Plenary Town Hall Discussion Notes

Facts are important, but facts alone are not enough.

What has worked well for you in your classrooms? What doesn't work / what mistakes have you made? What have you heard today that you can implement?

• teaching to non-majors means a range of interest, experience, so it's important to relate the facts to students' experiences; this makes facts more relevant to students
• facts help with a controversial topic and important to communicate well, to avoid misconceptions
• not all mental models lead to the same concept (or misconceptions) so also important to consider the audience and their experience

We psychologically distance ourselves from 'distant' threats.

What has worked well for you in your classrooms? What doesn't work / what mistakes have you made? What have you heard today that you can implement?

• when considering the 2* threshold, we might mislead students into thinking that we're ok until 2* or that we're ok until the year 2100, but we need to convey that this is a continuum and that we're already warming, we're already on the way to 2100
• Using the Yale Climate https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/ resources can open a lot of discussion among students, questions about regional trends in ideas about climate, can help students think beyond their own ideas or local considerations

What is our emotional response when we begin to understand the threat?

What has worked well for you in your classrooms? What doesn't work / what mistakes have you made? What have you heard today that you can implement?

• Emotional feeling of being overwhelmed may be counterbalanced by giving students a sense of agency, e.g. through examples of ways social movements have modified corporate practices, or cumulative efforts of the whole class making a change
• Lived experiences of first nations (Canadian Inuit) are being impacted by climate change, can start conversations for students 
• Avoid putting the burden of solving climate issues on our students
• Use of Climate En-ROADS: https://www.climateinteractive.org/tools/en-roads/ 
• Emotions can come out when political issues are wrapped up in climate change. Politicization brings in personal culture/community ideas that might be firmly embedded. How to avoid politicization? 
• Can build connections with other communities where climate change has big impacts; connect with high schools in other countries, to help our students understand experiences and also to emphasize the climate change issues are global issues, with global impacts, global solutions

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