The climate crisis continues to loom large as a global threat. However, the voices of the youth, as well as their inspirational leadership and activism, are integral to the victories currently cropping up in the environmental movement.
In both its content and form, this TeachableMoment affords students the choice to explore what aspects of these new environmental programs interest them and take ownership of their own learning by teaching each other about the programs’ key components while sharing their personal connections and impressions.
This lesson provides two readings each on the Green New Deal or the American Climate Corps. Before they begin the lesson, invite students to choose which program is of most interest to them. Consider reading the “To Teacher” section, which summarizes the readings.
In small groups, students will then read both articles, discuss with them with their peers, and then choose what they will share about this program with students that are in the other group. In this way, students are agents of both their own learning and each other’s.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
Readings for Exploring a Green New Deal for Schools
To the Teacher
These two readings are intended to facilitate an engaging and productive discussion about what it would look like for students to organize a Green New Deal for Schools tailored to the needs of their own schools. The first reading explains the Green New Deal for Schools campaign and its demands. The second reading goes on to talk about how youth climate activists are working to push this agenda forward, and what form organizing drives at individual schools might take. Questions for discussion follow each reading.
Prior to reading, review the following annotation symbols for reading with students:
** I can make a personal connection or have a thought to share about this
! This is important information to share with others
? I have a question about this
Let them know they should annotate using these symbols as they read as they will discuss them and then use them to help them plan out their pair share with classmates who chose the other reading. They will be responsible for sharing what they learned with each other.
Divide students up into groups of 4-5, depending on how many opt into exploring this program.
Reading One: What Is the Green New Deal for Schools?
This fall, the Sunrise Movement launched a national campaign calling for a Green New Deal for Schools. The youth organizers are demanding that schools expand climate curricula, retrofit their buildings, give refuge during climate disasters, provide free, healthy and sustainable lunches, and prepare students with pathways to good-paying green jobs.
The campaign is meant as a complement to federal legislation re-introduced in Congress in September by Rep. Jamaal Bowman and Senator Ed Markey. If adopted, the bill would allocate $1.6 trillion over the next decade to public schools to upgrade buildings, reduce pollution, and create jobs to address inequalities in education by hiring counselors, special education teachers, teachers and staff.
In an August 2023 article for education journalism organization The Hechinger Report, writer Caroline Preston gave an overview of the goals espoused by young people fighting for a Green New Deal for Schools. Preston wrote:
“The Green New Deal for Schools is so important right now in the U.S., where our school buildings are crumbling, where our students are not being adequately prepared to face the realities of the climate crisis, where there are vast inequities across race and class,” said Shiva Rajbhandari, a Sunrise Movement organizer and a 2023 graduate of Idaho’s Boise High School.
The campaign is part of a growing recognition of the importance of schools and young people in the fight against climate change. Heat waves, wildfires, floods and other disasters worsened by climate change are disrupting classes, displacing students, leveling school buildings and contributing to student mental health problems. Some school districts have started to take the problem seriously, by adding more climate change education and investing in electrified buses, composting and renewable sources for heating and cooling. But climate change advocates say schools — community hubs that impart knowledge and rely on billions of taxpayer money — can do much more.
Young people, meanwhile, are significantly more likely than older Americans to be concerned about the problem. They’ve helped shape lawsuits, protests and movements designed to inspire climate action; some, including Rajbhandari, have run successfully for local school boards on climate platforms. Yet many of them receive little to no introduction to climate science in K-12 schools.
The Green New Deal for Schools is meant to focus this climate activism on the education system….
There are reasons to be optimistic. Rajbhandari said he’s witnessed a big shift in the level of advocacy for schools and climate since he attended his first Sunrise event in 2019, a protest at the Idaho state capitol. “There’s a ton of momentum right now for comprehensive action on schools,” he said. “The groundwork has been laid by students across the country working in individual schools. Now it’s time for a coordinated strategy, and to bring a more massive federal investment for states and at the federal level to decarbonize schools.”
