Schools for the Planet: Toward Universal Climate Literacy with Children’s Literature and Media

Led by Dr. Nick Kleese, Dr. Jana Lo Bello Miller, Dr. Stephanie Rollag Yoon

Dates: June 20-22, 2023

Time: 9:00 am-1:30 pm

Cost: Free (includes resources)

Cost with dorm lodging from June 18-22, 2023: $275

Registration link: https://z.umn.edu/climatelit

We are a climate-illiterate civilization that has sleepwalked into climate breakdown, biodiversity crash, and unprecedented social inequalities that exacerbate planetary ecocide. To turn this around, we need to transform our wealth-based, extractive civilization into a sustainable and equitable ecological civilization. This transition requires that we build universal climate literacy. It makes our classrooms ground zero for this effort. 

In this three-day summer school, literacy educators Nick Kleese, Jana Lo Bello Miller, and Stephanie Rollag Yoon will guide you to engage with pedagogical practices of envisioning, embodying, and enacting climate literacy education in your classroom. You will learn why traditional climate change education (CCE), focused on scientific and environmental facts, is inadequate to address the social, racial, and political dimensions of climate change. You will explore climate literacy as a broader competence that includes climate science but focuses primarily on developing attitudes and values aligned with how we should live to respect our planetary home. You will learn why stories for young people—in books, films, games, and other narrative media—are the best technology for the social transformation that ensures everyone’s future: a technology that makes climate literacy accessible to every student everywhere.

This summer school will be offered in person on the East Bank of the University of Minnesota from 9:00 am-1:30 pm on Tuesday, June 20th, Wednesday, June 21st, and Thursday, June 22.