New law to bring climate education to classrooms across Oregon

Oregon lawmakers recently passed a bill requiring climate change education to be integrated into classrooms across the state. The legislation directs the state board of education to integrate climate science — including causes, effects and strategies for adaptation — in core subjects like science, history, health and civics. The goal is to equip students with accurate information and age-appropriate tools to understand and respond to the climate crisis. Supporters say the new law is a step toward normalizing climate education statewide, especially in rural and underserved regions.

Tana Shepard, founding member of Oregon Educators for Climate Education — the organization that drafted the bill — and Mikayla May, a high school student and climate advocate with Our Future, join us to talk about what this means for Oregon schools and for the next generation of students.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Climate change lessons are going to have to be integrated in Oregon classrooms across the state in the coming years. The legislature passed a bill in the most recent session that directs the state Board of Education to include climate science, including causes, impacts and strategies for adaptation. But implementation will take time, with standards being updated slowly and teachers working through what lessons will look like in practice.

In a few minutes, we’ll talk to one of the educators who helped draft this bill. We start with a student who pushed for it. Mikayla May is about to enter her junior year at Bend’s Caldera High School. Mikayla, welcome.

Mikayla May: Thank you for having me.

Miller: What led you to become a climate activist?

May: Throughout growing up, I’ve grown up in Bend my whole life, and I’ve heard comments like, oh, it’s getting hotter, there’s less snow, wildfires are getting more severe. So I’ve always had a drive to do something about climate change, but it wasn’t until I got to high school that I actually had the opportunity to do so. So my internship, Our Future, is how I’ve been able to advocate for this bill and others. So I started interning with Our Future my freshman year.

Miller: In your experience, what’s been missing in the way climate change is brought up or taught in Oregon schools?

May: I’ve only been in Bend-La Pine’s School District, so I can’t speak on any other school districts, but I know from my experience I’ve only learned about climate change in high school science classes. We’re only taught the problems and the causes of climate change, and we don’t learn anything about the solutions. So I think this is a big thing with just how it’s taught in general. I know that’s had an impact on my peers and my generation.

I remember a conversation I had with a friend who knew I was participating in climate action. She said that she cares about the environment and is concerned about climate change, but she thinks that we’re too far gone for any action to be worthwhile and that’s why she hadn’t participated in any action. So I think that it’s more than just they’re not teaching it, it’s having an actual impact on students in Oregon.

Miller: Wow, so past denial. This is acceptance and almost resignation in what you heard from a classmate?

May: Yes.

Miller: What did you most want lawmakers to know when you lobbied for this bill?

May: I think I wanted them to know that it’s very empowering to know how you can solve climate change, not only the causes, because that brings up all the anxiety. And being able to participate in climate action myself, whether that’s through Our Future or local efforts – shout out to Caldera Green Team and Deschutes Youth Climate Coalition – that empowerment of being able to take action is very important and this bill would help give students those options or ideas for solutions in school.

Miller: What specifically do you hope this bill will change in terms of the way your generation understands or responds to the climate crisis?

May: I hope that the bill will empower more students to take action and know that things aren’t hopeless. We can do something about it. We’re not too far gone. And that in multiple subjects across their entire years of schooling, from elementary through high school, they’re able to learn about the different ways that their communities are being impacted and the ways that they can help, so that it doesn’t feel like a hopeless thing that no one can do anything about.

Miller: Mikayla, thanks very much.

May: Thank you.

Miller: Mikayla May is going to enter her junior year at Bend’s Caldera High School in the fall.

I’m joined now by Tana Shepard. She is a longtime teacher in Eugene and a founding member of Oregon Educators for Climate Education, the organization that drafted this bill. Welcome to Think Out Loud.

Tana Shepard: Thank you so much for having me.

Miller: Can you walk us through what this bill actually does?

Shepard: Yeah, well, I guess just to back up, this is our second attempt at a bill and we started out with a very comprehensive, big, lofty idea with the first Senate bill that we put forth a couple of years ago. This time around we were going after standards and the way that the lens of climate change and sustainability could be adapted into the standards. Basically, in Oregon, we’re lucky that it’s already called out in science, social studies and health. So we originally were going after all subject areas. But then as we got to the Eighth Amendment, realized that, oh, right, this is probably where it best fits, because in language arts and math, it’s more of a skill-based, not content oriented way of assessing. So it kind of came down to how is this going to be assessed? That’s where education always goes, how are we going to measure it?