A Green New Deal for Schools could also address inequities in education, reconceiving schools as community centers that benefit local residents as well as students. In a July 2021 article for Curbed, freelance journalist Diana Budds described how the legislation being introduced into Congress could have a wide variety of impacts. She wrote:
So what might the Green New Deal for Public Schools look like? It could be used to fund [community gardens] or pay for lead, asbestos, and mold remediation at any one of the dozens of Philadelphia schools that have toxic environments and have suffered from years of disinvestment. It could be used to add solar panels and LED lighting to help a school cut down on carbon emissions, or equip another with energy storage in the event of a blackout. It could be used to turn schools into disaster relief centers during extreme weather events like heat waves, storms, and floods, like Mississippi’s Saint Martin’s Parish School, which was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina and re-built to emergency-shelter standards using FEMA money. The bill also allows for schools to distribute food, energy, or other basic needs on an ongoing basis. Local districts are able to prioritize their needs, as the bill doesn’t prescribe a single formula for each school.
Some schools already serve as de facto community centers and disaster relief hubs, but the Green New Deal for Schools envisions schools as central to community resilience, which is about fixing some of the chronic issues that make communities vulnerable in the first place.... The bill funds community needs beyond schooling, including programming and staff to facilitate connections to parks, libraries, health-care centers, childcare, and job resource centers. The bill would also fund 1.3 million construction, maintenance, and education resource jobs annually….. The bill specifies that school districts in the lowest income areas will receive funding first….
“The Green New Deal is thinking holistically about how a school could serve the neighborhood instead of the district budget, the state budget, or property values,” [Akira Drake Rodriguez, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania] says. “The power and potential is finally creating a public school that everyone cares about, and I can’t say that we’ve ever successfully done that before.”
[https://www.curbed.com/2021/07/green-new-deal-for-public-schools-community-resilience-bowman.html]
Youth organizers and politicians fighting for a Green New Deal for Schools see it as an opportunity not only to make schools more environmentally safe and healthy for students, but also to equip our society as a whole to better deal with the climate crisis.
For Discussion:
- In a go-round within your group, share the parts of your readings you’ve annotated with symbols (**, !, ?).
- According to the reading, what would be some of the elements of a Green New Deal for Schools?
- Do you think any of the demands called for by the Green New Deal for Schools would be beneficial to you, your school, or your community? Are there any you don’t think are needed at your school?
- Are there any demands you would add to the Green New Deal for Schools that you think are missing?
Reading Two: What Could a Green New Deal Look Like At Your School?
Youth organizers have been vital in creating both the idea of a Green New Deal for Schools and in building campaigns for its realization. Although they are backed by allies such as Representative Bowman and Senator Markey, as well as by unions, community members and teachers who support their demands, these organizers are clear about the unique role that young people have played in campaigns for progressive change, past and present.
As Sunrise organizers Adah Crandall and Ariela Lara wrote in a September 2023 op-ed published in TeenVogue:
Almost every major movement for progress in this country has been led by the youth, including the Civil Rights Movement and the Dreamers’ fight for immigrant justice, and the list goes on. Young people have an extraordinary power to dream and to go to bat for what we deserve. We are not constrained by what adults think is “politically possible.” We have the moral clarity to see that building a world that works for all of us is not only achievable, it is necessary.
Over the next year, the Sunrise Movement has a plan to put the Green New Deal for Schools front and center in American politics. We started this summer, when hundreds of high schoolers came together at a summer camp in southern Illinois to strategize and dream about what we can do together. Now, we’re launching nationally.
Already, hundreds of students across the country are petitioning dozens of local school boards to pass a Green New Deal for Schools. From California to Minnesota, the Gulf South to the Northeast, districts everywhere will be forced to reckon with our generation and the power we are building.
In the coming spring, with the 2024 presidential election around the corner, we’ll escalate. We’ll be marching, taking over our school buildings, and walking out of school. And we’ll send a clear message to our elected officials: If you want Gen Z on your side, you have to be ready to fight alongside us….
