of all races, ethnicities and financial circumstances have the opportunity to shape the future.

While there is tremendous for a skilled science workforce, the benefits of science education go far beyond the job market. A scientific mindset is essential for solving tomorrow’s problems; the country must commit resources to create high-quality learning opportunities that will enable science to be taught as a foundational subject for future generations.

Here are three key ways to bolster science education:

High-quality, well-trained, diverse teachers

Strengthening science education requires having well-trained, well-supported and diverse teachers in the classroom. Countries like China and India have made remarkable gains in science education by investing in their educators. But in the U.S., a recent found 69% of elementary school teachers and over 20% of secondary teachers do not feel they are well-prepared to teach science. These sentiments are felt more acutely by teachers in high-needs districts that serve high percentages of students of color. To foster continued professional growth, K-16 science educators deserve consistent professional development opportunities that build their knowledge and skills. 

There must also be proactive and sustained efforts to attract and retain educators of color. Currently, 80% of public elementary, middle school and high school science teachers are white. The nation must strengthen pathways to incentivize individuals of all backgrounds to become science educators while providing the proper supports to retain diverse talent in schools. 

Creative, student-centric materials

One of the greatest travesties, particularly in the elementary grades, is that science instruction is not a regular part of the curriculum. On average, elementary students spent just per day on science, compared with 90 minutes on English Language Arts. And when they do have exposure — meaning appropriate time and materials applied to learning science inside and outside of school — many students still experience a version that falls short of the vibrant, fascinating, hands-on experiences that are the hallmarks of excellent science education. Science is largely taught as a memorization exercise — for example, asking students to memorize the parts of a cell without understanding what they do — even though, in reality, it is a highly experiential discipline.

The country must embrace a vision aligned with , the foundation for the , in which science instruction comes alive. For instance, the standards discourage lectures in favor of student-guided questions, problem solving and discussions of scientific principles, under the teacher’s guidance. Catalyzing a lasting interest in science means all instruction and materials should support students’ natural curiosity and be anchored in solving problems and asking questions, not regurgitating facts. To keep students engaged, educators must be equipped with high-quality materials that enliven and support scientific exploration.

Quality evaluation tools that measure performance

Science learning is assessed in pretty much the same way it is taught: as a memorization exercise. The very basis of science is exploration — asking questions and challenging accepted theories — rather than correct answers. It is time for evaluation tools to reflect that ethos, challenging students to use their thinking skills in a way that nurtures a scientific mindset and provides them with tools that can be used throughout their lifetimes. 

Focusing efforts, policies and investments on getting these three core ingredients — people, resources and creative evaluation tools — correct can change the trajectory of science education in the U.S. It is the responsibility of education advocates and champions for learners to build on and scale up these best practices so quality science education is accessible to all children and finally treated as a national priority.

Marissa and Kason are using their iPad to train their computerized friend, inputting commands that will guide the robot in taking measurements, calculating angles and then using that information to successfully pick up three blocks, carry them a short distance, and drop them back to the surface. 

The two students have some success with the robot picking up one block, but then run into some obstacles as the simulation unfolds. Their summer camp teacher, Kristen Robinson, comes over to help see if she can offer some insight and guidance. 

More than two years since the pandemic disrupted in-person learning and forced a pivot to virtual learning, particularly in the areas of science and technology, students are back interacting with one another, developing critical social skills that have, at times, gone unused amid laptops, e-mails and Zoom sessions. 

It was something Robinson said she noticed early on working with the students during the multi-day camp. During the camp’s first few days, she says, kids were trying to create codes for their robots and when something in the coding didn’t work, they were growing frustrated. 

The frustration would boil over, Robinson says, and, much to her surprise, they would simply quit. 

“No one’s codes were working. They were wanting it to work. so I kind of problem-solved that a little bit. And shared that with them the next day. And so they used that knowledge to rewrite their code and to get everything figured out. And they’re like, ‘oh my gosh, you’re right. Yeah, it does work.’ 

