Empowering Youth to Confront the Climate Crisis in English Language Arts

Discover how English teachers and their students confront the climate crisis using critical inquiry, focusing on justice, and taking action.

Working in today's politically polarized environment, these teachers know first-hand about teaching and learning in communities that support and resist climate education. This much-needed book describes outstanding English instruction that includes creative and analytical writing; critical place-based learning; contemporary "cli-fi"; young adult, Indigenous, and youth-authored literature; Afrofuturism; critical media analysis; digital media production; and many other ways in which students can explore the crisis and have their voices heard and respected. While the focus is on high school and middle school English Language Arts, there are also relevant and inspiring elementary and college examples.

This resource provides everything teachers need to help young people understand and address the climate emergency through supportive and empowering transformational learning.

Book Features:

• Emphasizes addressing the climate crisis as an important dimension of English language arts.
• Illustrates relevant and effective ways to use writing, critical inquiry, literature, media, speaking, the arts, and publishing.
• Provides examples of students connecting local climate impacts with national and global events; critically analyzing climate denial, delay, and inaction; considering questions of justice; imagining different futures; and developing their voices and activism.
• Shares teaching methods, classroom stories, and student work from cities, suburbs, and rural classrooms.
• Examines questions of climate justice: Who causes the crisis? Who suffers? Why do governments fail to act? What is the experience of climate refugees? What type of world will young people inherit?
• Explains how students can take action, join with others, and become involved in solutions.