This won’t be an easy fight, but we’re ready to do whatever it takes, whether it’s shutting down our school districts for multiple days or winning school board elections ourselves.
This is the project of our generation. As students remake our schools to take on the greatest crisis humanity has ever faced, we will pave the way for the rest of society to follow. These are our schools, our lives, and our futures.
[https://www.teenvogue.com/story/green-new-deal-for-schools-sunrise-national-campaign]
Youth organizers like Crandall and Lara are making ambitious plans to win a Green New Deal for Schools at more than fifty high schools across the country. Rather than just organizing one-off protests, they are planning campaigns over longer periods of time that will grow in intensity and demand action from specific power holders, such as school boards members. International climate justice organization 350.org has posted this resource on their website about why organizing campaigns rather than stand-alone events is vital to winning social change. According to 350.org:
Campaigns are sustained efforts toward a specific outcome. For instance, getting a company to divest its funds, stopping a coal power plant, or forcing the government to create a climate change impact study.
Campaigns are a powerful way of strategically building group capacity and developing experience. At the same time, campaigns win solid victories for social justice.
Campaigns are different than efforts that just focus on the problems of society. Campaigns identify a piece of what we want and work toward achieving it. Having such a goal strengthens educational events, outreach, and protests.
Campaigns are different than one-time protests. One-time protests, like a large divestment day, can raise people’s awareness. But the power of a campaign is that after an action is over and people ask “how can we help make change?” we offer specific actions for them to take. Campaigns inspire people to take further action, in addition to helping them understand the depth of the problem—and this all adds up to real change.
[https://trainings.350.org/resource/what-is-a-campaign/]
Campaigns are no small commitment, requiring planning, collaboration, and commitment. Many social justice organizations have published guides on different aspects of organizing, whether establishing a leadership team to carry out the work together, choosing who to target your demands towards, recruiting participants to get involved, or planning events and demonstrations.
Winning a Green New Deal at a given school may feel like a far-fetched idea at first, but youth activists believe that in learning how to wage an organizing campaign and in experiencing the power of collective action, young people can win changes that many people would not have imagined possible. Indeed, given the urgency of the climate crisis, they believe that there is no alternative to doing so.
For Discussion:
- In a go-round within your group, share the parts of your readings you’ve annotated with symbols (**, !, ?).
- According to the reading, what are some of the strategies for pushing for a Green New Deal for Schools?
- The environmental group 350.org makes a distinction between a “campaign” and a “one-time protest.” How are these two different? What are some of the longer-term elements of an organizing campaign?
- Adah Crandall and Ariela Lara argue in their op-ed that young people have had vital roles in major movements for social change in the United States. What was your reaction to this idea? Are you aware of examples from past movements when youth took the lead?
- Do you think a campaign for a Green New Deal for your school would be possible? Why or why not? What would it take for such a campaign to make a difference?
Planning for Peer Teaching:
As a group, use your annotation symbols to help you plan what you think it’s most important to share with your classmates in the Climate Corps group about the Green New Deal. You may share your personal connections and questions, too. You’ll have two minutes to share in pair shares. Support each other in arriving on a two-minute mini-share you think captures the key ideas as well as your group’s thoughts and impressions. Feel free to jot it down.
Peer Teaching Activity:
Pair up students from the two different groups. Once all students are within a pair share, invite them to decide who will share first. Remind students that when one person is sharing, the other is actively listening. If students have questions or thoughts, invite them to write them down after they’ve heard from their classmate.
Have students begin sharing. When two minutes is up, cue pairs to switch (the speaker now becomes the listener, the listener becomes the speaker). Once students are done teaching one another, invite them to jot down their thoughts and questions, Then hold one more sharing round in which students can respond or ask follow-up questions.
Thank students for sharing with one another.
Readings for Exploring and Considering the American Climate Corps
To the Teacher
These two readings are intended to to facilitate an engaging and productive discussion around the American Climate Corps. The first reading provides an overview of the program and discusses some of the tactics that climate activists used to push the government to establish it. The second reading looks at how the Climate Corps might impact young peoples’ lives and includes discussion of some experiences of participants in the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression. Questions for discussion follow each reading.