So essentially, as the standards come up for review every so often, typically every seven-ish years – it’s not a perfect calendar – this will be a lens that is applied to looking at the standards moving forward. While it’s already named, it could actually be bolstered. And having it legislated and put into law protects it in those existing standards so that we can continue to move forward teaching that type of science and that content area, but also knowing that legislation is slow. So the mandates … it might sound very like “this is a law, you will do this right now,” but it’s really, how are we going to start infusing and integrating into what teachers already teach? So it’s not a curriculum adoption, it’s a standards look.

Miller: So what is that actually going to mean, say, in a second grade classroom or an eighth grade classroom?

Shepard: Well, elementary is a special category because the kids are really little. So a big part of what we acknowledge, as the K-12 lens on this, is that it needs to be age appropriate. Really in elementary, we’re hoping that kids will actually have time for science. That’s a real conundrum and elementary is a time constraint because we’re very language arts and math focused, so social studies and science don’t really fit into the schedule very well.

Hoping that, basically with elementary kids, if they are taught the science, they’re gonna have a better understanding of what’s happening to the planet. So then they’ll understand by eighth grade [things] like the different solutions that can happen [and] that yes, we can admire problems, but we really want to go after a hope and solution thread through K-12.

Miller: The bill says that students need to be taught, among other things, strategies for mediating the causes of climate change. That to me seems like a straightforward scientific proposition. We just, as humans, globally have to burn way less fossil fuel. But politically it is contentious. But this is what kids need to be taught, it’s going to be part of the standards now. How do you think about the politics of this in the classroom?

Shepard: Well, I mean, that’s really part of this. We wanted to formalize and normalize this so it depoliticizes it. But what we know is that really when we’re talking about civic engagement, we’re bringing up all kinds of different political things. The big thing to remember in education is that we’re here to offer a non-biased approach that is exposing kids to information. It is based on hard facts and truths, and science leads us in that direction. So the hope is that as we start to formal and normalize that, it takes it away from the political aspect. And it really comes down to the practices in teaching and how we deliver the content, so that’ll be up to the teachers.

We’re really hoping to offer professional development to help teachers have an entry level, and how do you talk to your age level? How do we reduce anxiety by talking through a solutions and hope lens, rather than doing a mic drop and telling kids, “we’re counting on you.” And that’s a really big part of it too is that the kids can see that their teachers are in this together with them and that it’s really an intergenerational movement. And to borrow from Paul Hawken, we’re hoping that we’ll solve this crisis within the generation and we all have to do that together. So part of it is having the kids start to understand that they can do something, we can all do something and it absolutely isn’t too late. That yes, we’re at a tipping point, but it doesn’t mean that we’re already off the cliff.

Miller: And there’s also tipping point after tipping point.

Shepard: Absolutely.

Miller: Will students, say, in the Willamette Valley or Portland Public Schools – which is ahead of the state by a number of years in this – be learning the same things as students say in Harney County, in Malheur County?

Shepard: It’s a great question. That’s something we’ve come up against quite a bit. Oregon is a big state, we have very vast viewpoints across the state, very different peoples across the state, different issues in different areas. So essentially, the hope is to create – and I’m sort of working on that now – a tool that helps regions look at, what are the climate issues that you’re facing? What are the livelihoods that are there that are being affected by that? How can we help kids stay in your community and help start to solve those problems?

We know it’s not a one-size-fits-all and a lot of the state doesn’t really … like if it’s coming from the I-5 corridor, it doesn’t necessarily apply to them. So it’s really going to be very place-based, and ways to look at yourself either as an educator or a school district, a community, and come to a shared vision of what is needed in your community. Then, how can we plug the kids in towards action and justice?

Miller: Just briefly, if different content areas have their standards revised every seven years, could it be seven years before all of this is actually worked through the system? You have about 30 seconds to answer that.

Shepard: Yeah, it just depends on how quickly people act and how tantalizing we make it to really head in that direction.

Miller: Tana, thanks very much.

Shepard: Thank you.

Miller: Tana Shepard is a founding member of the group Oregon Educators for Climate Education, which is one of the groups that is behind this new change in state law.

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