Clementine Causse and 14 other students presented to the Palisades Charter High School faculty of their support for climate curricula throughout all grade levels and courses.
More than three years ago, the Human Rights Watch Student Task Force at Palisades Charter High School successfully urged the school’s Board of Directors to adopt their resolution to incorporate climate curriculum in all courses.
The students’ assertion was that the world they are graduating into already has climate change baked in. They argued that to be prepared for this future, students need to understand the consequences of a changing climate.
Students felt that government policies, international relations, human rights, changing economies, green careers, the role of the arts and more need to be integrated in cross-curricular pathways.
Passing the resolution in 2021 was only the first step. Students have continued to push to fulfill the resolution’s goals.
At a March faculty meeting, students presented a Google website where teachers can create an archive of units and lessons ready for use across all subject curricula. That website will also serve as a platform for innovation and collaboration. The initiative is largely driven by the insistence of students.
Bravo PaliHi students advocating for climate education for over three years!
How successful have they been? Are our schools giving students the knowledge they need to understand the causes and the impacts of our rapidly warming planet? Do our schools teach about solutions to fight climate change? What can we as a community do to support these students and climate education?
So empowering to see the kids take control and demand that their education is relevant and aligns with the future they are inheriting.
Pali HS needs concentrate on its dismal math scores before it decides to change the curriculum for climate change.
I applaud the Pali High Students for sticking to this initiative all this time!
Some of the students will be graduating & have attempted to get this installed in curriculum for 3 years.
These kids are inheriting an Earth in jeopardy.
No wonder they are concerned.
And good on them for raising their voices and hanging in there!
Clean air, fresh water & the list goes on….. are what they are fighting for.
That’s not so much to ask ….
Awesome!! These students are left to grapple with and solve the climate crisis – an existential threat not of their own making. It is society’s past failure to properly and adequately address climate change that has put them in this position. They not only need but deserve our encouragement and support in trying to find ways to create a way of living on earth that is more sustainable and equitable!
Kudos to the Palisades High students for their brilliant leadership on one of the most critically important issues of our time…climate change…and all it’s devastating impacts. Education about this issue needs to cross all disciplines!
As a student, I always found math more interesting and comprehensible if I saw how it related to the world I live in. One of the Pali math teachers took historical data of atmospheric CO2 going back over a hundred years. She then guided the students to find the mathematical equation that best represented the exponential increase of CO2 over that time period. Once found, they then could predict future levels under a business-as-usual scenario, and what reduction protocols could halt the increase. In my book, that’s how you learn math.
Education is the foundation of real, actionable change. We need students of every age and grade to be educated on the climate crisis because we are the last generation to be able to do anything about it.
Reading about how Pali students are stepping up on human rights and climate change is so heartening. If post-school Palisadians are inspired by these students’ activism, they can act too by supporting the Human Rights Watch Student Task Force and Pali’s own Resilient Palisades.
Nobody’s too old or too late to pitch in!