Prior to reading, review the following annotation symbols for reading with students:
** I can make a personal connection or have a thought to share about this
! This is important information to share with others
? I have a question about this
Let them know they should annotate using these symbols as they read as they will discuss them and then use them to help them plan out their pair share with classmates who chose the other reading. They will be responsible for sharing what they learned with each other.
Divide students up into groups of 4-5, depending on how many opt into exploring this program.
Reading One — What will the American Climate Corps Do?
In a victory for the environmental movement, the Biden administration announced this fall a new jobs initiative called the “American Climate Corps.” An inter-agency partnership between several branches of the federal government, the Corps harkens back to previous programs such as the Peace Corps and the Civilian Conservation Corps of the Great Depression. It is designed to provide young people with career pathways in climate-related jobs, invest in climate resiliency and emissions reduction, and direct at least 40% of its investment towards disadvantaged communities.
In a September 25, 2023 article for Mother Jones, environmental and health journalist Henry Carnell summarized the newly-announced program. Carnell wrote:
On Wednesday, the Biden administration launched the American Climate Corps, a climate-focused youth job training program. The plan will put some 20,000 people to work doing clean energy, wildfire prevention, and coastal resilience jobs and has already cost $150 million in investment. It’s far from the original vision, which Biden announced in 2021 and which would have invested $30 billion for more than 300,000 workers. Despite this, activists, including those in New York City for the Climate Week protests, are celebrating.
It is no secret that the American Climate Corps is meant to mirror Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal–era Civilian Conservation Corps, best known for leaving the world with more trees, national parks, and photos of shirtless men doing labor. In fact, the original (much more progressive) ACC legislation was also the progeny of New Deal parents Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.). Biden has emphasized how different the program is to its predecessor [from the Great Depression]: Gone are the days of $1 daily wages, segregated camps, and a no-women-allowed ethos. The new program has promised a “living wage” (although the only crew that has been explicitly guaranteed $15 per hour is the Forest Corps) and a “focus on equity and environmental justice.”
[https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/09/biden-climate-core-civilian-conservation/]
While the program will not fully launch for another year, the Biden administration envisions the Corps as an entry point from which participants can launch longer careers in climate-related fields. In an October 2023 blog post, the climate policy think tank Evergreen Action covered some of the pathways being built into the program. It explained, “the White House will partner with unions and is committed to providing members with the hard skills and transferable credentials that will allow them to find good-paying jobs or seek further training through apprenticeships and trade schools after their service.” No prior experience is necessary for most positions in the program and few are expected to require college degrees.
The American Climate Corps is the product of years of environmentalists pushing the government to take action on climate. Reporting for Waging Nonviolence, investigative journalist Alessandra Bergamin interviewed Even Weber, co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, a climate activist group, about the steps that organizers took to push for the new program. Tactics included behind-the-scenes coalition building; electoral work; and targeted campaigns pushing President Biden to be more aggressive on climate change, including staging a massive demonstration in front of the White House in the summer of 2021 in which many young people were arrested. As Weber explained:
I think the American Climate Corps is really an example of how it takes a variety of tactics and a variety of different actors working to both push politics as far as we can, when we can, and then squeeze out what policy wins we’re able to achieve from the political windows of opportunity that movements create.
[https://wagingnonviolence.org/2023/10/how-climate-activists-won-the-american-climate-corps/]
Weber considers the passing of the American Climate Corps a win for youth organizers, but he also recognizes that the program is not without shortcomings and that a longer road lies ahead. As he stated:
[I]t’s definitely not everything we wanted. It’s not a climate jobs guarantee, and it’s certainly not a Green New Deal. You could also look at this victory as, out of all of the climate demands, doing something on jobs and doing something for young people, which the Biden administration has shown they find easier than some of the harder asks we’re making, such as stopping new fossil fuel exploration and committing to bold executive action through a climate emergency. So I think it’s important to recognize and celebrate our victories when we have them. But also be clear eyed about what we’re fighting for and make sure that we don’t stop to celebrate for too long.
