Education Week - March 8, 2023 - 13

" My entire class was just like, what
the hell? " said Jia, a 15-year-old junior.
" They were really all just super angry
about that. It feels like, you know,
you've obviously been lied to, " she said.
As she's learned more about climate
change, her anger about the crisis has
shifted from being directed at individual
consumption to the big corporations
that she now realizes are largely
responsible for pollution.
" It's not like I don't think that individual
eco-consciousness [doesn't]
matter or anything, " she said. " I just
think it's like-well, we are all supposed
to carry this guilt and responsibility
of like, 'You're the generation
that's going to fix climate change.'
But also, all these corporations have a
monopoly and control on our government.
It's going to be insanely hard to
get laws passed, so good luck with it. "
Meanwhile, at Angelo Rodriguez High
School in Fairfield, Calif., 16-year-old
Jessica Baltaxe said that most of what
her teachers taught her about climate
change focused on the idea of a carbon
footprint and changes that individuals
can make to reduce it. Although Jessica
said she appreciated the exercise, she
would also like to learn more.
" I like diagrams, data, and knowing
the effects of things and the actual
science behind it, because something
about that makes it more tangible for
me, " she said. " It would be nice to
see that tie into current events and
things that are happening right now
because of climate change. We always
talk about the big general things-the
world temperature is getting hotter,
and stuff is melting, and species are becoming
extinct-but what is happening
right now because of climate change? "
Students' changing sense of
efficacy and responsibility
There's still a time and place for
teaching students about what they
can do, personally, to reduce their
household greenhouse gas emissions.
Pyle, of NSTA, said he often does the
carbon footprint exercise with his college
students and finds it to be useful
and eye-opening.
Discussing steps students can take
to reduce it can be helpful for students
who are anxious about the climate crisis,
said Elizabeth Kirman, a science
teacher in the Lower Dauphin school
district in Pennsylvania. She also
teaches a course on climate science
for educators at Penn State University
Harrisburg.
About five years ago, she started to
notice that her high school students
were more stressed about the ramifications
of climate change.
" So, we just talked about little ways
to take control, like upcycling, " she
said. " And they were most surprised
by the connection between their food
choices and climate. They did not really
understand that a Hot Pocket has a
bigger imprint than a local salad. "
After all, 3 in 10 high school students
said they feel helpless when they think
about climate change and its effects,
according to an EdWeek Research
Center poll of 14- to 18-year-olds.
That's nearly twice the percentage of
students who said they feel optimistic
about climate change.
Rhonda Stibbe, a biology and
botany teacher at Waubonsie Valley
High School in Aurora, Ill., said she's
noticed, over the course of her 30year
career in the classroom, a shift
in students' sense of self-efficacy on
climate change.
These days, students come into her
class more aware of the changing climate
than they have been in the past,
she said, but they're also a little less
motivated to take action on their own
than they used to be.
" I think they don't feel like they
have control, like they can really do
anything, " she said. " I don't think they
think little things make a difference. "
Stibbe tells her students that they can
make a difference, even in their own
orbit. " We talk a lot about how you're
either part of the problem or part of
the solution, " she said, adding that by
the end of the unit, she can start that
phrase and her students will finish it.
Kirman, the Pennsylvania teacher,
suspects that teachers focus on ways
students can change their own behaviors
to be more environmentally
friendly because it's a safer way to discuss
climate change when the topic
has become so politically polarized.
What students want: hard truths
What students-or at least those
in high school-say they most want
to learn about is how climate change
will affect the future of the Earth and
society. Sixty-five percent of teens cite
that priority, according to an EdWeek
Research Center survey last fall.
What high school teachers and students
prioritize are broadly in alignment.
The three most important
topics to teens are among the three
most- taught topics among their
teachers of all subjects.
Fifty-two percent of teens want to
learn about what they can personally
do to lessen the effects of climate
change, and 41 percent say they
want to learn the science behind it.
Meanwhile, 51 percent of high school
teachers say they teach about how
climate change will affect the future
of the Earth and society, 40 percent
of teachers say they are teaching students
what they can personally do to
lessen the effects of climate change,
and 33 percent say they discuss the
science behind climate change.
Pyle, the outgoing head of NSTA,
said that while teachers may not always
be able to tailor what they teach
to what students want to learn about
climate change, educators shouldn't
throw up their hands.
Schools should also leverage extracurriculars
and co-curriculars to provide
learning opportunities on climate
change topics of intense interest to
students, he said; school administrators
should lead the way.
There are opportunities to discuss
the many facets of climate change
across subject areas, he added.
" It really shouldn't be the sole responsibility
of science teachers to
discuss the mathematical models of
climate change, or social studies teachers
to limit their discussions of policy
to generic things, " he said. " They can
be talking about policy development
and the workings of government in the
context of climate change. "
Coverage of how climate change
is affecting students' learning
and well-being is supported
in part by a grant from the
Education Writers' Association
Reporting Fellowship program,
at www.ewa.org/fellowship.
Education Week retains sole
editorial control over the
content of this coverage.
a ChatGPT response, she suggested students
share the prompt they used to generate
the information in their citation.
When Romoslawski and his colleagues
suspect a student used ChatGPT
to complete an assignment when
they weren't supposed to, he also
brings up citation, in part as a way into
the conversation.
" We ask the students, 'did you use
any resources that you don't cite?' " he
said. " And often, the student says 'yes.'
And so, then it creates a conversation
about how to properly cite and attribute
and why we do that. "
4
Ask students directly if
they used ChatGPT
5
Don't beat around the bush if you
suspect a student may have used AI
to cheat. Ask them in a very straightforward
way if they did, CommonLit
and Quill say.
If students say " yes, " Romoslawski
likes to get a sense of why. " More often
than not, the student was just struggling
on the assignment. They had a
roadblock. They didn't know what to
do, " he said. " They were crunched for
time, because we're a high-achieving
high school and our students are taking
some pretty rigorous courses. This
was their third homework assignment
of the night and they just wanted to get
through it. "
If the student says " no, " but you still
suspect them of cheating, ask if they got
other help with the assignment. If they
still say " no, " explain your concerns by
pointing out differences between the
work they turned in and their previous
writing, CommonLit and Quill suggest.
Don't rely on the detectors
to determine if there
was cheating
There are a number of tools-including
one from OpenAI, ChatGPT's
developer-that purport to be able to
distinguish an AI-crafted story or
essay from one written by a human.
But most of these detectors don't publish
their accuracy rates. And those
that do are ineffective about 10 to 20
percent of the time.
" You can't fully rely on that as the
sole proof of academic dishonesty, "
Brown said.
6
Make it clear why learning
to write on your own
is important
Students in general, and particularly
students who take advantage of AI to
cheat, need to understand what they
are missing out on when they take a
technology-enabled shortcut. Educators
should try to persuade students that
learning to write on their own will help
them reason and think, or be critical to
future job success, Gault said.
But others will need a more immediate
incentive. The strongest argument
one teacher came up with, according to
Quill's Gault? Tell students that learning
to write will make them more persuasive,
and therefore, " you can convince
your parents to do what you want. "
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Education Week - March 8, 2023

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