Climate change anxiety can make talking about the environment to young children challenging, but it’s an important subject to teach and discuss. Here are some ways to help tackle discussions about climate change and the environment a little easier.
Did you know that 37% of young people in the USA are frightened by the effects of climate change and the planet’s condition?
According to Harvard Medicine Magazine, anxieties and worries about the environment continue to be on the rise. And whilst the idea of teaching young learners about climate change can seem intimidating, there are ways to introduce this subject into the classroom without it being too scary, like PowerPoint presentations and activity packs.
Let’s talk more about spotting climate change concerns and anxieties in younger children.
What is Climate Change Anxiety?
As Earth.Org details, climate anxiety (sometimes known as eco-distress) is a term used to describe how people feel when hearing news or updates about the climate, environment or the planet. Because of how often climate change is featured in the news and across media, reading articles or viewing digital content that shows damage across the world can cause us to feel a variety of emotions. These could be:
- Worried
- Angry
- Stressed
- Scared
- Overwhelmed
- Feeling unsure or uncertain about the future
However, psychologists have concluded that climate anxiety doesn’t qualify as its own type of anxiety disorder, unlike Social Anxiety, Panic Disorder or Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Instead, the term ‘climate anxiety’ is used to sum up all of the different feelings and thoughts that can come from our concern about the environment.
While it’s clear to see the signs of climate change anxiety among older age groups, what can we try to spot when it comes to younger children?
How can I spot climate anxiety symptoms in young children?
Being able to spot a child who is experiencing climate anxiety might not be easy at first. As Healthline explains, there are some visible signs and symptoms commonly associated with young children when topics about the environment and the planet are being taught to them. These can be:
- restlessness or being easily distracted during discussions
- anger when the current state of the planet is being discussed
- frustration if others don’t visibly show concern
- sadness when hearing about things that have already been destroyed or lost by climate change
Because of this, it’s important to plan talks that might cover any of these topics with sensitivity and delicate care.
How do I discuss climate change concerns in the classroom?
It can be daunting to plan lessons around the topic of the environment and climate change, especially for younger age groups.
As previously mentioned, it’s important to make sure to both deliver the important facts and be aware of the effects it can have on children in the classroom. Therefore, try to create lessons and group activities that are fun, informative and positive in tone can be key to helping make the topic of climate change easier for young children to understand.
To begin with, you could get them to write their worries down or help them jot down ideas on how to tackle climate change.
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences refers to something called the e5 model, which provides five starting points about how to approach discussing climate change in the classroom. They are:
Engage
Make sure to listen and take in everything that children might want to know or discuss about climate change. They might be scared, concerned or curious about what it means and how it might affect them. You should also take the opportunity to start finding out what they already know about looking after the environment and sustainability.
Explore
Look to see how you can use easy-to-follow presentations or short talks to provide realistic but positive information about the world’s current climate. Consider discussing how children can help to protect the environment through initiatives like recycling, saving on energy and planting trees.
Explain
As climate change and environmental issues are delicate topics, you should look to discuss and further explore topics that are more appropriate towards the age group you are teaching. For example, it might be better to focus on using practical activities like games and activity sheets rather than a PowerPoint presentation containing statistics and figures with younger children.
Likewise, older students will likely want to focus more on the details around climate change and won’t need to be protected as much from some of the more difficult truths.
Elaborate
Once discussions in the classroom have taken place, you can look to provide solutions or positive actions that are easy for children to take. On a larger scale, you could help to create a school action plan – a list of things that everyone in the school can do to help reduce everyone’s climate anxiety with simple tasks like making sure computers aren’t left on standby, printing is kept to a minimum, etc.
Evaluate
Agree with the class that you’ll revisit progress on any of the measures and actions that have been talked about. You could look at creating something along the lines of a ‘classroom pledge’, so that students have something they can keep referring to, now that they are making positive actions towards reducing climate change. By following these principles, you can effectively build lesson plans and schemes of work that are unlikely to overwhelm or confuse children who are experiencing climate change anxiety.
It Doesn’t Have to be a Scary Conversation
Handling the topic of climate change concerns positively and constructively can encourage children to create ideas and plans on how they can be a greater influence in lessening their impact on the planet and the world around them.
This in turn is likely to reduce their climate change anxiety, too — by starting to work on the changes they can make in their day-to-day lives, students and teachers are helping to directly influence the bigger picture of how we can all protect the environment which, in return, provides its reward.
Twinkl Educational Publishing serves educators in every U.S. state and provides a constantly updated collection of high-quality, low-cost teaching resources. Our resources are written, edited, and proofed in-house by certified, experienced educators and brought to life by our professional graphic designers and illustrators.
- Twinkl Educational Publishinghttps://ace-ed.org/author/twinkl/