California’s Central Valley, a crucial agricultural hub for the entire world, is sinking — and young people living there are about to learn why. Soon, seventh graders across California will have access to a curricular unit that will help them understand how climate change is impacting the state and explore what can be done about it. This new unit is not a typical doom-and-gloom story of environmental disaster, however; it was designed by a group of young people from 19 countries across four continents for our California peers to learn about climate change, environmental justice, and what actions young people can take.
As college students (one from Minas Gerais, Brazil, the other from California), we were excited to be part of the global youth team designing this curriculum. Our generation has grown up knowing that our planet is suffering under the intense duress of climate change. Terms like “forest fire,” “sea level rise,” and “climate risk” have been familiar to us since we were very young. We are from different countries and cultures, yet we share a common concern about how to tackle our inherited climate crisis because it impacts us all.
Global Nomads Group, a nonprofit organization that connects youth across the world to collaboratively create curricular content on social issues, provided us the opportunity, training, and support to work with global peers on this youth-designed environmental justice curriculum. After being field-tested and reviewed by multiple educators in California, it will now be used in California schools.
As students of vastly different education systems around the world, we know how inaccessible education can be. Whether it’s the language used or the focus on memorization and regurgitation, education is often designed for a perceived “average student,” shutting out students with disabilities, language barriers, and other learning interferences. Our curriculum is based on our own designers’ needs. We included translations, pictorial representations, and various ways to access the content and participate in the learning. Our training and experience show that designing for the margins makes the curriculum better for all.
Our unit starts with the problem of land sinking, also known as subsidence, in California’s Central Valley and is intended to build curiosity about the broader issues of water management. We learned about professional curriculum design tools used by publishing companies like backwards design, standards alignment, content research, expert reviews, universal design, and pilot testing.
We brought our own creative approach as young people to ensure our curriculum will be uniquely appealing to our generation. First, we wanted to gamify our curriculum, because we know how our generation likes to learn in unique ways. Instead of traditional lecture-style content, students meet different characters (that our more artistic team members designed) and pore over clues to puzzle out why the Central Valley is sinking. The learning is motivated by our natural curiosity and questioning. We designed from the heart, pushing ourselves to only put forward ideas and approaches that would interest our peers.