“Normally, I feel like kids would maybe [persevere] and be like, ‘We’re gonna figure this out, right?’”

But sometimes the right answer isn’t the first answer. That’s why this key lesson — that perfection and proficiency takes time and resilience — is a central part of the process being developed and distributed by the Tulsa Regional STEM Alliance. The organization works with schools, students and others to build the capacity of educators in STEM-related fields.

“It includes districts, of course,” said Levi Patrick, executive director of the alliance, also known as TRSA. “We have relationships with our districts, but mostly through classroom teachers across the region.”

The goal, Patrick said, is to reduce the barriers that are keeping STEM out of individual classrooms, and to make sure that instructors have additional training available to them so they can expand their coursework. “Then, we work with many other people beyond the districts — a lot of our work happens with our community partners, but also workforce [advocates and] employers who really want to make sure that they are investing back into the community,” he added.

Which brings us back to the library at Darnaby Elementary. One pillar of the organization’s work over the past decade (the last five as a nonprofit) has been to provide training, grants and even curriculum to community partners so they can host summer learning programs and expand student access to STEM coursework during the summer months. 

“We’re actually able to serve about twice as many student experiences this summer, just by changing that model,” Patrick said. 

TRSA connects a vast universe of partners — from major school districts to Global Gardens, a program for low-income students to learn about science through gardening. 

“Our goal as an alliance is to find ways to bring in more and more partners who can do this work alongside us,” he said. “We believe collectively there’s a need. We know that there are essentially always students on the waiting list at the summer camps. And we know our small organization can’t do it alone. So as an alliance, our vision is to continue to bring people into the fold, resource them, give them support.”

Tulsa was identified as Oklahoma’s first STEM Community in large part thanks to the extensive partnerships and collaborations available with college, university, district, and nonprofit partners, said Lynn Staggs, TRSA’s chief of staff.

At Darnaby Elementary, that support involved providing 3D printers and VEX robotics materials for the robotics coding and building camps, said MacKensie Mathison, the school’s STEM strategist. 

“Their partnership with Darnaby goes even beyond the singular grant: TRSA went above and beyond to provide us with surgical kits for our biomedical camp when we were struggling to acquire the needed materials through our traditional channels,” Mathison said. “This partnership has also included an engaging curriculum, professional development, contacts with other partners, and amazing items such as the Giant Moon and Mars Maps that were lent out for our NASA camp.”

TRSA staff develop the majority of the student experiences that TRSA offers and implement across the community in an effort to overcome the substantial opportunity gap that still hinders access to STEM for girls and Black, Latino, Indigenous, rural and economically disadvantaged students, Staggs said. 

“This past summer, TRSA provided nearly $30,000 in grant funds to expand access to summer STEM camps,” she said. “A two-day training was provided to ensure partners have a shared view of STEM and how powerful learning opportunities can shape beliefs about student identity, their confidence and competence in STEM, and their view of how STEM is used in their world.”

She added that they plan to expand summer STEM camp learning opportunities over the next few years by working closely with neighborhoods around Tulsa to understand their role in overcoming opportunity gaps that continue to persist.

This July, from Oregon to Maine as wildfire smoke traveled across northern states. New Yorkers woke up to an orange sun, and as a sand storm blocked visibility on a major highway. And while reports of extreme weather and dominate the news, young people are renewing the push to make climate education a reality in K-12 schools.

After learning that if Minnesota continues to warm at its current rate, and connecting extreme weather at home to a global phenomenon, high school senior Annie Chen started a campaign to get more climate-oriented books in Minnesota schools. She recalls having to wear her winter coat over Halloween costumes as a kid, but recently, the snow hasn’t reached her home in Rochester until later in the season. Hotter summers seem to linger through September.

“I think that younger people are definitely worried a lot,” she says. “The students who are worried and trying to get [climate education] into schools are doing so because they were just curious like myself and went out there to learn on their own — and then realized the importance of this education.”