[https://wagingnonviolence.org/2023/10/how-climate-activists-won-the-american-climate-corps/]
Consistent with Weber’s point, some activists have argued that the Corps will need to be a lot bigger than a cohort of 20,000 members if it is to meet the scale of the climate crisis. For context, the New Deal’s Civilian Climate Corps, reached a peak enrollment of 500,000 members in 1935.
Still, in a September 2023 article for Grist, staff writer Katie Yoder explains that “Assuming all goes well, the program could expand. [Mark Paul, professor of public policy at Rutgers University,] speculates that the Biden administration is starting small as ‘proof of concept to the American people to show that this program can work and that it is worthy of investment.’”
The American Climate Corps is the result of years of activism pushing the government for action on climate change. Whether it can have the same impact as programs such as the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps remains to be seen.
For Discussion:
In a go-round within your group, share the parts of your readings you’ve annotated with symbols (**, !, ?).
- In your own words, what is the American Climate Corps and what does it aim to accomplish?
- According to the reading, what tactics did climate activists use to push the federal government to implement the American Climate Corps?
- Although the American Climate Corps is smaller than what some activists hoped, experts such as Mark Paul believe that the program could show that government investment in climate jobs is worthwhile, and that the program could eventually be expanded. Do you agree with him? What do you think of the idea of a government climate jobs program?
- As you think about possible career pathways for the future, is the American Climate Corps something that might appeal to you? Why or why not?
Reading Two: What Will the Climate Corps Mean for Young People Today?
While the Biden administration is still finalizing details about the American Climate Corps, the government’s communications around the program have indicated an intention for the Corps to be geared towards young people and based around ideas of national and community service. In this respect, it is similar to several programs launched by the federal government in past eras.
In the 1960s, President John F. Kennedy created the Peace Corps for young Americans to work on humanitarian projects in developing countries. The Peace Corps has since sent more than 240,000 Americans to represent the country abroad over the last seven decades. Also in the 1960s, the government created a domestic version of the Peace Corps, which since 1993 has been known as AmeriCorps. Participants contribute to community development projects across the country. Today, AmeriCorps involves around 200,000 participants and volunteers each year in work projects that include helping high school students from low-income communities apply to college, building hiking trails through public lands, running after-school programs for elementary school students.
The new American Climate Corps also harkens back to an even earlier effort. In 1933, during the Great Depression, when many Americans were without employment, President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched a program to put more than 300,000 people to work on projects in the public’s interest. Over the course of its nine-year lifespan, the Civilian Conservation Corps, as the project was known, employed millions of young men to plant more than three billion trees and build shelters and trails in more than 800 parks across the country.
For participants in the Civilian Conservation Corps, the experience of joining the program could be profound. Writing for Fast Company in October 2023, staff writer Talib Visram interviewed several families today whose parents and grandparents participated in the earlier Corps on the impact that the program had on their families. Visram writes:
In the 1930s, a 24-year-old farmer in Indiana, Ed Young, lost his farm and could barely afford to feed his family. He joined a new government jobs program called the Civilian Conservation Corps, spending two years helping build the Hoosier National Forest. He constructed trails through the forest, lookout towers for wildfires, and access roads linking to some of the nearby rural towns.
Before he died, Young took his grandson Tom Chapman out for a hike in the forest, showing him the trees he’d planted and a bridge he’d built across a creek. It was a source of pride. “He knew almost every single tree he’d planted,” Chapman says.
That’s a relatively common story for a generation raised during the Great Depression. Part of Roosevelt’s New Deal, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a program to get unemployed men back to work. It essentially built the infrastructure of America’s parks and forests as we know them today.
[The] work also helped the men learn critical skills, which served them both in the short and long term. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the CCC became focused on military training, gearing up for America’s entry into World War II.
