In 2023, EENC received a grant from the Triangle Community Foundation with a focus on Environmental Resilience, using the Educating for Climate Action and Justice: Guidelines for Excellence from NAAEE that were still in development. EENC put together a team of experts that included: Renee Strnad, Jonathan Navarro, Keith Bamberger, Mariah Amter, K.C. Busch, Dana Haine, Sarah Yelton, and EENC's Programming Lead Michelle Pearce. This team designed the pilot workshop and it's materials in under a month, and then piloted the program in December of 2023 in Raleigh for nearly 20 educators from the Triangle area. It was facilitated by Michelle and Renee, who are already NAAEE Guidelines Facilitators.
NAAEE developed Educating for Climate Action and Justice: Guidelines for Excellence (2024)—the newest member of NAAEE’s Guidelines for Excellence series to serve a broad range of individuals and organizations interested in using education, in its different forms and in varying settings, as a tool for working with communities to find just climate solutions.
We know that climate education can play a crucial role in raising awareness and understanding of climate change, its causes, impacts, and potential solutions. We also know we need to go beyond learning about climate change and build individual and collective capacity for effective climate action and justice. Effective climate action and justice depends on the ability to identify and critique alternative solutions and courses of action, select and plan appropriate action-taking and participate in individual and collective climate action. These Guidelines focus on how to design and implement effective climate education programs that truly empower just action.
Many of you have been following along with the journey of the Educating for Climate Action and Justice: Guidelines for Excellence workshops since the pilot workshop last December. Spring of 2024 an online adaptation of the workshp was created by another team of North Carolina educators, again lead by Michelle Pearce: Audrey Vaughn, Chehala Adriananjason, and Rae Cohn. This team used the resources developmed by the initial think group, and added connections to accessible and inclusive online learning. The online workshop was held just this month.
An essential part of NAAEE's dissemination plan for all of the Guidelines for Excellence publications is to offer hands-on workshops so participants have an opportunity to truly dig into the Guidelines and understand how they can be used in their own programs. To facilitate the development of these workshops, they create a bank of lesson plans, handouts, and PowerPoints that members of the NAAEE Guidelines Trainers' Bureau can easily adapt. Because these guidelines have not yet been published, these resources have not been created yet. But now NAAEE is putting together their own team, and EENC is part of it!
From Bora Simmons with the National Project for Excellence in Environmental Education: "When I decided to pull together a small team to help develop these workshop materials, I immediately thought of Michelle Pearce and EENC. EENC has been one of our strongest and most active dissemination partners, offering workshops on the Guidelines for Excellence and training trainers throughout the year. As usual, Michelle went above and beyond when, along with Renee Strnad, she offered to design and pilot test an Educating for Climate Action and Justice: Guidelines for Excellence workshop using a near final draft. We'll be able to build off of that great work as we develop these new workshop materials."
EENC is so thrilled and honored to be part of this team, and to do this work. We're looking forward to sharing more updates about this project at the Annual Conference in September.