– So welcome to climate action pedagogy. This is a design challenge and a co-working session. So I’m going to give you all lots of resources, and I’ve set aside 15 minutes today for us to do some actual work on our pedagogy. So thank you so much for being here. If you’d like to share about this on wherever social you’re still on, or the nine that you’re now on, please do so. I ask that you do remember to alt text any images, and if you want to hashtag it as climate action pedagogy, please do so. Okay, so I’m Karen Costa. I’m your facilitator and fellow learner in this work here with you today. I’m an adjunct teaching in higher ed. I do a lot of faculty development work, write things, originally from New Jersey, and I am currently in central Massachusetts. Love to read, watch sports, hang out with my family. Niya, do you want to say hello?

– Yeah. Hi, everyone. I’m Niya. You’ll notice there’s a lot of similarities in my bio to Karen. I’m also an adjunct. I do faculty development facilitation, and I do it here at OneHE. I also write, I live in Maine, I have three kids, I love adopting bulldogs and plants, just give me all the things to take care of.

– Yes, you can see why Niya and I are friends, so we have a lot in common. So please do say your own hello in the chat if you’d like to share where you’re Zooming in from, perhaps what you teach, what you love to do. That chat is there for you, and I love to see folks chatting with each other and supporting each other and connecting. Some of the folks who are here today are my, you know, very valued friends, and I’ve likely met many of them in Zoom chats, so you never know where the Zoom chat will take you. Okay, so as a reminder, there is a link in the slide deck, so remember to bookmark that and use that and save that, lots of resources in the speaker’s notes. So in addition to this, which is a open, free, live workshop, we also have a self-paced course that you can do asynchronously in the One Higher Ed platform. So similar content, but there’s some areas we’re able to go more in-depth in. So even if you’ve attended this workshop, you might still find value in that. Share with your colleagues. If you are a One Higher Ed member, a OneHE member, you will already have access to that. If you’re interested in membership, you would get access to this and all kinds of other amazing courses. One of my friends, Dawn, just did a zine course for OneHE. Lots of cool stuff in there. If you want to check it out, there is a free 10-day trial. And any questions about that, you can post those in the chat. Dasha and Niya can help you out with that.

Okay, so as I mentioned earlier, please adapt this session to your learning needs. Everything is an invitation. So do what you need to do to feel well as a learner and as a human being. If you want to keep your camera on, great. If you need to turn it off, amazing. If you want to be super productive today, awesome. If you want to be lowkey and listen, that’s great. We’ve got all levels of interest and expertise in climate action, and you are all welcomed here today as your whole human self. I’ve also got a poem in the speaker’s notes called “The Invitation,” that, for those of you who are looking to do this work with your students, might be a nice way to introduce climate action pedagogy. There’s also a link with this slide in the speaker’s notes for the work of Esme Yang, excuse me, Esme Wang, who writes about chronic illness and writing. And one of her links is about how to show up for activist-type work when we aren’t feeling well or when we are overwhelmed. Whatever our challenge is, it’s a really wonderful offering about how to both rest and take action, and that would be another amazing resource for you. Okay, so here is our agenda.

Thanks to everybody saying hi in the chat. I hope some folks are building and finding connections there. That might be what you get out of this workshop is if somebody that you can email or touch base with outside of this workshop that you found in the chat. Okay, so we’re going to check in together in the chat in a moment. I’m going to share a design template with you that is, I love templates, checklists, so I think that will be very useful for you. I’m going to introduce the three-part CAP design vision, and then I’m going to walk you through three recommended resources. So a big part of this work is sort of fighting against overwhelm with climate action resources and because we can get lost in that process. Our students can as well. So I’ve got three, keeping it simple, three recommended resources for you. We’ll then set aside 15 minutes to work, okay? And I’m going to really challenge you to perhaps not use that 15 minutes to go back to other work or to, you know, go through and scroll social media. I’m going to really challenge you to get your climate action ideas into writing. We’ll then check in after that. I’ll go through a few more recommended learning artifacts that you might want to model or borrow or design from in your own work. And then we’ll wrap up with some question time. Any questions about that, pop them in the chat. Everybody have the slides? I’m going to pop those in once again.