Chen’s activism reflects a national push for comprehensive climate education that educators, scientists, students and advocates say is gaining strength this summer. The movement is something of a perfect storm resulting from expanded access to virtual climate education resources created by the pandemic, the increasingly visible and dire reminders of the global climate crisis, the weakening presence of climate deniers and a growing awareness of the connections between racial and climate justice.

In partnership with other Minnesota youth and the national advocacy group Climate Generation, Chen is working to advance that could make climate justice education required. Her home state is one of 24 across the country that developed their own version of the Next Generation Science Standards / Framework for K-12 Science Education.

Widely adopted since 2013 in 20 states and Washington, D.C., the Next Generation standards include climate and weather. For high school, students are expected to understand how changes in energy flow affect Earth’s climate, and be able to assess climate change’s future impacts to the planet’s systems.

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Some states adopted much of the framework, but omitted , leaving students like Chen to potentially graduate without understanding the larger system of greenhouse gases, carbon emissions and global warming unless their teachers incorporated it into their lessons voluntarily.

On August 9, a United Nations report of over 3,000 pages created by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change detailed how that larger system is warming the Earth and creating “unprecedented” changes. In every scenario, scientists predict the world will cross the threshold of a 2.7-degree increase in temperature, set in the 2015 Paris climate accord, sometime in the 2030s. stating world leaders need to urgently address the crisis and curb emissions if they’re to prevent subsequent, compounding emergencies worldwide.

“Teachers are sort of like trying to cloud us from the truth. They’re introducing it like it’s a baby threat — like it’s not gonna potentially wipe us all out, and Earth as we know it if we don’t do something.” Enzo Nicolai, New York City 5th-grader 

Given the gravity of the subject, younger generations . For one elementary schooler, that’s no reason to slow the spread of climate education, especially when lessons pair solutions and actions alongside science. He needs the inclusion to be “more urgent.”

“I just respect the fact that, well, the earth has given us so much and we’re treating it like a giant pile of garbage,” rising New York City 5th-grader Enzo Nicolai said. “Teachers are sort of like trying to cloud us from the truth. They’re introducing it like it’s a baby threat — like it’s not gonna potentially wipe us all out, and Earth as we know it if we don’t do something.”

The politics of teaching climate change

According to Yale’s , roughly 72 percent of American adults believe global warming is happening. And according to its 2019 iteration, an estimated 78 percent believe schools should teach about “the causes, consequences, and potential solutions to global warming.”

Similarly, an NPR/Ipsos study found that wanted their childrens’ schools to teach about climate change. Still, with a majority of the public interested, consistent climate education in K-12 classrooms does not yet exist.

Yale lecturer and researcher Jennifer Marlon has studied climate and wildfires for years, examining sediments and producing the opinion maps to help show how folks across the country perceive climate change.

In of global warming, believing climate change is not a threat or not caused by humans. Five years later, only 8 percent are classified as “dismissive,” while 55 percent are “concerned” or “alarmed” by the global threat.

“There’s a widespread misunderstanding that a lot of people still don’t really care, or aren’t taking it that seriously, and the reality is and are taking it very seriously,’ she said. “But there’s a widespread gap in the fear and the anxiety versus the knowing what to do about it.”

For Marlon, the social dynamics of climate change are deserving of more attention. Many don’t yet know how to have critical conversations about warming and carbon emissions to engage their peers “in the steps they need to take to make their communities safe, their homes safe, and their neighborhoods safe, without worsening the political divisions.”

Students and teachers are seeing those very political divisions play out with a movement to prevent lessons on systemic racism from entering the classroom, a conflict that’s come to be known as critical race theory. Efforts to learn and engage in climate change solutions may be and where teaching restrictions go beyond racialized content, curtailing classroom activity that enters the realm of political advocacy.

