From glacier fields to coral reefs, prairies to densely populated coastlines, we are facing the effects of Climate Change. How can an educator help if not actually teaching Environmental Science? The UN’s Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) give us a guideline that supercedes our regional curricula. The 17 SDGs fit well into elementary, secondary school and beyond, covering rights we need: food, clean water, education, equal rights, medicine, clean energy, sustainable communities, climate action, biodiversity on land and in water, peace, and justice. Social justice education is on the rise. Climate Education, however, is lacking. In Ontario, we teach recycling, and compare the pros and cons of renewable versus non-renewable energy in elementary years. I was recently sent colouring books for students that included the wonders of gas, oil and nuclear energy as part of a “balanced” energy program. That’s nonsense. Why, in this era of hurricanes, droughts, wildfires and floods, are we debating whether or not fossil fuels could possibly be good for us?
Be brave. Be radical.
Lakehead and Simon Fraser Universities are documenting the rise of Climate Anxiety among our youth. Your students are going to live in a world with peace or conflict, with a worsening Climate Crisis or with communities working together to live sustainably. Students need to hear that there are solutions right now, e.g., that countries around the world are using wind, solar and water-powered electricity in innovative and large-scale ways, successfully.
To this end, I founded, Youth Imagine the Future: a Festival of Writing and Art (YIF) with Nikki Alward, in 2022, Kingston. I created a slideshow of solutions. There are wind farms on land and on water, rooftop turbines, river and wave turbines, traditional solar panels and new ones being developed from vegetable waste. William Kamkwamba built a wind turbine with old bicycle parts in Malawi at age 14. Bangladesh villages are using solar panels now to create all their electricity in small microgrids, neighbours helping neighbours. Vermont is following suit! Cold Climate Heat Pumps that transfer air around to heat and cool buildings are right here in Canada, with no fossil fuel burned at all. In Stockholm and London, U.K., the body heat of commuters is heating neighbourhoods. These are just a few examples.
I brought this slideshow into grades 7-12. After students saw and discussed the ideas, I invited them to do the hard work: imagining a better future. Here. They wrote. They sketched. They shared.
Some teachers used our YIF workshop to jumpstart projects in geography or science. Others encouraged their students to create art or a short story in their better future and submit them to our festival. We knocked on doors for gift certificates to honour them. Queen’s Faculty of Education was our first sponsor and the Kingston Community Credit Union soon offered $500 for the top two submissions. We were thrilled.
One art piece was a diorama of Kingston heritage buildings, with additions to make them multi-family, greenhouses on balconies and roofs, solar panels, and urban farming on the lawn. Another was a brilliant painting of four coins from the future to celebrate 100 years of rewilding, 40 years of fresh drinking water, 30 years of world-class addiction care, and 25 years of zero carbon emissions. This year’s winner showed the artist looking inside a large book where we saw mixed agriculture with wind turbines, and beyond, a city skyline with a giant tree in the centre to represent urban re-greening. The short stories were riveting, sweet, and funny, all set in hopeful futures.
We had no idea how to run a festival, but we’re learning. (Spoiler: it’s a lot of work.) However, we ended up creating something needed: a place where our youth are encouraged to think about real problems, consider real solutions, and have a voice. They did the work, happily. We honoured many.
Young people are creative thinkers and dreamers. We need to encourage their imagination and invite them into an authentic conversation about the future.
Educators everywhere could use this sort of method. Show a slideshow of inspiring solutions used around the world. (Feel free to use ours.) Ask the students to consider problems in their neighbourhood or region. Ask them to brainstorm solutions, to collaborate. Imagine how the future would look if their solutions were implemented. Insist on improved social justice in their futures. Have them describe a scene, the downtown “street,” or attractive multi-family housing.
Then let them create.
We invited art and short story writing, (optimistic Climate Fiction is a genre called “Solarpunk1.”) You could allow any form of expression: a dance; a play, a song, music, video, film, poetry. They could knit or sew their ideas.
Provincial curriculum is political and not always up to date. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are better guidelines.
We can meet some SDGs if we consider regenerative farming over factory farms. We can protect and restore biodiversity with messy hedgerows through mixed farms, not tilling but nourishing the soil. Community food gardens can spread across parks, lawns, and rooftops for pollinators and food security. Edmonton is a shining example of community food gardens. Calgary rocks indoor vertical farms downtown. Montréal is the star of “sponge parks,” small wetlands protecting the city from extreme storms. Toronto has a green roof bylaw for large roofs that we all need, and Germany has green roofs often topped with solar panels. India, The Netherlands and Kingston, Ontario are planting Miyawaki forests to lower urban temperatures, buffer storms, and restore ecological corridors. Jamaica, India, Australia and others are growing coral reefs and mangrove forests, replanting with care, a painstaking process from laboratories to oceans.
The point is, we can do it.
Young people are creative thinkers and dreamers. We need to encourage their imagination and invite them into an authentic conversation about the future. In your teaching, be brave. Be real. Your students’ imagined futures will uplift you.
1 Why we need Solarpunk stories
Jerri Jerreat’s writing, from Anishinaabe & Haudenosaunee territory, appears in Fairlight Books short stories, Fictive Dreams, Grist/Fix: Imagine 2200 Climate Fiction, Flyway: Journal of Writing& Environment, Onyx Publications (1st Place), Alluvian, Every Day Fiction, Feminine Collective, Yale Review Online, The New Quarterly, The Penmen Review, Glass&Gardens Solarpunk Winters, Solarpunk Summers, Allium Journal of Poetry & Prose, and in a new anthology, “Solarpunk Creatures,” (World Weaver Press, 2024.) She has an op-ed online in On Spec, an article in ETFO Voice Magazine, “From Fear to Empowerment” and learns so much from youth she mentors through YouthImaginetheFuture.com The YIF slideshow, festival toolkit, and advice is free on the website.