Okay, so if you have not already done so, please open up that chat, remembering everything’s an invitation, so you should be able to hover over your Zoom controls to do so. And share in the chat a word, a phrase, an emoji, where are you in your climate action pedagogy journey as of this moment? And I’m going to take a sip of water. Where are you in your climate action pedagogy journey? Not started, beginner, curious, unsure, mm, curious, just starting, big red question mark emoji, committed, love it, just starting, trying to make ideas come to fruition, mind-blown emoji, beginner, slightly downturned sad face emoji, very early but just completed a day course on carbon footprint. Okay, beginner, beginner, yep. Wonderful. Feeling urgency about it, absolutely. Apprenticeship. Have already started to incorporate. Wonderful. Okay, so a very quick story, I had a friend and colleague reach out to me this week who I consider to be, I don’t know, one of the foremost experts in higher education on pedagogy who said, “I’m scared to start this climate action work because I feel like an imposter.” And I was just so grateful and thanked them for telling me that because that’s why I’m here doing this. And it’s where this started. I started developing this workshop and this course from that space of feeling like I didn’t know what to do, but I knew that I wanted and needed to do something, and that’s what we’re going to figure out here today. You know, and what I said to them was, “You have to start where you are. That’s the only place we can start,” right? So just being mindful of that and owning, celebrating, naming where we are as our starting point is really important. So thank you, everybody who shared. That chat is still open if you want to process any of that as we move forward.

Okay, and as I just said, the only CAP prerequisite is your willingness. Nobody needs to be an expert on climate science. Nobody needs to be the perfect activist in their community or in their household regarding climate. All I ask is that people are willing, and if you’re here, I know that you are. So I just really want to create a space for folks who have that feeling of being an imposter or, you know, I think sometimes I feel like a hypocrite or I’m not doing enough. And those feelings often act as barriers toward meaningful action. I sit with them, and I’m open to them, and then I’m willing to see what’s on the other side of them. So thank you, all of you who are willing to be here. All right, so I am going to pop another link in the chat, and this is a going to prompt you to create a copy of a template. So go ahead and open that up. And you should be prompted to create a template. You will need a Google account, so if you don’t have that, please pop me an email later, and I can certainly download it and send it to you. So you might want to have this template open alongside the slides. You don’t have to. You can also just go analog and be taking notes in a notebook. This is an option and an invitation.

So let me hop over to the template. So this is what you’ll see when you create your copy that will now allow you to write in the template and make it your own. So there are the steps that we’re going to go through in the workshop, and I’ve got links in here to all the recommended resources. I’ve got links to example artifacts that you can use. And there’s a space here for you to use with a table, if you’d like, with a really simple design approach. So Florence, you’re going to want to email me later, and I can send you that. You don’t need the template to participate. It’s just sort of like a bonus thing. Everything in the template, I’m going to go through in the slides, okay? So that is a resource for you. It is optional, it’s not required, but that might be helpful. You can also go analog. Just listen. All that will will be good as well. Okay, actually, you know what, Florence, try this. I had a little note in my slides that said, “If not Google account, view only doc here.” I don’t know if that’ll work for you, but let’s give it a shot. June Karen created that. I don’t know, August Karen thanks her.

Okay, so let’s talk about the CAP design vision. So we’ve got a lot of folks here who are saying, “I’m a beginner. There’s this feeling of like, overwhelm, fear, anger,” lots of stuff coming up in this work. So this is the model that I’ve been using for myself and that I think can be really helpful to a lot of folks who are, again, not climate scientists necessarily, but want to do something. The three, what I call containers are accessibility, emergent strategy, and learning experience design. I like the word containers. It means frameworks. We often hear the word frameworks in higher ed. I try to avoid higher ed speak whenever I can. This idea of containers comes from one of my teachers, Marlee Grace. They are hyperlinked in the speaker’s notes. They are amazing. And they are a creator, writer, quilter, a healer in this very troubled world, definitely check out their work. And Marlee talks about this idea of having containers for the things we want to bring out into the world. So a quilt can be a container, a podcast can be a container, things like that. Yeah, Christina, no problem. It’s Marlee Grace, and it’s in the speaker’s notes.

So these are the three containers that we are going to play with today. Okay, so the first container for climate action pedagogy is accessibility. So this is really, really important. What we’re not going to do, what we’re not going to do is leave anybody out of this work. We are not going to leave anyone behind. We’re not going to do that, okay? So we want to make sure that whatever we create in climate action pedagogy is accessible to all of our learners. So that is a webinar slash graduate program slash lifelong learning process in and of itself. But here is, like, the one-slide version of that. And there are links in the speaker’s notes to things like the Universal Design for Learning website, and there’s also a link to a program called Teach Access. So things like adding captions to your videos. I have images in this presentation, I’ve added alt text to those, alt texts when we post on social media, things like that. And encouraging our students to do so as we’re teaching these topics. Making sure we’re providing diverse representation, offering choices, multiple means of engagement. So for example, if we allow students the option to write a paper or perhaps record an audio presentation or do a slide presentation, things like that. I also want to acknowledge that, within this realm of accessibility, that disabled folks are uniquely positioned for leadership in the climate action movement. We are not leaving disabled folks behind. And we also recognise that people that live with disabilities, myself included, are experts on adaptation in trying circumstances and really the importance of centering these folks and in our climate action pedagogy, okay? So that’s the first container.