For students in Texas, letter-writing campaigns or service learning with climate policy organizations may be activities of the past because of the legislation.

“When you shut off the flow of information to people, they can’t make decisions well,” Marlon said.

With states taking different approaches to climate education standards, and because most teachers did not encounter climate change in their own schooling, many have turned to education and advocacy organizations like Climate Generation, Alliance for Climate Education, and the CLEO Institute for resources.

These groups have built partnerships with districts — — and have seen interest from teachers and students grow steadily in recent years. Climate Generation’s network of teachers is now at about 8,000 nationally; the organization has offered professional development and curricular resources for educators since 2006.

Its Education Manager Lindsey Kirkland has witnessed some state policy support crop up, beginning to match student- and teacher-led interest in making climate education more widespread. New Jersey, for example, — not limited to science.

Kirkland believes the uptick in policy support and increasingly apparent intersections between systemic racism and climate change are pushing educators and youth to seek out climate education resources at this moment.

“I think folks are looking for resources on justice and oftentimes a great way to bring justice into a science classroom is through climate justice programming,” she said.

Jonathan Schulman, a 4th-grade teacher at PS 110 – The Monitor School in New York, is one educator who has taken on a justice-centered approach to his climate lessons. Since recent spotlights on racial inequity, he’s noticed “there’s a push” among his colleagues to incorporate climate and racial justice across content areas and in more localized ways.

In recent years, some of his classes have learned about the East River, Newtown Creek, and Gowanus Canal — polluted waterways that surround their Brooklyn school. They also discuss why storms seem to hit more vulnerable communities; from to Delaware and Louisiana, as a result of economic segregation.

Federal redlining policies in housing created inequities in land distribution; today, lower-income communities of color are , with few trees and an abundance of pavement.

“Before I was thinking, just stop our carbon footprint, reduce it — you’re thinking well that’s great, we can do that, we can save energy, but how can we really help people that need it the most?” Schulman said. “We are finding ways that we can become allies in the Black community and part of that is climate change.”

The shift to explore climate justice, not only climate science, is growing among California educators as well. Currently the largest, most active subgroups within the are the equity and environmental literacy committees, according to the group’s president and former high school science teacher Peter A’Hearn.

“I think there’s a real push on all of those fronts, right at the intersection of the idea that climate change affects low-income and communities of color a lot worse than it affects wealthy white people,” A’Hearn said. “What are the impacts of and what are the communities where we put toxic industries?”

It’s fun in the worst way

Teacher interest comes at a time when reports of pandemic learning loss and parent concerns about politically charged curricula are growing. In conservative-leaning Utah for instance, Teacher of the Year John Arthur hasn’t noticed his fellow educators any more eager than usual to leap into climate change-specific curricula in the fall, even with .

“There are a lot of debates right now throughout the country about what teachers should or should not be teaching in their classroom, what is and is not within our purview, whether it’s critical race theory or manmade climate change. A lot of teachers have found that they need to walk a fine line,” he said.

Arthur explores pressure systems, observable weather changes, and the greenhouse effect with his 6th-grade students at Meadowlark Elementary, a Salt Lake City school that serves predominantly low-income families. Often that means incorporating news and current events to help students observe and investigate the changing climate around them.

“It’s fun, in the worst way because it’s exciting, it’s engaging, but we’re learning about the devastation of our planet, and thinking about the impacts that’s going to have on my students, their generation and the generations to come.”

For rising Monitor School 5th-grader Kristina Morgan, opportunities to work on or write about climate change next school year can’t come fast enough. She fondly remembers writing a paper on how to slow soil pollution.

“I enjoy learning about the environment,” she said. “I think that some kids in third grade — not only like the higher grades — they should learn about it.”

Her peer Nina Solis also liked the climate-specific lessons and learning that she could control or stop some aspects, like water pollution, with her actions.

“If children learn about this, when they grow up, they’re still gonna carry that knowledge. They could tell it to their children, anybody that they could reach out to — they could tell it to them and then we all could help save the earth, one by one.”

