We are offering an online training for teachers and non-formal educators as part of the European project ‘CLARITY’: Transformative Climate Resilience Education for Children and Youth: From Climate Anxiety to Resilience, Creativity , Connection and Regeneration.’ The next cohort starts in September and places are limited!
Which challenges does the CLARITY project address?
Climate change education in schools and universities tends to focus on environmental facts, whilst little room is given to competences for change and to collective ation. The emotional and mental wellbeing of students, as well as the values, skills and mindsets that are needed for addressing societal challenges and fostering transformation are hardly considered. Consequently, children and youth are increasingly experiencing climate anxiety, associated overwhelm and denial.
CLARITY is a European educational project co-led by Lund University, One Resilient Earth, REAL School Budapest, Climate Creativity, Legacy17, and The Vision Works. The project aims to address these challenges by (1) enhancing educators’ skills for dealing with climate anxiety and nurturing inner resilience of learners, and (2) supporting more integrative approaches that link the inner and outer dimensions of systems change and cultural transformation. For further information about the CLARITY project, please click here.
Who is the teachers and educators training for?
The training is for teachers and non-formal educators working with children and young people from 6 to 20+ years old, who are looking for knowledge, tools and methods to teach about climate change with both care and impact.
The training was originally designed for teachers and non-formal educators based in Europe, which informs the content and the methods we offer. However, teachers and educators from other geographies are welcome to join as well. We will do our best to create spaces for their participation.
What is the teachers and educators training about?
This series of workshops will enable teachers and educators to better understand why and how they can teach competences that contribute to climate resilience building and regeneration with their students.
Our online workshops will also address how those competences can be taught with care and in ways that foster individual, collective and ecosystemic wellbeing.
The workshop series will help teachers and educators acquire the knowledge and skills they need to use all tools from the pedagogical toolbox created under CLARITY, including by diving deeper into approaches and methods that may be novel or complex, and cannot be mastered through the online teachers’ learning material that we are developing and will be made available to all.
What will you learn?
Each workshop of 2 hours will focus on a different competence area defined under the CLARITY Competence framework. More precisely, we will focus on:
- Understanding the need for climate resilience and regeneration (September 11th)
We will clarify what climate resilience entails, and why it is critical to pursue transformation and regeneration to build climate resilience.
- Navigating climate emotions and climate trauma with students (September 25th)
We will address what climate anxiety is, how it manifests in children and youth, as well as why and how it needs to be addressed when teaching. We will discuss why the emotional wellbeing and mental health of teachers and educators is paramount, as well as simple exercises you can implement and resources that you can access to restore wellbeing.
- Connecting to oneself, others and nature (October 9th)
We will explore why and how integrating activities in nature and with animals helps build critical competences for climate resilience and regeneration. The role of journaling and storytelling in deepening connections will also be explored.
- Embracing values that sustain more- than-human lives (October 23rd)
We will experiment with deep-listening techniques and discuss how they are crucial to a sharper understanding of the cultural stories we tell ourselves. This workshop will also focus on working with Indigenous knowledge holders and their stories.
- Opening up to diverse and regenerative futures (November 6th)
We will introduce the Futures Literacy Lab method and how it can be introduced in full or in parts to grow imagination, foster agency and active hope, as well as engage fully with regeneration and transformation. We will also highlight the role of visual arts in diversifying our representations of the future.
- Taking collective action towards climate resilience and regeneration (November 20th)
We will address how to make the most of synergies between inner change and collective action (in schools and in the outer world), for both impact and learning purposes.
- Reflecting about our way forward (December 4th)
We will take the time to reflect on our learnings, discuss pending questions and explore ways forward.
How will you learn?
The workshops will be facilitated by the One Resilient Earth team with support from other CLARITY partners and invited experts. Workshops will enable interactive exercises, Q/A sessions and peer-learning. In addition, all participants will have access to an online community platform where all recordings and complementary learning material will be saved and where you will have a chance to connect and interact further with others.
What is expected of participants?
Participants are expected to join 7 online workshops of 2 hours, from 5-7pm CET, on the dates mentioned above.
In case you cannot join one session, workshops will be recorded and accessible online. We expect participants to watch the recordings of the workshops they cannot join.
Participants are also expected to read the relevant chapter in the teachers’ guide prior to each workshop, as well as to watch complementary video material (1-2 videos of 5-10 minutes per workshop).
Last, participants will be invited to use tools from the CLARITY toolbox with their students, as well as to gather simple data from their students about their assessments of the tools. This will help assess the impact of transformative climate resilience education in the long run.
What will you gain as a participant?
As a participant, you will gain:
- Access to pioneering pedagogical tools and methods to foster transformative climate resilience education;
- Connections with members of a transnational community of educators;
- Peer-learning and one-on-one support during workshops and through the knowledge and community platform;
- The ability to limit the climate anxiety of all your future students, while fostering their resilience, creativity and capacities to regenerate their ecosystems;
- A certificate of completion.
In which other ways can you participate in the CLARITY project?
If you are a teacher or an educator, you are welcome to take part in the CLARITY project in various ways:
- You are welcome to register your interest in joining future cohort-based training for teachers and educators here, if the cohort-based training above does not work for you. Our partners, Climate Creativity and Legacy 17, in Norway and Sweden, will offer other training opportunities.
- You can join our ‘transforming climate education’ online community for teachers and educators here. There you will be informed of our online monthly meet ups for teachers and educators.
- You are welcome to promote the training for teachers and educators among your peers, including by sharing the following document or printing it and putting it up as a poster in the teachers’ room in your school.
If you are more than a teacher and educator, please help us promote and disseminate the policy-brief advocating for transformative climate change education for children and youth that you can see here. This will help us create the conditions that we need to transform climate education together.
For any other collaborations or ideas, please contact us: contact@oneresilientearth.org.