Number two, emergent strategy. If you’re here, you’ve heard me talk about this. So is there anyone who has never heard of emergent strategy and wants to be brave in the chat and say, “I’ve never even heard of this. What are you talking about?” or wherever you are with emergent strategy. But if you’re here, you’ve heard me talk about it for sure. Oh, Irwin great, I’m excited. Okay, so emergent strategy is, one of my favorite definitions, comes from the work of Sage Crump. Sage writes that, “Emergent strategy is amplifying the importance of the incremental to impact the monumental,” so those little by little, small choices and behaviors and connections matter. And when we start believing that they don’t matter, that actually is a barrier towards positive change, okay?

So emergent strategy intentionally embraces the small. The work of Adrienne Maree Brown, linked in the speaker’s notes, Brown writes, “Small is good. Small is all. The large is a reflection of the small.” So one of the things I want to invite you all into as you work in your work co-working session that we’ll do in just a few minutes, play the game of small. Higher ed loves the word scale, and higher ed loves to tell everything that if you can’t make your initiative huge and massive and to impact thousands and millions of people, then why bother? Guess who that benefits. Guess who that harms. So emergent strategy says small matters, showing up here matters. Connecting with somebody in this chat, who knows where that connection will lead. So play the game of small and be very vigilant against overwhelm or against any voice that says to you, “This seems so small, how could this possibly matter?” And then the mantra is, “Small is good, small is all.”

Here’s a quote that I found that I wanted to share with you. This was not in the first session, the first CAP session, so it’s new for all of you. This is Adrienne Maree Brown writing in the book, “Emergent Strategy” about one of her mentors, Grace Lee Boggs. And Brown wrote, “Grace articulated it in what might be the most used quote of my life: ‘Transform yourself to transform the world.’ This doesn’t mean to get lost in the self, but rather to see our own lives and work and relationships as a frontline, a first place we can practice justice, liberation, and alignment with each other and the planet.” So if you didn’t know Adrienne Maree Brown, you do now. I just got the chills, and I’ve read this a hundred times, and, you know, we know how I feel about AMB. So this is what climate action pedagogy is about. It’s about starting right where we already are. We don’t have to go out and be somebody else. We don’t have to travel anywhere or do anything different. We just shift right here where we already are. So for me, that was about creating this in my faculty development work and looking at my home and my community, looking locally for how I could take action, okay? So emergent strategy is container two.

And then container three is, this design modality, learning experience design, is that new to folks? Have folks heard of it? Jenae Cohn just wrote a book called “Learning Experience Design,” and I wrote the forward for it. So Niya, if you have that, would you pop that into the chat? Well, let’s sell Jenae some books for those who want to learn more about this. So learning experience design, here’s how I interpret it, it’s about empathy. So LXD asks, who are my learners? What do they want and what do they need? And what’s the context in which they’re learning? So I go into my design with empathy for my learners. Something that I haven’t seen as much that I have added is, who am I as an educator? What do I want and need? That matters too. It matters to me, and it matters to my students that I’m asking that question. And what’s that context in which I am teaching and learning? So this looks like simple and sustainable teaching practices that don’t burn us out, right? Small is all. There is an empathy map link if you love this and want to go deeper into this. Niya has shared Jenae’s book. This is the third container of CAP.

I found this quote that I love from Ocean Vuong, who’s a poet. This is from Ocean, was on the “On Being” podcast. This is another way to think about that empathy piece and that learning experience design process. Ocean writes, “We often tell our students, ‘The future’s in your hands,” but I think the future is actually in your mouth. You have to articulate the world you want to live in first.” So a large part of this work, one of the ways you can think about what you’re going to design today or build upon, is to think about how can I create space for my students to articulate the world they want to live in first? That would be a great way to start this climate action pedagogy or to continue that and for you to have space to articulate that as well, okay?

