SUSTAINABILITY COURSE TO HELP UK STUDENTS ADDRESS KEY CLIMATE CHANGE ISSUES FOLLOWING COP26
As the world’s attention is on the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, there is no doubt that teachers across the UK will be looking at ways they can incorporate the themes from the conference into everyday teaching. EVERFI, a leading and global education company driving social impact through education to address the most challenging issues affecting society, has a free course available for teachers to run in the classroom, aimed at 11 – 14 year olds.
Speaking at COP26 the Education Secretary, Nadhim Zahawi has expressed the importance of placing climate change topics at the heart of education, saying: ‘Empowering teachers in every school to deliver world-leading climate change education will not only raise awareness and understanding of the problem, but also equips young people with the skills and knowledge to build a sustainable future.’
The demand for education on social impact issues, such as sustainability, is something that today’s students crave. Some young people are even losing sleep over the thought of what our world will look like in the future1. Environmentalists like Great Thunberg, who is at COP26, have highlighted the critical importance of sustainability and the need for behaviour change in the way we live our lives.
EVERFI brings together national and regional partners so students can access high-quality learning resources, at no cost to schools. The platform offers self-paced online lessons with built-in assessments free to schools with unlimited student licenses and ongoing support.
To help teachers unlock the conversation around the topic of sustainability, EVERFI has created Sustainability Foundations, the ideal course to upskill secondary students. Students can explore environmental systems and understand how human health, climate change, global resource constraints, and animal welfare are all interconnected. The learning journey enables students to practice making sustainable choices, reinforcing the concept that they have the agency to create sustainable change.
This curriculum-linked course provides a fascinating, hopeful introduction to the topical and important subject of sustainability, for a generation of young people who will feel the consequences of human exploitation of our planet’s resources, and must be part of finding effective solutions.
The course is is divided into four unique modules that focus on different areas of sustainability:
- Sustaining Global Resources teaches students to identify renewable and non-renewable resources and make sustainable choices.
- Protecting Healthy Biodiversity helps students explore the importance of biodiversity and the balance of all living organisms.
- Positively Impacting Climate Change asks students to hypothesize about what it will take to contribute to the restoration and regeneration of a virtual place.
- Healthy Life explores the complexity of needs required to keep human life healthy.
The course has been designed in partnership with teachers and subject experts, and needs minimal preparation: all the subject knowledge you need is built in. As with all EVERFI courses, Sustainability offers self-graded, interactive lessons to help students develop simple, actionable strategies for positively contributing to a healthy environment. Real-world scenarios prime students for long-term behavioural change using problem-solving and self-reflection activities.
Schools can register to access the free course – and others like it – here: https://uk.everfi.com/our-platform/
