Initial Publication Date: March 2, 2022

Community Meeting 1

Key Idea Synthesis

These are the takeaways from first community meeting of the MCC Educator Community of Practice (CoP) on February 28th, 2022 as summarized by Cathy Manduca at the end of the meeting. For the recording of the meeting, visit the Program page.

  1. A major asset of the CoP is the breadth of membership.  We have representatives from informal (of several types), K-12 and higher ed (private and public); from ed schools, science and social science programs, humanities, business, law and more; from a variety of different geographic areas in the Midwest including communities of different sizes; and with expertise in things ranging from seismology to communication.  This means that we can learn a lot from one another about what climate education looks like from different points of view and can build action that links across disciplines, sectors, institutions, and regions.
  2. This group is united by its interest in and focus on climate education in the upper Midwest.  We recognize the importance of a regional focus in our education efforts and the power of working together to make that a reality.  We see the importance of connecting education to community action, workforce opportunity, and policy.
  3. We will want to balance the ability to learn broadly with the opportunity to address specific  needs within subgroups be they educational setting, discipline, topic or skill focused.  A practical pathway to improving our educational work in the short term is as important to us as learning broadly.  
  4. Sharing resources is an immediate practical opportunity for moving forward. This began today in the chat and reinforces our goal of building a robust resource repository.
  5. We see a tremendous opportunity in building cohesion across our individual efforts through shared language, story lines, curriculum resources and more.  This could be a scalable mechanism for creating a common understanding of climate change, impacts, and responses across the upper Midwest.  Our vision goes beyond sharing what exists to working together to create new things.