Written by: Nicole Fassina

Education plays a pivotal role in tackling issues related to climate change by educating young students and empowering them to engage actively in advocating for environmental justice. Education not only imparts knowledge, but also possesses the transformative power to shape attitudes and behaviors, empowering students to have agency over their personal growth and societal impact. Understanding the psychology of education and how essential it is for addressing complex societal issues, like climate change, is a special interest of mine, especially as an undergraduate psychology student at University of San Diego. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to speak with Dr. Nan Renner to discuss the education initiatives led by the SoCal Heat Hub so far and to hear about how these education initiatives are facilitating active and meaningful engagement between university science and K-12 students in the local community. 

 Dr. Nan Renner is co-PI of the SoCal Heat Hub and leads the Education to Broaden Participation theme area. She has a PhD in cognitive science with a special focus on how people learn and create opportunities to promote learning. This expertise and background allows her to bridge different disciplines into her environmental work in K-12 education. Dr. Renner is also Senior Director of Strategic Partnerships at Birch Aquarium, which serves as a public engagement center for Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Having this position at Birch facilitates the integration of Heat Hub science into the community through two essential avenues. The first strategy involves forging partnerships with K-12 institutions, actively engaging with schools and classrooms to promote an ecological way of thinking in education across our community. The second strategy involves incorporating Heat Hub and climate science within Birch Aquarium programming in order to establish a vital connection between human activity and its effects on ocean life. 

As a whole, the Heat Hub focuses on convergent science: bridging together different fields of science in order to gain a better understanding of complex environmental issues that directly affect our community. In the Education theme area, collaboration between community partners, local school districts, and local educators has been an integral aspect of bringing the nature of convergent science into the K-12 space. Dr. Nan Renner and Cheryl Peach lead the education efforts of the Hub while collaborating with partners at Birch Aquarium, UCSD CREATE, and the San Diego Science Project. Collaboration and an ecological framework is essential to how the education component is approached. So far, the Education Team has hosted two Climate Champions Designs Summits for teachers and school district leaders focusing on Heat Hub science, particularly the phenomenon of how vegetation affects land surface temperature. In these summits, educators have learned how to connect the Understanding Global Change (UGC) framework with Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), while also combining strategies to foster Earth systems thinking in education. 

The Heat Hub’s education activities apply the conceptual framework of Understanding Global Change (UGC), which weaves global phenomena into a local context, along with Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). NGSS is a science education standard being employed in multiple states, that focuses on specific topics in more depth and emphasizes critical thinking and investigation in order to help students build a cohesive understanding of science over time (Next Generation Science Standards). The UGC framework was developed and produced by the University of California Museum of Paleontology (UCMP) in order to support foundational science education. The UGC framework is separated into three main components: firstly, the Causes of Global Change, which include both human actions and natural events that alter the Earth system. Secondly, How the Earth System Functions, which refers to the key processes that influence and shape the planet. Lastly, Measurable Changes in the Earth System, which are the observable data reflecting how the Earth reacts to these causes of change (UC Berkeley). This framework aims to clarify the interconnected cause-and-effect relationships driving global change while also fostering an awareness of one’s personal impact on the world and empowering individuals to address climate and environmental issues at a local and global level. The UGC framework, in the context of Heat Hub’s work, aims to instill an ecological thinking and an Earth systems mindset into the K-12 space by facilitating the modeling of relationships and connections within and across communities. Earth systems thinking utilizes different tools and concepts to understand how complex things work and ultimately makes learning more relevant for students who learn to see and make connections between local and global phenomena. For the Heat Hub education efforts, the purpose of this learning approach is for students to put urban greening efforts into action as a strategy to cool down the local environment in order to mitigate the effects of excess heat. 

The Climate Champions Design Summit hosted in March of 2023 was a catalyst for several things that followed, including the Cooler Communities curriculum. Zoë Randall, who leads the STEAM team at the San Diego Unified School District, took her experience from the Climate Champions Design Summit and used it as a starting point to develop an entire curriculum for fifth-graders. Heat Hub scientists, especially Scripps PhD student Laney Wicker, supported the development of this curriculum by sharing data visualizations of land surface temperatures (LST) and vegetation, assisting with the implementation of the UGC framework, and supporting the overall curriculum structure and content. After developing the Cooler Communities curriculum, the STEAM team shared it with dozens of elementary schools in the broader San Diego County. It is currently implemented at 84 elementary schools. One of the primary objectives behind implementing the Cooler Communities curriculum was to integrate it into elementary schools situated in regions known as heat islands, where temperatures are higher on average. Schools are often situated in areas considered to be heat islands due to the prevalence of asphalt and concrete surfaces and lack of vegetation, which highlights the need for and importance of a curriculum like this. 

