Communicating Climate Change: A Guide for Educators

13

BUILDING SOIL TO CAPTURE CARBON IN A SCHOOL GARDEN IN NEW MEXICO

The Next Generation Science Standards include explicit benchmarks for climate change education. Even as states adopt the standards, however, climate change continues to present a challenge for formal science teachers in more ways than one. Not only is it a complex, interdisciplinary topic, but teachers’ own knowledge and values can make it difficult to approach.¹ Environmental educators, with their experience teaching about other so-called “wicked problems” like nuclear energy, are well prepared to meet the challenges of teaching such an interdisciplinary and difficult topic as climate change.² Here we tell the story of Karen Temple-Beamish, a science teacher at the Albuquerque Academy in New Mexico, who weaves climate change into her classroom, her work with school environmental clubs, and her Desert Oasis Teaching Garden.

In 2013, an irrigation system near the Albuquerque Academy broke and flooded the campus, resulting in significant erosion. Seeking a solution to the erosion and inspired by Gary Nabhan’s Growing Food in a Hotter, Drier Land,³ Karen Temple-Beamish used her experience as an eighth-grade science teacher and garden lover to create the Desert Oasis Teaching Garden. Karen realized that the garden “could really be a hub for teaching others in the community, faculty, staff, parents, other schools, other children at other schools, other professionals … how to actually grow food with less water, less resources, and at the same time build soil” to sequester carbon.

To begin building rich soil for the garden and sequestering carbon, Karen and student volunteers spread the school’s compost over the garden plot and planted cover crops. The garden now encompasses two acres, with ten raised beds and a pollinator meadow. Karen and her colleagues also constructed a welcome center to provide shade and inform visitors about the garden and its practices using interpretive panels. They are planning to add an orchard.

Karen uses the garden with her students at the Albuquerque Academy, holds workshops for the local community, and hosts learn-work days. One thing that Karen has learned over the twenty years she has been teaching climate change is that “you have to give people a solution … something that they can participate in. And so that’s how we always frame it.” Karen’s solutions center on carbon sequestration in the garden’s soil and building garden literacy to help ensure students’ and community members’ resilience to climate change. Karen and her colleagues “ask people to come and not only work in the garden and get something accomplished but also learn in the process of their working.”

Karen emphasizes solutions with community volunteers and classroom students. When working with volunteers to create “soil sponges” for trees, she explains how each part of the activity connects to a climate solution (figure 13.1). In her classroom, Karen tries to make learning about climate change “fun for the most part and something [students] can do something about. For example, right now, they are creating a pledge that they will try and carry out for the rest of the year. This pledge is something I asked them to do that’s something they have control over.” Some students are eating less meat, while others are taking shorter showers. All students are keeping a journal about their experiences and recording data. “If they’re doing food, they can make a list of the food they bought that week and turn that into pounds of CO₂ emitted for the production of that food type.”

Karen’s tips for educators communicating about climate change are, first, make it relevant, because “these kids, they’ve got their hands full just growing up. And so it has to connect to their lives.” Second, provide audiences with “solutions that they can get their hands on and do something with.” She explains that “if you hammer all those facts and figures at them, it doesn’t go anywhere except maybe depress them. But if you give them something that’s fun that they can do about it, then it’s most effective.”

FIGURE 13.1 Karen’s explanation of soil sponges, in which she connects each step of the activity to climate change solutions

TABLE 13.1 Summary of Karen Temple-Beamish’s climate change programs and how they connect to concepts covered in chapters 1–10

In 2016, Karen participated in the Polar Trec in Alaska, where she researched carbon flux in the tundra. She has used this experience to create new climate change lessons for her students, connecting their soil-building in the garden to carbon cycles in the far-off tundra. She is also developing a project called “Children Capturing Carbon” that builds on the carbon sequestration work taking place in the garden.

Summary

Karen focuses on solutions both in the classroom and in the Desert Oasis Teaching Garden. In her classroom, students learn about individual actions they can take at home to mitigate climate change. In the garden, students and community members learn about how each garden activity ties into climate change mitigation, like building soil to sequester carbon (table 13.1).

Karen’s Tip for Educators

Make climate change relevant to students’ lives and solutions-based. Just using facts and figures can lead students to disengage.