So number one, just to recap here on our containers, all of which are an invitation, take what you need and leave the rest. Accessibility, we’re not leaving anybody out of this work period, okay? Emergent strategy, small is all. And number three is learning experience design. We design from a space of empathy for our students and for ourselves. Any questions about that or comments, pop them in the chat. We’ll have time for questions at the ends, but that chat is there for y’all. Okay, so let’s dive into, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to introduce you to these three recommended resources, and then we’re going to open up for 15 minutes of co-work. One of these might grab you, Don’t overthink it, and I would suggest that you go with it. You might want to go in another direction. Maybe some of those quotes I just read grabbed you, and you want to use those. So you don’t have to use these resources. They are invitations. I want to emphasise to you all that a lot of this work is being vigilant and protecting ourselves from overwhelm so that we can take meaningful action. When we are completely overwhelmed at the state of the world and all the ways we’re supposed to be fixing it, if you’re like me, I shut down, and then I’m not able to take meaningful action. So small is all, is our mantra.

Okay, so this is the Project Regeneration website. Niya, will you gimme a thumbs up that you can see the Nexus page? Thank you. This is linked. Actually, I’m going to pop it in the chat. I have the link right here if y’all want to open it up. And Niya, Carl needs the slide link if you have a sec in the chat. Okay, so Project Regeneration is a climate action nonprofit with the goal of ending the climate crisis in one generation. Yeah. We just talked about naming the world that we want to see, really important. Okay, so Regen has this amazing website, and you can see here as I’m scrolling through this, that there are all different areas of climate action. So we’ve got banking and finance, we’ve got beavers, we’ve got Boreal Forest, we’ve got buildings. So this is a discipline agnostic program, CAP is, okay? So there’s something here for you and your students.

So I’m going to just click on Beavers because why not, okay? Any of them would’ve worked. All of the pages are set up with the same format, which I love, I love consistency. There’s a call to action and a summary. And then all of the pages have similar items. So action items, governance issues, key players on this topic. And then in the learn section, love it, they have organised this by watch, read, and listen. So watch are videos, read are articles, and listen are podcasts, audio only. So the topic of beavers speaks to you and your students, you can use that. Let me pick another one. Oh, this is an interesting topic. Heat pumps, hopefully folks have heard of that, to make us more efficient and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. So you can see here, it looks very much the same, right? The same format. And we go to learn, and we’ve got watch, read, listen. So one of the reasons I selected this to recommend to faculty is because of that consistency, and you can kind of know what to expect, okay? So that might be a spark for your climate action pedagogy design. Any questions about that, pop them in the chat.

The second recommendation I have is for the All We Can Save organisation. All We Can Save is also a book. So if you are someone who is looking for a book that you can read with your students, this might be your preferred option. And there are resources. This is the All We Can Save website. Niya just popped it in the chat. You do not need to use the book in order to find benefit from these resources. However, some of them are linked to the book. And for example, here is a link to a bunch of TED Talks related to their work. So “All We Can Save” is a really lovely collection, the book is a really lovely collection of essays written from very diverse population of folks from all different perspectives. And that might be of benefit to you and your students. And then the third resource I want to recommend for you all is, and I see Liz was at CAP one, and Liz is saying, yay for the Regeneration Nexus page. So you’ve got Liz’s seal of approval there. The third option I want to recommend to you is, this is from the work of, oh my gosh. Oh, come back, Dr. Ayana Elizabeth, I’m blanking on her last name, and it’s covered up on my screen. Here we go.

– Johnson. Johnson.

– Johnson, beautiful. Thanks, Niya. So Dr. Johnson has created climate action Venn diagrams. So remember that person we were talking about earlier who was like, “I want to start, I want to do something, but I don’t know what to do,” and this idea that we don’t have to go out and be someone else and do their life’s work in order to take climate action? This is why I love her work. So what do you love? What brings you joy? What are you good at? What are your skills? What resources do you have, and what work needs to be done? And then that’s where you find your purpose in this work. So really simple. There’s tons of resources. I’m not going to go through them all now, but you if that jumps out at you, Niya has linked to the website. Last time in CAP one, somebody was like, “Yep, this is it. I’m going to build an activity around this to do with my students and faculty.” So don’t overthink it. If you see something that draws you in, grab it. This is Dr. Johnson’s TED Talk. So it’s a nice 10-minute TED talk. There’s a template, we love templates, for the climate action Venn diagram and information on Instagram if you want to link into social and things like that, okay?

