Resilience focused climate education
Equipping young people with what they need now and for the future,
The climate and social crises are challenging every aspect of human response. We are facing a totally changed present and future that calls for a many layered approach to resilience. Learning about what is happening can be overwhelming and distressing. Climate education needs to include the fundamentals of human resilience in order to support young people’s capacity to respond in creative and collaborative ways.
This is about recognising the whole experience of young people and what they need to face and stay engaged with contributing to a changed future. It is about understanding the foundations of resilience and prioritising them in any climate education.
Emotional resilience and mental health is not just about talking about feelings. The climate emergency is challenging us to get better at how we face adversity, and contribute meaningfully to responding together.
Students emotional response to what they are learning matters. They need to stay well and resourced to learn and to be effective in contributing to a sustained response
The three necessary interrelated elements of an effective response to climate disruption
from Transformational Resilience by Bob Doppelt
Young people learning about climate and social emergency have been brought up in a culture where their emotional and mental health have not been tended to. They do not already know how to manage difficult feelings as this has not been prioritised or modelled.
To be useful, climate science and education needs to include current and ancient understanding of how people respond to adversity and what equips us with the most resilient responses. There is a whole field of research and understanding here that often gets missed from the curriculum. It is time to make climate education more up to date and effective.
Bob Doppelt’s model here shows how our capacity to cope with trauma, grow and thrive is one of the three interrelated approaches to climate disruption. When you think about it, it is obvious that no matter what we know, if we don’t have the capacity to act wisely in the face of disruption we cannot find collective ways forward.
We have the research and knowledge to make climate education and action truly useful if we can include human resilience in what we teach and the way we teach it.
Climate resilience means:
increasing our capacity for tolerating stress
learning social resilience, to collaborate and care for others
thinking clearly about threats and needs and how to respond
leadership that is calm, inclusive, wise and informed
understanding of trauma and the conditions for recovery
knowing how people tick - what do we need in order to come together in strength rather than collapse in the face of the challenges
Resilience focused climate education includes:
understanding that individual and community responses to climate and social crisis are key to an effective education and active response
meeting the distress and impact of learning about and engaging with climate emergency with effective care
research around human developmental needs for resilience (learning from indigenous worldview educators and also from interpersonal neurobiology) and how this is needed in conditions of stress and adversity
collective and individual practices to create culture of care and responsiveness including
communication and support practices
embodied nervous system regulation
nature knowledge and connection
creativity practice
understanding trauma as a systemic response to the forces that underly climate collapse, including learn trauma-informed models of education and community organising.
Our culture has caused many of us to feel uncomfortable acknowledging out needs and feelings and traditional psychological approaches that ask people to 'talk about their feelings' are not appropriate in isolation
At LifeKind we offer training and consultancy for climate educators to increase their knowledge and confidence to include resilience based practices and knowledge in their courses.
Contact us to discuss how we might best support you to support your students in resilience focused climate education
Other workshops and talks
Also see Jo’s chapter in ‘Holding the Hope Reviving psychological and spiritual agency in the face of climate change’
Changing the world in one generation: Raising children to grow resilience amid climate and social collapse
Supporting young people with climate emotions
Including the voices of young people
Trauma-informed climate activism
Trauma and secondary trauma
Organising climate projects in schools
Get in touch with Jo
Jo offers a wide range of sessions and trainings based on your need, whether individual or in a group setting. Please use this form to get in touch with Jo to talk about what she can offer.