Each year, English teachers from across the country gather to share ideas, research, and best practices in the field. The 2023 annual convention for the National Council of Teachers of English was held in Columbus, OH. The theme of the conference was “Conexiones: Communicate, Collaborate, Create.”
Mac Mann-Wood, a Zankel fellow working with Youth at the Center, attended the conference to share a poster titled “Conversations about Climate: Incorporating Eco-Literature into English Classrooms.” The poster describes a series of questioning prompted by their work with Youth at the Center. In the fall of 2022, climate activists from around New York City met in person for a community-building workshop. One activity involved reading a short story from Cities of Light, a solarpunk anthology where students around the world described their city in an ideal climate future. After reading the selected story, YATC students brainstormed what their ideal climate future would look like in New York City. Then, students described the actions they could take to ensure that their ideal future could become a reality.
After this workshop, Mac began to wonder how feasible it would be to bring eco-literature into the English Language Arts classroom. While pondering the question, Mac remembered taking a capstone seminar course as a senior at Santa Clara University, taught by Dr. Claudia McIsaac. Rooted in the ideas discussed in that course, and guided by the community of young scholars in Youth at the Center, Mac moved forward with compiling resources for English teachers to bring into the classroom. The core of this project rests on the idea that climate education doesn’t have to be a scary thing. In fact, many students want to discuss climate change in their classes and are simply waiting for an opportunity to do so. Knowing this, presenting a poster at an annual conference for English teachers felt like the perfect opportunity to share ideas of how to bring Conversations about Climate into classrooms across the country. The next step for this project is to create a living database with resources for teachers to bring into their classrooms.
