Climate change is now part of NJ school curricula. Rutgers shares its resources

High school senior Piotr Lesnicki’s idea was to use drones and AI technology to collect climate change data faster for quicker responses during a climate event, such as a flood or a storm.

Another senior, Bill Wang, demonstrated a model he built of a “breakwave” system to protect the Jersey Shore and other coastlines by breaking powerful waves and generating electricity from their kinetic energy.

Lesnicki and Wang, soon to graduate from Bergen County Technical High Schools, presented recently to a room full of curious K-12 educators at a Rutgers University workshop on how to teach kids about climate change.

Rutgers is a partner in implementing a new state requirement that climate change education should be included at the K-12 level across school curricula, part of the latest standards adopted by the New Jersey Department of Education.

The state adopted the new standards in 2020, making New Jersey the first state to require schools to incorporate the theme of climate change into all subjects.

Schools began implementing the change last fall, after a two-year process that culminated in the state launching an online hub of lesson ideas for teachers called the New Jersey Climate Change Initiative.

Sunny day flooding

“It’s not that interesting to look at,” Wang said apologetically, as he fiddled with his model of the breakwave system. But people were interested. His project addressed a climate change impact called "sunny day flooding," when high tides from rising sea levels cause flooding and damage to communities.

Such a system would be mounted on the ocean floor and would float on the water, he told Mandy Natalie, STEM supervisor at Bridgeton Public schools in southern Cumberland County, who raised her hand to ask a question.

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“Think deeper — patent it,” Natalie told Wang enthusiastically. The group watched as Wang started up a battery that set off tiny waves in a rectangular plastic container. The system would have to withstand mild and strong waves, said Dunbar Birnie, a material sciences professor at Rutgers who was facilitating the session.

Wang's model was built using thermoform plastic recycled from sneeze guards and 3-D printed at labs in the Bergen Makerspace, a community partnership between Bergen Technical High Schools and Bergen Community College, where Lesnicki and Wang are interns.

Designing experiments and models

Dozens of public school teachers from districts across the state gathered around tables in a conference space on the Rutgers-New Brunswick campus for the workshop, brainstorming ways to teach kids about the impact of climate change in New Jersey. Funded by their school districts using grant money from the state Department of Education, the middle and high school math and science teachers and curriculum supervisors drew up handwritten idea boards and attended presentations by Rutgers faculty and pitches from private education vendors.

Birnie gave teachers a list of databases accessible to the public and students that they could use to design experiments and models related to climate science.

They also networked over a “plant-based” vegetarian luncheon complete with red velvet beet brownies for dessert.

School districts were invited to apply for grants of $6,600 to $7,500 dedicated to climate change education from a funding pool of $4.5 million in last year's budget. Some 686 grants were awarded in total, and the money had to be spent between April and June on “student-driven, authentic, location-based, and innovative” projects emphasizing the impact of climate change on local communities "which have the greatest meaning for students."

Thursday’s workshop fell into the professional development pot for teachers.

How to visualize climate data

New Jersey’s public schools have taught climate change for several years. The 2020 standards require climate education to be integrated throughout subject areas, in health and physical education, art, theater and music. The state board is working on revisions to standards for math and language arts in 2023.

An “I wonder” exercise at the workshop had teachers taking away “big ideas” about how to visualize state climate change data.

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Supporting teachers in non-science subjects was key for Amanda Rosenberg, curriculum supervisor at a K-8 charter school.

“Those are the teachers I’m looking to better support with ways to integrate the standards naturally into what they’re doing so that we can be addressing the issue through all of our content areas,” she said.

Green light to teach about climate change

The mandate is important, said teachers from a school in Union county, because it gives schools the green light to continue with the climate science teaching they have already been doing in New Jersey for years. The power of mandates is that teaching these topics become accepted. The mandate also gives teachers the opportunity to dig deep into climate studies, they said, allowing students who might be anxious about the future of climate to understand that they can help find solutions and career choices in green jobs.

Bill Wang’s wave tank was the result of kicking around ideas on how to tackle climate change at the Bergen Makerspaces, a place for high schoolers and community college students to be innovative and creative, said Mark Tronicke, a co-founder and mentor at the sites.

Lesnicki was a high schooler studying culinary arts until Tronicke gave him access to Python, a software used to examine large chunks of data. There was no looking back after Lesnicki got his hands on the software, said Tronicke.

Wang is headed to Johns Hopkins in the fall; Lesnicki will study engineering at Rutgers.

Tapping into Rutgers resources

Birnie, the Rutgers material sciences professor, was interested in harnessing solar energy for power generation - an idea he lived out for a time by strapping a solar panel from a student project to the top of his car and driving around.

The workshop offered ways for teachers to tap into the immense resources available at Rutgers.

“At this event we have marine science, Mason Gross School of the Arts, the university’s climate change resource center, the 4-H center and the graduate school of education and others working with us,” said event organizer Edward Cohen, assistant director at Rutgers' Center for Mathematics, Science and Computer Education.

“We get to collaborate with them — that’s part of our goal, to share big Rutgers with everyone,” he said.

More information about rising temperatures and other impacts of climate change in New Jersey can be found in the 2020 Scientific Report on Climate Change.

The full report is here.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: NJ teachers learning how to include climate change in lesson plans