Audience: Secondary teachers teaching Social Studies, Geography, Social Justice, Global Issues, Sustainability, Leadership
Climate change has been called the greatest challenge of our time, threatening communities around the world and driving massive transitions in this century. The recent IPCC report –
Global Warming of 1.5°C gives us only 12 years to respond aggressively in reducing carbon emissions, if we are to avoid dangerous climate change impacts. Canadian policies at all levels of government (e.g.
Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change, Vancouver’s Greenest City Action Plan) call for substantial reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (80% by 2050). It is important that young people feel engaged and empowered to contribute to solutions to climate change. This workshop will provide you with a set of “
Cool Tools” to help your students learn about and act upon local solutions.
A DIY toolkit on climate change and urban forestry (Coolkit), a videogame on climate change solutions, and a supplementary Teacher’s Guide are some of the Cool Tools that will be presented at this workshop. These resources bring together a number of enticing educational components - outdoor experiential learning, place-based education, game development, digital & field mapping tools; have demonstrated an increase in students’ awareness and understanding of basic climate change, sustainability and urban forestry concepts; and hope to eventually motivate behaviour changes individually and collectively.
The Collaborative for Advanced Landscape Planning (CALP) at the University of British Columbia has co-designed and tested (with teachers, students & staff at Vancouver School Board; educational NGO’s; international researchers; municipal/city staff; other educators and general public) these tools that use innovative social processes and powerful visual and digital media, that has shown to be very effective in building awareness and stimulating behaviour change among youth.
The workshop will give you access to these Cool Tools and provide you with an opportunity to use them in your classrooms to educate and engage your students on climate change in a fun, interactive & personalized way!
Coffee, snacks and lunch will be provided.