TEACH FOR CLIMATE JUSTICE: A Vision for Transforming Education

Global warming, species extinction, rampant inequality, and their impacts on human life and civilization will be the primary factors shaping the lives of the children and young people in school now and in the future. Our students will, in turn, be called to shape the world they are growing into: It has fallen to their generation to shoulder a major share of the responsibility to turn things around before it’s too late. Yet, schools are generally paying little attention to this reality. Even when climate education is offered, it is generally about climate change rather than for a habitable planet, for the transition from fossil fuels to sustainable sources of energy, and for climate justice.

Teach for Climate Justice is a call to action—an urgent plea for Pre-K to 12 educators to rise up and provide transformative education attuned to the needs of their students and humanity at this critical inflection point in human history. Educators are well-positioned to make an immensely important strategic contribution to the great adventure of our time: the global movement to save the environment, usher in a new era of climate justice, and heal our broken relationship with nature. We must seize this opportunity.

The book is not a curriculum. Most needed now is an inspiring perspective to guide developmentally appropriate teaching and learning across the grades. Drawing on the author’s fifty years of educating for social responsibility, social and emotional learning (SEL), and racial equity, the book is the first to offer a comprehensive vision of what Pre-K to 12 education needs to be in this time of climate crisis. Vivid stories featuring the outstanding work of twenty-three educators and four student activists ground the perspective in real-life classrooms and schools.

The book has eight dimensions, each described in a chapter of the book, as follows:

  • Build the Beloved Community: Strong Hearts United for Climate Justice

  • Cultivate Love and Understanding for Nature

  • Educate for Deep Understanding of the Climate Crisis

  • Envision a Just and Sustainable Future and Practice Active Hope

  • Teach for Civil Resistance: The Power of Grassroots Movements to Effect Transformational Change

  • Support Students to Make a Difference

  • Engage the Entire School—and Beyond

  • Go Forth with Heart, Joy, and a Fighting Spirit!

As educators we are called to stand in solidarity with our students as they face an uncertain and challenging future. Funding cuts, the obsession with standardized tests, divisive political issues, and the pandemic are making it difficult to express the depth of caring we have for our students. We must mourn—and organize, joining with colleagues, students, parents, and community members, to demand the freedom and resources to give our students a great education—for climate justice!  

The Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkley named Teach for Climate Justice as one of their 5 favorite books for Educators in 2023. Click to read their review.

You can order the book here: Teach for Climate Justice

Tom Roderick

I’m an educator, activist, and writer based in New York City. I came to education through the civil rights movement in the sixties and taught in Harlem and East Harlem for ten years, including seven years as teacher-director of a storefront school led by parents. For thirty-six years I served as founding executive director of Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility, started in 1982 by educators concerned about the danger of nuclear war. Over the years I led Morningside Center to become a national leader in partnering with schools to implement high-quality, research-based programs in social and emotional learning (SEL), restorative practices, and racial equity. In May 2018, the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) awarded me its Mary Utne O’Brien Award for Excellence in Expanding Evidence-Based Practice of Social and Emotional Learning.

I have a bachelor’s degree in history from Yale University and a master’s and honorary doctorate from Bank Street College of Education. I am the author of A School of Our Own: Parents, Power, and Community at the East Harlem Block Schools (Teachers College Press, 2001). I retired from Morningside Center at the end of 2018, and spent four years researching and writing Teach for Climate Justice: A Vision for Transforming Education (Harvard Education Press, 2023).  

Praise for Teach for Climate Justice

  • Teach for Climate Justice is a powerful ‘how to’ guide for environmental education. It is full of practical advice on how to teach students about the urgency of our climate crisis and what they can do to address it, with many illustrative vignettes of the best work in our classrooms and schools. It will be a vital resource for educators working in this critical area.

    — Randi Weingarten, president, American Federation of Teachers

  • Tom Roderick has written a timely and invaluable new book on the most important issue of our time—climate justice. Aimed at educators, he makes it clear that despite the numerous other expectations and responsibilities that have been foisted upon schools, this is a subject that cannot be ignored. Written in a clear and compelling manner, Teach for Climate Justice is a call to action supported by strategies that show us how to take on this important work.

    — Pedro Noguera, Emery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops Dean, Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California

  • This is not a book that tries to scare us into caring about the climate emergency. Tom Roderick shows how the most effective way to teach for climate justice is to turn schools into sites of joy and justice. The book weaves an urgent analysis of the causes and impact of our climate crisis with inspiring classroom stories of teachers who seek to make a difference. Teach for Climate Justice is a festival of wisdom, imagination—and hope.

    — Bill Bigelow, curriculum editor, Rethinking Schools and codirector, Zinn Education Project

  • A viable future depends on young people being more informed as to the root causes of climate change and knowing how to take action. Tom Roderick's Teach for Climate Justice makes the case for why climate education should be central in our curriculum and is filled with informative and inspirational stories of teachers who provide clear examples of how to teach for climate justice. These teachers offer a road map of how to be honest without leaving young people in despair. This is an invaluable book which will hopefully lead to teachers adding many more stories of their own.

    — Deborah Menkart, executive director, Teaching for Change