We are excited to share that a major milestone in climate education has been reached with the launch of the Climate Change Resource Library for Educators by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP), a new online tool designed to help K-5 teachers integrate climate literacy into their existing curriculum.

Created with teachers’ needs at the forefront, the library offers hundreds of curated resources—from five-minute activities to multi-week projects—focused on climate change solutions and environmental stewardship. Rather than creating extra work for teachers, the library is designed to seamlessly supplement current lesson plans across a variety of subjects, including language arts, math, science, social studies, and even physical education and the arts.

The CSF community is proud to see education tools like this emerging, which empower teachers to inspire students with hope, agency, and creativity in the face of climate change. Congratulations to Julia Sommer, Climate Curriculum Specialist at the Office of Environmental Education, who attended our Summer Institute for leading the way on this project!

“Last summer I attended the Summer Institute 7/18 and 7/19. I really enjoyed being around all those motivated and thoughtful educators! The Summer Institute reminded me to include plenty of hands-on activities in the Climate Change Resource Library. There was a discussion at one point about why boys seem to lead less often than girls when it comes to climate activism; my groupmates pointed out that without physical, results-driven activities boys often lose interest and sadly, much climate change education tends to be more cerebral than kinesthetic. The Summer Institute made that really click for me and, as a result, the Resource Library has a search function that allows users to type “kinesthetic” when searching for activities and lessons.

There was another conversation during the Institute that got me thinking. We were asked to come up with metaphors describing students’ perceptions of the climate crisis. One particularly apt metaphor was “the blind men and the elephant” in which the students (the “blind men”) are so distracted by their phones and confused by disparate pieces of climate change evidence that they fail to see the entire problem (the “elephant”). 

That’s why I’ve included resources that belong in multiple subject areas at once, to help  students see how various effects of climate change manifest and connect to form a huge multifaceted societal challenge. Another spot-on metaphor was the idea of a tide, in which big forces push and pull us while we feel out of control. This conversation underscored the necessity of teaching young children that there are indeed bits they can control or at least influence, with small changemaking initiatives on a classroom level.” - Julia Sommer, Summer Institute ‘24

You can explore the Climate Change Resource Library here and more about the Summer Institute here.