So those are three of my favorite recommended resources. Also, Liz is here, I don’t know if Sybil is here. So I’m also going to share a couple resources from CAP one faculty. So Liz, if you haven’t already, if you want to kind of wave again and say, “I’m here if folks have questions.” Liz and Sybil both said I could share their work. And the links to their learning artifacts are in the template. So Liz put together this amazing resource called, “Global Learning in IT Management: Smart Microgrid Presentation.” Liz, remind me, you teach in information technology, I believe, correct me if I’m wrong. So here’s an example of a learning artifact created through CAP one, which was the same as this, that wove in climate action pedagogy to Liz’s existing course in information technology. And you can see here, Liz loved the regeneration website, as we said, and linked to some information on smart microgrids. Liz was kind enough, I don’t have it shared here, but to share some words from one of her students about this. And it was just a really positive, thank you for those sharing links, a very positive assignment for her students.

So wonderful option there. And again, that assignment is linked in the template. And then Sybil, my friend from Twitter who was in CAP one, this is an example of Sybil’s assignment. Create a one-page assignment for students, and the topic is you and climate change. So this one’s a little more general, and I believe Sybil teaches writing, college writing. So one page, simple assignment. And you can see that Liz, excuse me, Sybil pulled some of the recommended resources right from the design template and also licensed the assignment through Creative Commons. So bonus points there. So just a couple examples of assignments that came out of CAP one to give you some ideas. I hesitate sometimes to provide examples because I don’t want to limit your brainstorming and your thinking, but I know examples are helpful. So there’s a couple for you to get you going.

Okay, so we are going to shift to co-working time, okay? So I’m going to ease this in here, and we are actually one minute ahead of schedule, so anything is possible if that’s happening. Okay, so I’m going to set a timer on my phone for 15 minutes and invite you to use that 15 minutes to start working on your design, whatever that looks like for you. So you can use that design template, you can go analog, you can dive in and do some research on some of those websites, or do anything that you would like to do. I am going to open up breakout rooms, and I’m going to create, oh, just for the heck of it, 10, and open all rooms. Okay, so I’ve just opened up 10 breakout rooms. If you came here with a colleague and you want to say to them, “Hey, do you want to go into breakout room one or breakout room seven, and we can work on this together?” The rooms are open, they are optional, okay?

Niya and I are going to stay here in the main room to support you as needed. I invite you to mute, turn things off, do whatever you need to do to help you focus. I do want to strongly encourage you to resist that voice in your head that says, “Let me just use this time to go on social media or go back to my other work.” Use this time to get those ideas down in writing and to establish the next best small step. Come on back, everybody. Welcome back, welcome. If you want to keep working, if you are in the zone, we love getting in the zone. You can keep working. I won’t be offended, and I won’t tell. So do whatever you need to do to feel well in your work. Okay, yeah, just a quick note, kind of pull back the curtain moment, I don’t always love breakout rooms. So Niya and I, you know, had some conversations about how we could do that best. And you know, I sense I’m not alone in that feeling about breakout rooms, but I know some people love breakout rooms. So we gave it as an option, and I set it up so people could put themselves in their rooms and move freely about rooms. And that seems to have worked for some of you, and it seems that some of you chose to stay here. So just a little, you know, Zoom pedagogical note. Making breakout rooms optional is one way to approach them.

Okay, so folks, if you would be so kind, where are you now? So you shared how you felt when we started this session about your climate action pedagogy journey. So come on into the chat and let us know, how did it go? Where are you now? Did something go well that you’d like to share? Do you need help with something? Are you stuck somewhere? What do you need? Come on in the chat. Cam, thank you for your encouragement to work on the issues here. Great. Liz has chimed in. Kayla has a question about those examples. So Liz has chimed in on the IT lesson, and then Sybil’s has, you’ll see at the bottom, a Creative Commons license. I didn’t look exactly at what type of license it is, but if you know Creative Commons, you’ll know what type of license. So you can check that out.

Rebecca, yeah, what came up for you in having that space set aside? I resisted the urge to multitask. I get it. I realised I have already started talking about climate change in my class. I love that. Some of the examples I’ve been using address some of the issues in a roundabout way, but I could be more purposeful about it. I bet folks resonate with that, right? How could we not, in some way, already be acknowledging this with our students? I didn’t make much progress, but I made progress. Yeah, so progress, not perfection can be one of our other mantras. That is a sister mantra to small is all. Progress, not perfection. That’s the important thing. Absolutely. I have more of a vision now.

