Education Week - May 31, 2023 - 4

Disrupted Learning
And Health Woes:
Climate Change
Impacts Educators
Should Brace For
Severe heat, flooding, storms,
and diminished air quality will pose
challenges that students, parents,
and schools will all confront
By Madeline Will
& Mark Lieberman
America's children are poised to
face a wide range of health challenges
as a result of climate change,
and schools have a significant role to
play in addressing those impacts.
That's the takeaway from a report
released in April by the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency that
outlines five major health risks for
children associated with a projected
rise in the global temperature. The
EPA's office of atmospheric protection
synthesized existing research
with emerging models that show the
impact of climate change to make
projections about the scale of the
challenges K-12 students will endure.
The report paints a troubling picture
of how children's health and
well-being will be affected as temperatures
rise and air quality worsens.
Climate change is also expected
to lead to increased coastal flooding,
more pollen exposure, and an uptick
in infectious diseases-all of which
will harm children's health.
Children of color will suffer the
most, the report says.
These issues are becoming increasingly
difficult for school district
leaders to ignore. And the American
public broadly agrees that schools
need to be actively involved in the
fight against climate change in the
classroom and beyond, according to
a nationally representative survey of
more than 2,000 adults conducted
in March by the Center for Sustainable
Futures and The Public Matters
Project at Teachers College, Columbia
University.
Eighty-five percent of respondents
said they somewhat or strongly
agree that schools should install
solar panels and source food from
local providers. Three-quarters said
schools should replace diesel buses
with more energy-efficient electric
equivalents. And three-quarters
also said marginalized communities
should be prioritized in schools' climate
change efforts.
There are some sources of federal
funding available for districts for
some of this work. The two national
teachers' unions-the National Education
Association and the American
Federation of Teachers-and This
Is Planet Ed, an initiative from the
Aspen Institute, recently released
an educator advocacy toolkit for
climate solutions, which points to
resources and shares talking points
for district leaders.
Meanwhile, overwhelming majorities
of respondents-including a
majority who identified as politically
conservative-said schools should
teach children how to identify climate
change misinformation, prepare
children for unexpected school
closures caused by severe weather,
and help children understand which
nations are most responsible for climate
change.
Lin Andrews, the director of
teacher support for the National
Center for Science Education,
said the findings from the EPA report
provide a good foundation for
teachers to incorporate climate
change into their curriculum. It
adds meaning and purpose to the
lessons when students understand
what's at stake, she said.
Also, teaching about the very real
health conditions exacerbated by
climate change is likely to be less
controversial or divisive than talking
about climate change in the abstract,
Andrews added.
" Things like the health of our
children, that is always a huge
driver for our parents, and our kids
take that information to their parents, "
she said. " We've seen time
and again that student-driven initiatives
are more likely to propel
change in parents than anything a
teacher will say. "
The EPA report looks at how increases
in the global average temperature
of 2 and 4 degrees Celsius
would affect children. The former is
the widely accepted number of degrees
the global temperature can rise
before the worst consequences of climate
change become virtually inevitable.
A 4-degree Celsius rise would
be a much more severe scenario-
albeit one that scientists warn could
happen if countries don't do more to
cut greenhouse gas emissions.
4 | EDUCATION WEEK | May 31, 2023 | www.edweek.org
Here are the five major health risks
for children associated with climate
change.
Extreme heat hurts both student
learning and well-being
The school year is already getting
hotter, with several states and cities
seeing record temperatures starting
in the spring and stretching into September.
Many schools don't have air
conditioning units that are equipped
to cope with sweltering heat, leaving
schools to decide between closing
school on especially hot days or letting
students sweat next to box fans.
A body of research has found that
heat makes it harder for students to
learn, and students perform worse
on tests when they're hot. According
to the EPA report, that's for several
reasons: Cognitive function declines
during excessive heat, leading to
slower reaction times; heat affects
the ability to sleep well at night; and
students might skip school on extremely
hot days, especially if their
school isn't air-conditioned. (They
might also fall asleep in class.)
Children are also at greater risk of
developing anxiety or depression because
of the heat. Doctors say heat
can make people more impulsive
and less able to regulate their behavior,
meaning students might act out
more during hot days, and bullying
could increase. And there are physical
health risks, too.
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Education Week - May 31, 2023

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