As the descendants of the Civilian Conservation Corps workers recounted their parents’ and grandparents’ experiences, many were optimistic that today’s Climate Corps, in Visram’s words, “has the potential to be similarly life-changing for those involved.” Still, young people may ask, what would participating in today’s American Climate Corps look like?
Three weeks after announcing the American Climate Corps, the White House’s interest form for the Climate Corps had received more than 42,000 interested respondents, more than double the total available slots in the program. About two-thirds of those who responded were between the ages of 18-35. There is optimism that participants in the program will be paid a “living wage,” although the only group that has been guaranteed a payment package equivalent to $15 an hour so far is the Forest Corps, a project which aims to protect national forests and grasslands from climate change-related problems like wildfires.
More details about other American Climate Corps projects and programs are expected to be announced in the coming months, allowing time for climate activists and other stakeholders to give their input into how the Corps will be shaped.
In September, InsideClimate News radio producer Aynsley O’Neill asked environmental researcher Trevor Dolan of Evergreen Action to describe what some of those Climate Corps projects could look like on the ground. Dolan responded:
[As an] example, we know that wildfires are burning increasingly out of control as a result of the climate crisis. There are steps that the U.S. Forest Service can take, for example, to mitigate wildfires by going in, conducting forestry, removing wildfire fuel from federal lands, and we can have American Climate Corps members who are the ones on the ground with the chainsaws, in the work boots, doing the work of preventing out of control wildfires in the future.
I’m from New York City originally. In my parents’ neighborhood, there were public EV chargers installed recently, chargers for electric vehicles. Climate Corps members, in partnership with the local electrical workers union, could go out and get trained to install electric vehicle chargers. And then on a New York City block they could be out there in Climate Corps shirts, work gloves on, installing electric vehicle chargers.
The same could go for federal funding for retrofitting low-income households. Federal dollars are available for folks in low-income households to install smart thermostats, beef up their insulation, install solar panels, all these things that can reduce energy costs for people in low-income housing, that Climate Corps members can be the ones out there, getting their hands dirty, doing the work that is piecemeal tackling the climate crisis, building resilience.
[https://insideclimatenews.org/news/30092023/biden-createas-the-american-climate-corps/]
Currently, the White House has published an interest form for the Climate Corps, allowing anyone interested to sign up to receive updates about the program. Additional information is expected to come online this winter.
For Discussion:
In a go-round within your group, share the parts of your readings you’ve annotated with symbols (**, !, ?).
- The American Climate Corps is similar to previous public programs that were geared towards national and community service. Were you familiar with the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, or the Civilian Conservation Corps? What do you think of these programs?
- According to the reading, what were some of the skills that members learned from the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression? How did their experience in the program impact their lives in the years afterwards? Do you think these experiences from past eras are relevant for today? Why or why not?
- What are some of the jobs that may be included in the American Climate Corps? Can you think of any other jobs that should be considered as parts of the Climate Corps but were not mentioned in the reading?
- When considering jobs or careers that you may want to pursue in the future, is national or community service appealing to you? How does the concept of the American Climate Corps relate to the idea of public service?
Planning for Peer Teaching:
As a group, use your annotation symbols to help you plan what you think it’s most important to share with your classmates in the Green New Deal group about the Climate Corps. You may share your personal connections and questions, too. You’ll have two minutes to share in pair shares. Support each other in arriving on a two-minute mini-share you think captures the key ideas as well as your group’s thoughts and impressions. Feel free to jot it down.
Peer Teaching Activity:
Pair up students from the two different groups. Once all students are within a pair share, invite them to decide who will share first. Remind students that when one person is sharing, the other is actively listening. If students have questions or thoughts, invite them to write them down after they’ve heard from their classmate.
Have students begin sharing. When two minutes is up, cue pairs to switch (the speaker now becomes the listener, the listener becomes the speaker). Once students are done teaching one another, invite them to jot down their thoughts and questions. Then hold one more sharing round in which students can respond or ask follow-up questions.
Thank students for sharing with one another.
—Research assistance provided by Sophia Zaia & Sean Welch.