Yeah, my suggestion would be to get any and all ideas you have either in writing or in some kind of voice note so that you don’t lose those and build that momentum. I can now see I’ve already been doing CAP. Oh my gosh, I love that. Now I want to be more intentional. Some breakout room love. I am so thrilled that y’all connected in breakout rooms. Even though that’s not my thing, I love that that’s your thing and that we were able to balance that for all of us here. Oh my gosh, okay. Too many ideas to share. But I want y’all to poke through the chat and see what’s in there. And perhaps you can send private messages in the chat. If there’s somebody who is calling to you, answer the call, and maybe reach out if you feel comfortable staying in touch after this. One of the other things about emergent strategy that Adrienne Maree Brown teaches is that we prioritise critical connections over critical mass. I’m going to say that again. We prioritise critical connections over critical mass. So that one conversation or that one email or text or DM that you exchange, you have no idea the ripple effects that might have. That’s how we’re all here because this idea came from a conversation that I actually have with my therapist because I said, “I’m hopeless, and what do I do about all this?” And she said, “Well, what can you do?” And that’s why we’re here. Okay, glad that the small resonates with you.

Okay, sorry, I didn’t know if I went too far. Okay, so I’m going to be here with us until 1:15. I want to show you some more examples. Then I have a poem, a short, short poem to share with you. I didn’t write it. I’m not quite there yet to share my own poetry. A lovely poem that I think will inspire you and is something you can use with your students. And then we’ll have time for questions. So these are a few more specific ideas. I don’t share these before the co-work session because I don’t want to limit your creativity too much ’cause examples can constrain our creativity. But now I’m going to show you, okay? So here is a punch list. Have folks heard of a punch list before? This is on the Project Regen website, which you’re already familiar with. This could be an activity you do with your students, okay? You could make this punch list general. So what are some things you can do to take climate action? You’ll see on the screen here, there’s examples of Gaby and Sadie’s punch lists. Perhaps you would want to make this specific to what you teach. So, you know, applying the strategies that we just learned in graphic design, psychology, computer science, whatever the case may be, create a punch list using course concepts, okay?

So the Regen website, you don’t have to use their website to make a punch list. You could do this in Google Docs, but they have a punch list generator if you’re into that sort of thing. Someone mentions something about carbon calculators or carbon footprint before. So whoever did might have more resources on this, also on the Regen website. This is another activity you could do with your students, have them calculate their carbon footprint, okay? So most of us are recognising all roads lead back to fossil fuels. So this is a way, and to be clear, drastically changing our relationship with fossil fuels. So this is a way to start that conversation with your students. Oh, Sue, lovely, lovely. And it’s a UK website, so I know we’ve got an international audience, so check that out. Thank you so much.

Another example, and these are all in the template, so if you’re like, “Whoa, slow down, honey,” they’re all in the template, okay, promise. This is a Google drive of students in Massachusetts where I’m from. These are middle school and high school students who made public service announcements. So this is absolutely something that your college learners and learners outside of higher ed could create as well. And you can see some examples of the students’ work. So having your students create a public service announcement, perhaps weaving in your course content. This is a website from our friends to the north, my friends to the north where I am in the US, so it’s a Canadian website called Whose Land am I on? So this is another way that you might want to engage your students with climate action pedagogy, linking them to this conversation about native land and native resources and, you know, the tribal and indigenous approach to climate action and bringing that and centering that in our conversations.

Okay, two more I’m going to show you. As a reminder, this is in the template. Most of us do a discussion a week one. Introduce yourself-type discussion with our students, whatever the modality, online or not. You could simply ask your students to introduce themselves and to pick one of the topics on the Nexus page and to share, in their introduction, “Hi, I am Karen Costa. I chose,” let’s see here, “agroforestry as my topic, and the reason I chose that is,” so that kind of is a very simple, broad way that we can get them started on their climate action journey. And then this is one of my favorite educators who put this together.

Some of you may know Dawn Stahura. Dawn has a zine class in OneHE. Have your students create zines. Zines are back, if you didn’t get the memo. They didn’t stay in the ’90s, they’re back, and we love them. Dawn does an amazing workshop, and there’s a course in OneHE, so you can check that out as well. And there’s tons of resources on Dawn’s website. We love Dawn. Dawn is such a great, if you need professional development, have Dawn come talk. Dasha has put the link to that course. This is a great way to get creative with your students in their climate action pedagogy work.

