Confronting Climate Crises by Telling the Climate Story

This event has already occurred, but you can watch the recording below. 

Join us for a conversation about the importance of stories in climate education hosted by Rebecca Young, editor of Literature as a Lens for Climate Change: Using Narratives to Prepare the Next Generation. Contributors to this collection of resources come from different parts of the world with expertise ranging from early elementary to post-secondary education. Panelists will share their experiences using poetry, short stories, novels, and informational texts to engage students as ecologically conscious, globally-minded problem solvers in the climate crisis. We look forward to you joining the conversation!

Rebecca L. Young serves as a Language and Literature content specialist for the non-profit education organizations Cognia and the International Baccalaureate. She is the author of Confronting Climate Crises through Education: Reading Our Way Forward, which examines how using stories as a lens for understanding climate science can help prepare young people for the challenges of a changing planet. An edited collection of chapters on this approach, Literature as a Lens for Climate Change: Using Narratives to Prepare the Next Generation, features the work of educators who are engaging students as climate literate global citizens. Her next project will offer a collection of chapters focused on the ways alternative forms of storytelling such as documentary, video games, and social media can help bring climate education to classrooms around the world.

Anna Bernstein is a fifth-year middle school English teacher in Nashville who holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Florida and a master’s degree in Secondary English Education from Vanderbilt University. Her work focuses on literacy practices that empower young people to see reading and writing as acts of joyful emancipation that have the capacity to make change in their communities.

María Encarnación Carrillo-García (Murcia University) holds a PhD in Didactics of Language and Literature. She has worked as a teacher in all levels of the Spanish educative system, from infant education to tertiary education. Her research area of interest includes children’s, young adult, and adult literature as educational resources for the teaching of languages. She has been an active member of the Spanish research group of the University of Murcia, Didactics of Language and Literature, since 2010; and of the Spanish innovation group of the University of Murcia, Deucalión, since 2016, which is responsible for designing innovation activities for the teaching of language and literature. She is the author of Roald Dahl and children’s and young adults’ literature in language teaching: a proposal for improving literary competence in the classroom (Digitum, 2011). ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8741-8412 

RESEARCHGATE: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Maria_Carrillo-Garcia 

Timothy J. Duggan is a professor of English education at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. He received his BA from the University of California at Santa Barbara, his MA from the University of Nebraska, and his EdD from the University of South Dakota. He frequently conducts teacher workshops at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Tim has published teaching guides for Hamlet, Julius Caesar, and Lord of the Flies through Prufrock Press, and has published two collections of songs from Shakespeare and other well-known literature, as well as numerous book chapters and journal articles.

David Robinson is the Head of the Department of Education and Curriculum Studies and a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He graduated with a PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand. He has presented papers at conferences in South Africa and internationally and has published academic articles in the field of literature and English studies. He has an interest in the teaching of literature, and within this field he has an interest in ecocriticism and social justice. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0178-3249   

Ryan Skardal is an English teacher who has taught in Hong Kong, New Jersey, and now at Brentwood College School, which is located on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. He has previously contributed to Developing Contemporary Literacies Through Sports and to the New Jersey English Journal.

Sarah Wyman, PhD, teaches 20th and 21st century Comparative Literature with a focus on poetry, literary theory, sustainability, and the visual arts at the State University of New York at New Paltz, USA.  She also directs the Faculty Development Center and is a co-coordinator of the SUNY New Paltz Sustainability Learning Community. She received her PhD from UNC Chapel Hill, her MA in Creative Writing from Hollins, and her BA from Brown University. Recent publications on verbal/visual intersections appeared in Feminist Formations, ANQ, African American Review, Theatre History Studies, and Journal of Learning Through the Arts. Website: https://faculty.newpaltz.edu/sarahwyman/