More confident, less anxious about the future

Excitement for expanding climate education doesn’t only stem from student activists or students familiar with the subject. Experts and professors in the field of climate science are noticing a bubbling effect from youth completely unfamiliar with the foundations of their work.

Jen Pierce, a Boise State geoscience professor who helps bring climate education to , teaches an introductory climate science course. This fall, high school students will enroll with the financial support of Jane Fonda, the 83-year-old actor and activist who was in Washington, D.C.

“I have seen interest and advocacy coming from younger students and young people in general, around creating a climate future that they are comfortable with, and that will protect ecosystems and human life,” said Kimberly Miner, earth scientist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a leader in climate science. In years past, Miner would go months at a time without outside inquiry, yet recently has seen weekly requests from professionals, students and educators seeking to understand more about climate change.

The lab’s K-12 education division saw an influx of demand for climate and earth science materials as the pandemic began, with parents and educators seeking new methods to teach online. Annually, they choose a different STEM theme to center lessons and resources around. For the first time in years — given the wealth of engineering, space and chemical science data they create — they decided to repeat a theme: climate and earth science for 2021-22.

After an isolating pandemic school year, advocates and leaders encourage teachers to lean into interest in climate education as an opportunity to encourage student participation.

“Picking things that are relevant to them — like fires and climate change, they all see what’s happening in the world and they have concerns — that’s a relevant hook that helps bring kids back and get them re-engaged,” A’Hearn says.

Particularly given a growing student mental health crisis and heightened levels of anxiety, students urge educators to provide climate solutions alongside any science, social studies, or humanities curricula that makes its way into the classroom.

“Something that’s important to me with learning about climate justice is like learning about the solutions to it too. It can be kind of overwhelming, just learning about all the issues, but there are plenty of groups out there who are working on solutions — there’s many and deals and that students can work on,” said Maya Hidalgo, who’s entering 12th grade at her Minneapolis high school.

Hidalgo and her peers organized an environmental racism book club and presented climate education resources to Thomas Jefferson High School’s science department in the hopes some topics will make their way into classrooms this fall.

Outside of the classroom, she’s been involved in the Minnesota climate justice education bill — the same one Annie Chen looks to build steam behind. Should it become law, students would participate in required, schoolwide climate justice projects.

“The ability to advocate for yourself and your community helps to address mental health concerns. The benefits are not just the students learning, although that’s also very important. What we see is that students are more confident and less anxious because they see these issues and they’re not told, wait until you’re older, vote for this,” Karolyn Burns, science educator and program manager with the Florida-based CLEO Institute, said.

In much of Oregon, where record-breaking temperatures reached and devastating wildfires , orienting K-12 students toward climate education and solutions have become as they cope with extreme weather challenges. The state adopted the Next Generation Science Standards in full, so all K-12 students encounter some weather and climate education. The Eugene Water and Electric Board also funds a teacher on assignment for climate, energy, and conservation: Tana Shephard.

Now in her 20th year as an educator, Shephard works across content areas to help social studies, humanities, and science teachers incorporate lessons on earth science, renewable energy, and individual “carbon stories” — storytelling about students’ and teachers’ lived experiences with climate change.

Known in Eugene as the electric car woman vocal about climate justice, Shepherd shares that more people in the last year have been taking her up on critical conversations, including custodians, nutritional staff, and principals. Even in Oregon where climate activism from students and teachers is consistent, she’s noticing a “cultural shift” as a result of increased news coverage, student desire, and the growing climate justice movement.

“Although we’re in a dire situation with fire and all kinds of different [weather],” she said, “it’s sort of like the stars are aligning.”

Lead Image: Residential flooding (left), a sand storm in Death Valley (center, Hugh Peterswald/Pacific Press via Getty Images), and smoke haze over Manhattan (right, Wang Ying/Xinhua via Getty Images)