Okay, so any questions about that, pop them in the chat. I see people sharing resources, and I love it. But remember, I just kind of bombarded you. It’s okay. It’s just to give you information. You’ve got the template. Small is all. We’re not trying to do all of those things I just showed you. I know some of you might, I know some of you might. But that’s okay. Small is all. So we’re going to protect ourselves and our students from overwhelm. Okay, my voice is a bit shot, so I’m going to actually ask, does somebody want to read this? This is Andrea Gibson. This is a poem. Does somebody want to raise their hand and read this for me? Are you allowed to take yourselves off mute?

– I think I allowed that, but if not, I can read it.

– Niya, do you want to read it for us?

– Oh, sure. Okay, “You fear you are not strong enough to do the hardest thing, only because you don’t yet know that doing the hardest thing is exactly what will help you know your strength.”

– Thank you so much, Niya. I was reading this this summer. You’ll read about this in Inside Higher Ed, apparently. Some perimenopause mental health issues bubbled up, and it was a wild ride there for a bit. And I found Andrea Gibson’s work through Glennon Doyle’s podcast, Glennon and Abby and sister, if you listen. And I was like, “Whoa, what’s this? You know, I’ll just keep reading this over and over as one of the things to help me get through it.” So I think poetry helps. I think poetry helps. So this might be something to share with your students. This work is not only about climate action, it’s about mental health. It’s about justice and finding new ways and old ways to live because what we’re doing isn’t working. And it’s a lot, so poetry helps. And this was one I wanted to share with you all.

I’m going to be here for the next 15 minutes. If you need to bolt, that’s cool. But I do want to share another resource with you, two more resources with you in the chat. And then I’m going to open up for any questions. So I’ve got some friends at Western University who are offering a climate change action course this fall. I believe that, it’s free. I’m saying it’s free, but then I’m like, “It’s too good to be true.” It’s free, and you can sign up to get notified. It’s opening soon-ish in the next couple weeks if you want more. They are doing amazing work.

Another resource that I’ve just found is called The Narrative Method. I’m going to pop that in the chat. We’re not meant to hold all of this inside. So if you’re looking for ways to get it out, all of these feelings that are coming up around this work, The Narrative Method, I’ve gone to two sessions. It’s a creative writing program. I’ve gone to the 30-minute session. It’s amazing. It’s a chance to be social and connect with other humans. And then you write for about seven minutes. And it’s led by a licensed therapist. It’s free and donation-based. And I really love the approach to just, I’m a huge fan of expressive writing as part of this work. So if you’re still here with us, if you would share in the chat, so we’ve had a few check-ins, we’re wrapping up here.

So where are you now? If you would like to put in writing for accountability for yourself, for inspiration for yourself and others what’s your next small step, I would love to see it. Please stay in touch. Folks have been sending me the artifacts that they’ve created. They’ve been sending me feedback from students. You just make my day, and I’m able to feed that back into the community, so please do stay in touch. Questions, you can raise your hand, and I’ll pull you off mute. Or if you can unmute yourself, feel free and ask, or you can pop them in the chat as well. Kate, I am excited. That’s really important. And I’m going to sell a lot of Adrienne Maree Brown’s books per usual.

Another of her books is called “Pleasure Activism.” And the idea is that we need to make doing good feel good in order to get people to do good. “Pleasure Activism” is the book. I woke up today saying, “It’s CAP day!” I want people to feel excited about doing this work. Look through the slides again in my own time. Lovely. I would encourage you, Kate, to put an appointment in your calendar to do that. That’s an invitation. Next small step, finalised dialogue, resources, and rubric for course assignment. I would encourage you to put that in your calendar or planner. I’m going to say that a couple more times. I have ADHD, so I’m really aware of time management stuff. And one of my rules is if it’s not in my calendar planner written down, it doesn’t happen, so.

Cam, I appreciate your leadership. I’m just here to hold this space for all of you in your leadership, so thank you for being here. Oh, chat’s popping off, which I love. I’ll be able to assign work in each of my courses starting this semester now. Yes, so think of how many students are going to access this work because of all of you today. So if you’re feeling hopeless, remember how many students are going to be learning about this. My next step is to scaffold breakdown the project I envision for students and play with the syllabus for next spring, amazing. Ask the students, yeah, Liz taught this already, who went through that project, what they would recommend for the next cohort. Yeah, let’s do this with our students. Let’s learn with our students.

