A Climate Consortium for High School Students

During the fall of 2011, Steve Lane and Jeff Yuhas taught the Climate Consortium for a group of students from four local high schools. This represented a unique collaboration between a social studies teacher and a science teacher. The dynamic allowed for a greater emphasis on policy and messaging than found in most climate change courses, which typically focus on just the science of climate change. The consortium also utilized Facebook as a means to continue the dialogue while away from the classroom. The goal of teaching the course this way was to have a class of aspiring voters leave with the tools necessary to critically assess how science is portrayed by the media and understood by the electorate and see how this dynamic shapes public policy.

The Four-School Consortium, originally the History Consortium but hijacked for the year to become the Climate Consortium, is an agreement between four high schools – two public (Concord-Carlisle High School and Wayland High School) and two private (Concord Academy and Middlesex School) – to rotate hosting a high-level, one semester seminar on a topic not offered in the regular curriculum of any of the schools. The course had traditionally been a history offering, but was broadened to allow other social science topics – in our case, Climate Change: Policy, Politics, and Action Behind the Science.

Each school chooses three students to participate in the seminar. Typically the course meets 90 minutes, twice per week during the evening. It is generally not offered for credit, and graded on a pass/fail basis.

From day one, the challenge of the course was to try to get the students to care about, or prioritize, climate change issues without making the situation seem so dire as to make them think they couldn't do anything about it. This led to our class theme of "Urgency and Hope".

Rather than focusing on the science, the course shifted to discuss how scientific research is filtered / repackaged for consumption by the general public. In short, we focused on the impact of the message – as delivered by media, politicians, policymakers, and corporate and environmental advocates – instead of the science itself.

The course slowly evolved into three predominant topics:

Science and Public Trust

Politics and Policy

Approaches to the Problem

The primary challenges in offering a course to students from four different schools is communication among the 12 students, and between the students and teachers. Given the subject matter, the seminar nature of the course, and the constraint of meeting only twice per week, we felt it was important that discussion of topics introduced in class continue outside the classroom. Using Facebook was integral to our course, and we certainly would have made greater use of it if we were to teach the course again. A private Facebook group was set up, with the instructors as the only administrators. It should be noted that the students were able to join the Group without being Facebook "friends" of the instructors.

From a teaching standpoint, Facebook provided a common, free, on-line environment for posting assignments, making class announcements, and initiating discussions. Students would post draft copies of their presentations allowing for both teacher and peer comments.

The students formed an on-line support group where they would help each other out if they did not fully understand assignments. As the semester wore on, they initiated more of their own on-line discussions and would often post links that would lead to classroom discussions. This took advantage of the fact that the the students regularly log into Facebook and were readily aware of any new discussions in the Group.

The Consortium models a way to teach about climate change less as a science issue, and more as an issue of messaging, critical evaluation, and understanding of the process of scientific investigation. Further, the course demonstrated several ways to use social media as an effective tool for expanding and deepening the conversation around issues raised in the class.