Hot Conversations—When Your Climate Change Class Blows Up

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

As scholars, we understand that climate change poses enormous intellectual, philosophical, cultural, scientific, political, and economic challenges. As educators, we know that teaching about these kinds of challenges can often lead to fulfilling and meaningful conversations with students. Many of us, though, have also experienced the opposite during semester-long courses on climate change: students who become overwhelmed by grief or hopelessness, paralyzed by dire future scenarios, or simply tire of materials that might not meet them where they are.

We’ve organized this roundtable with participants from a range of disciplinary backgrounds (literature, history of science, environmental communication) to explore why courses on climate change sometimes break down—even after promising starts—and what kinds of interventions can be made when that happens. How can we reclaim conversations that might have gone off-track while still respecting the very real difficulties students encounter when talking about climate change? We will consider some of the strategies that have led to successful mid-semester course corrections, as well as those that haven’t worked as well. Contemporary environmental studies scholar/professors such as Sarah Jacquette Ray argue that teachers of climate change courses need to address upfront the anxiety students feel about climate change: How can we flip our classroom scripts away from doom and gloom and toward the hopeful and agentic?

Sub Unit

• ASEH Annual Conference

Chair

• Tina Gianquitto, Colorado School of Mines

Moderator

• Thomas Hallock, University of South Florida

Presenters

• Lauren LaFauci, Whitman College

• Rochelle Johnson, The College of Idaho

• Annie Merrill, Davidson College

• Shannon Mancus, Colorado School of Mines