In order to dive deeper into the development of the Cooler Communities curriculum, I sought out the perspective of Zoë Randall, who was instrumental in the development and implementation of this curriculum. She told me that Cooler Communities was developed with three main goals in mind: centering voices in our community, discovering and critiquing the ways that humans affect land surface temperatures, and establishing connections among Earth systems. As part of Cooler Communities, students learn how Earth systems interact using the UGC framework. The curriculum centers around experiential and collaborative learning, encouraging socio-emotional learning and fostering an understanding of human impact on land surface temperatures. Socio-emotional learning teaches emotional management, empathy, goal-setting, healthy relationships, and responsible decision-making. This is important for young students in the context of ecological thinking because it helps them develop the emotional intelligence needed to navigate complex environmental issues with empathy, resilience, and a sense of responsibility.

A student at Clay Elementary shows her digital UGC model explaining the phenomenon of different surface temperatures around San Diego.

The curriculum as a whole is project-based, and by the end of the unit, the goal is for students to put together a map or a model demonstrating how to make their community cooler by describing the ways the geosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere and/or atmosphere interact. Additionally, the final unit of the curriculum includes an option for student action and outlines the process for planting a tree on their school campus. In collaboration with Tree San Diego, students who choose to pursue this option will identify where they would like a tree on campus and explain why that location is suitable for a tree. They will have to submit a form to schedule a visit with an arborist in order to determine if the location chosen for the tree is the most suitable. This is a great opportunity to encourage students to take action on their school grounds while also directly applying what they will have learned from this curriculum.

Throughout the lesson plans, students will have the opportunity to engage with a wide variety of materials in order to better understand, integrate, and apply the knowledge they will be learning to a local context. For example, students will learn about LSTs and how they differ across parts of the city by observing their community LST map and comparing it to Google Earth maps to examine where heat is located and the infrastructure that contributes to higher temperatures. They will also learn how to use infrared thermometers to record the temperature of different land surfaces around their school in order to gain a local understanding of how asphalt, concrete, grass fields, soil gardens, artificial turf, and more affect LST in their own community. Students will also use maps and observations to determine where vegetation is in their community and how that affects the broader environment. They will explore their own campus to look for vegetation and record the type and number of plants that they find. This will help students understand the importance of vegetation in reducing extreme heat and will also get students thinking about their proposals to plant a tree on their campus.

A student at Carver Elementary takes the surface temperature of a tree.

In addition to observing LST maps and gathering scientific data about their school, students will have the opportunity to establish a connection to the land, by acknowledging the Kumeyaay tribe and exploring then/now pictures of how San Diego appeared before it became a major settlement. This activity will help students grasp how human activity has altered the landscape and will also acknowledge the importance of paying respects to the Kumeyaay tribe who are indigenous to the land in which we reside. Through literature, including Greta Thunberg’s book Our House is on Fire and Last Stop on Market Street written by local San Diego author Matt de la Peña, students will engage their literacy skills while gaining insights into environmental justice and activism. Moreover, students will have an option to engage in a call to action letter-writing activity, brainstorming specific actions and target audiences to support their vision, by collaborating in a group to write a letter to a specific target audience outlining their specific call to action, empowering them to make a tangible impact on the environment. 

As the Cooler Communities curriculum continues its integration into schools this spring, it holds the potential to transform not only how students learn about the local and global environment but also how they can actively contribute to a more sustainable future. By fostering a deeper understanding of environmental issues and practical solutions in a local context, students are empowered to become stewards of their communities, driving positive change through informed action and collaboration. This holistic approach to learning about climate and the environment not only enriches their academic experience but also cultivates a sense of responsibility and agency in tackling pressing environmental challenges, shaping them into conscientious global citizens prepared to make meaningful contributions to a more sustainable world.

Header image caption: Students at Clay Elementary conduct an investigation of surface temperatures of different materials found around campus. All photos by Zoë Randall.