Teaching green: NYC rolls out climate-based curriculum

Mayor Eric Adams has announced some new steps the city’s public schools will take to boost sustainability – part of the city’s broader sustainability plan, PlaNYC.

“We want the students to know we are taking our climate plan to the next level,” Adams said ahead of Earth Day this week.

Starting next year, all New York City public schools will be asked to participate in a Climate Action Day, showcasing lessons in environmental education and sustainability. The education department will also create new career training programs for the “green” economy and ramp up professional development for teachers on issues of sustainability.

On Friday, Teachers College at Columbia University announced it would host a cohort this summer of New York City teachers at a new institute dedicated to promoting climate education.

Vicki Sando, who teaches second and third graders at P.S. 41 in Manhattan, said she appreciates the new emphasis on teacher training because talking to children about climate change can be tricky.

“Students are demanding and expecting this education,” she said. “But there’s such a fine line between giving them context and scaring them.”

Sando, a member of the Climate and Resilience Education Task Force, said she hopes schools will be able to provide teachers with the flexibility they need to gain these skills, noting that teachers’ time is itself a finite resource.

“Teachers are expected to do more and more in the same amount of time,” she said.

The new initiatives build on efforts that have already been underway for years.

Schools are already home to 76 solar installations. Cafeterias hold “Meatless Mondays” and “Vegan Fridays” to reduce meat consumption during lunch, and the city has been building out a fleet of electric school buses. The state has required all New York school buses to be electric by 2035.

But Sando said city schools — which encompass some 1,300 buildings and 130 million square feet — could do much more to conserve energy and material.

“I just think there’s a tremendous amount of waste in schools,” she said. “I always focus with my students on systems thinking, and a school is an ecosystem.”