I’d really like to bridge open education with CAP, exploring. Yeah. Kayla, Ooh, there’s somebody at CAP. Monica at Creative Commons, Monica, and I’m not pulling a last name right now, Monica at Creative Commons is leading their climate action work. And Cable, Monica and Cable, those are the folks you want to talk to. Megan and Christina. Yeah, Monica and Cable, okay, at Creative Commons. And if you can’t find them, poke me. I’m using this framework to shape how I talk to my students who are taking a class on planning their journey through gen ed requirements. Thrilling, thrilling. My next step is to finish a couple computer assignments where students interact with real climate data and put them online. Love it. I am already aiming to apply. Yeah, this is really hitting me right now, y’all. This is tough, this being human at this moment in time.

So I’m, ooh, okay. I’m already aiming to apply some of these shared resources for course this semester. Don’t worry, I won’t. Small will be all. Feeling inspired. Yeah. Remember that feeling. So we want our students to feel that way as well, right? So we want to craft and design our projects and our approach so that our students feel hopeful and inspired as well. That’s what’s going to keep us moving and keep us taking action. Thank you, Kelsey, for being here. It wouldn’t have been the same without you, right? We never know what one person missing, how that would’ve shifted things, thank you. I’m going to be working with a group of first generation students to interview them about their experience in college. I’m wondering how I can incorporate some of these ideas into the interview questions. Absolutely, absolutely. Eliza, keep going with that. Incredibly important. I love it. Sue, a personal pledge is to look at green computing. The aspect I have control over is taking steps for greener use of computing in the workplace. Yeah, what can I do, right? That’s a really big question. What can I do? Thank you so much.

Having students work on infographics. Wonderful. Irwin, I create little pieces of music to open discussions with my classes. Here’s one for thinking about our environment. Feel free to use or share. Irwin, thank you for your generosity. I love that. I said poetry helps. Music helps too, right? And if you’re doing this work with students, and, you know, you need a break, put on some music in class. Yep, and maybe a playlist that you’ve made with your students. I love that. Jill, as an instructional designer, will create a CAP resource for faculty. Are folks feeling a little more hopeful about this future of the world as I’m reading these? I hope so. I hope so.

As an instructional designer creating resources, yeah. I’d like to really, oh, Kayla, yeah. We’ve already hit that one, I think. Oh, no. Maybe we didn’t. Bridging open education, uplift CAP, just getting an idea of what a faculty facing CAP. Yeah, so Cable and Monica, you can tell them I sent you. They know about this. I’ve talked to them about it. The name of the game in climate, one of the names of the game in climate action is to look at generative approaches. So win-wins that are collaborative and that create community and opportunities. So the open movement is a really important, they’re already doing that, and then climate action is doing that. So you’re really in a wonderful place. So I’m going to be going to your workshop on open climate action resources. That would be, like, a step two. So yeah, I’m hoping people will build on this and go into new places.

And if you want to keep going, don’t forget the OneHE course. Thank Dasha. Dasha is a mind reader. The self-paced course is in the One Higher Ed platform. Again, if your institution is a member, you can access it for free, along with, like, many other amazing courses. If they’re not a member, you can ask them to become a member so that you and all of your colleagues, like, imagine if all the faculty at your institution did this, and climate action was woven into all of our courses, like, wow. But if your institution’s not, and you just want to check it out solo there, there’s a free trial, and there’s also a solo membership that’s very affordable. I believe it’s $14.99 a month for not just from this course, for the whole library.

Oh, and folks, I know there’s only 15, I meant to say this earlier, I’m planning, if you’re still here, I’m loosely planning some, like, lunch and learn coffee chats with no agenda once a month to get together and talk about climate action pedagogy and just be humans together and share resources and what’s hard and what’s going well. So if you’re interested in that, my website is 100faculty.com, and you should be able to sign up for my mailing list there. And if you don’t see it for some reason, you can just shoot me an email, and I can add you, and I will post, or follow me. I am still on, I refuse to call it by its new name. I am on Twitter, @karenraycosta, and I’m also on Mastodon and Bluesky and LinkedIn. I don’t want to be all these places, but, you know, it is what it is. So if you’re not following me on one of those seven places, I’ll post information there. But just like a an hour to get together and talk about this once a month, I think would be fun, and hopeful for me, and hopefully for you as well. All right, folks, let’s keep it going. Let’s stay in touch. You know where to find me. I’m not going anywhere. Niya, thank you. Dasha, thank you. Dasha’s from One Higher Ed. Thank you so much for your presence and your support.

– [Participant] Thanks, Karen. It was great. Thank you so much for your time and energy.

– Yes, yes. All right, folks, are we ready to say goodbye?

– Ready.

– Yep.

– All right. Stop share. All right, I’m going to shut us down. Bye, everybody.