Maine Public Schools to Implement Climate Education Starting with Teacher Training

Lydia Blume, who has represented the southern Maine beach town of York for the past eight years, says climate change is not an abstract future concept.

York was the first Maine town to put sea-level rise in its comprehensive plan and has since constructed a two-mile sea wall Long Sands Beach to combat erosion made worse by encroaching sea level rise. “Every storm we have rocks and debris brought upon the road, and it has to be shoveled out,” Blume said in an interview along the sea wall. “This will buy us time.”

The Maine Climate Council projects the Gulf of Maine waters could rise by a foot-and-a-half by 2050, putting $1 billion of private property along the York coast at risk.
Blume said, “If we can do it here in York, every coastal community in Maine can do it, because it’s going to affect all of us in different ways.”

Blume channeled her concerns about climate change to craft a bill passed by the Maine State Legislature and signed by Gov. Janet Mills this spring allocating $2 million for grants over the next three years for a pilot program to train teachers how to better educate kids about climate change.

“I think it’s going to be welcomed, and I think our students will be better off because of it,” Blume said. "It is happening so fast that teachers need more professional development in this area."

The Maine Department of Education is expected to hire a coordinator in August who will ensure school districts in all 16 counties have a chance to apply for the grants. With help from the Nature Based Education Consortium, a Maine-based collaborative network of outdoor learning leaders, WMTW discovered a pair of York County science teachers who are interested in applying for the training.

"Earth science, atmosphere, and ocean science. it's all connected. It all plays a role in climate science," said York County teacher of the year Melissa Luetje.

Luetje already incorporates climate change in her science classes at Kennebunk High School. Luetje said, "If it's done well, then you are empowering youth to make a change and be an advocate for climate change education and changes in the way that government and people do things, and that's just a win-win."

Kosi Ifeji, who just graduated from Bangor High School and turns 18 next month before heading to Tulane University, was among the youth climate activists who lobbied legislators to approve the bill and other policies to address climate change.

Ifeji said she had been hungry for climate ed but left school unsatisfied. Ifeji said, "I had only two weeks in climate education, once in sophomore year, and then it was never formally brought up in the curricula before that or after that."

Sanford Middle School science teacher Diana Allen said the phenomenon of the Gulf of Maine being one of the fastest-warming bodies of water in the world presents learning opportunities. "My look at it is through the lens of human activity and how humans are impacting our environment," Allen said in an interview. “So, you dig into an investigation, and you plow through it, and you look for what are the problems, what are the causes?"

Allen, Leutje, and Ifeji gathered this week at the Ecology School, in Saco, with other advocates to celebrate the new law. Ifeji said, "I really hope that this is a launching off point for more long-term and comprehensive climate education standards and goals in the state."

Blume said climate ed would be incorporated in the state’s next generation science standards.
The science teachers said they intend for climate ed to help develop students’ critical thinking skills and inspire them to think about solutions.

Allen said, “This is something that we are all living with, and what better to do than to educate our children about what this looks like, what’s the cause, and what can we do?”
Luetje said, “Students need to know this isn’t the status quo. We didn’t grow up with this. This doesn’t have to be their normal.

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