Creating a climate of hope-Schools Climate Education South Yorkshire Conference

On  Thursday 29th Feb, nearly 200 students and teachers attended the Schools Climate Education South Yorkshire Conference 2024 at Niagara Conference Centre. They gathered from Doncaster, Barnsley, Derbyshire and Sheffield, representing 21 schools and Sheffield  College. Aged from 10 to 18 the students spent most of the day working in small groups with a Climate Fresk facilitator. Some schools brought their Eco Committees who are already working hard to green their schools. 

Climate Fresk is an activity where a small group of people work together with several sets of cards to build up a mind map of the causes and effects of climate change.  

In order to take action and build solutions, we need to understand the problem. Climate Fresk is a powerful tool for quality climate education, accessible to anyone.

Students discussed how to arrange the cards and gradually filled a large table, then annotated it with arrows and illustrations to show the many and varied interconnections.  Students then shared their reactions and feelings about the science, such as concerned, confused, angry, sad, urgent, hope.

The older students, from Sheffield College’s T-level Construction Course, had a more complicated set of cards, delving deeper into the complexities of the subject and getting to grips with Pteropods and Coccolithophores for example! 

Climate Fresk cards are sourced from the IPCC reports so it is neutral and objective using scientific facts.

The students were highly motivated to cooperate and complete the task. Climate Fresk facilitators recruited by SCESY and with Climate Fresk coaches on hand guided the students through the workshop with everyone taking an active role, becoming participative learners.

As the students linked the causes and effects of climate change, they were able to understand the systemic nature of the challenges.

The students had positive conversations about how their school could do more to tackle the problem. Each group completed an action plan in the form of a tree, with each branch a different action category. So for instance one school chose transport, nature, food, stationery and waste as their five branches. In transport, they wanted to reduce the number of students travelling to school by car and suggested rewards for active travel. There were plans to create posters and introduce pollution wardens. In Nature, they wanted more of the school grounds to be nature-friendly. A pond, bug hotels, bird boxes and hedgehog homes were on the to-do list. In Stationary they wanted the school to utilise apps and technology more in the classroom to avoid waste. Online tests, e-book libraries and re-useable sheets were suggested. In Food, they wanted meatless Mondays and compost bins and wormeries. In Waste they wanted litter picking and recycling bins. Teachers were given a copy of Friends of the Earth’s Climate Action Plan for Schools and Colleges to help them when back at school.

Some schools recognised it wasn’t all on them, and included Protest as one of the branches. They explained that to avoid climate catastrophe we need the Governments, big businesses and Councils to start acting responsibly. 

SCESY member and Climate Fresk facilitator Toby Mallinson explained to me that “his group voted on what the title should be and they settled on “World Destruction?” When we came to vote on how people felt almost all of them voted to say they had “Hope”. I thought this was incredibly important because if we feel hopeless we are never going to get anywhere, it is only through hope that we can collectively combat this climate emergency. “ 

If you have a small group of people (ideally 8) that would like a Climate Fresk Workshop (they take 3 hours) or you are interested in becoming a Climate Fresk facilitator (no pay but very rewarding!) please contact Carolyn Leary. (carolyn.leary@btinternet.com)

A vibrant and busy aspect of the SCESY conference was the lunchtime stalls with relevant action points for schools. Also on view was the terrific artwork and poetry students had brought with them.  The stalls included Common Threads who were busy hanging undies on a washing line to advertise their clothes swaps at Union Street in the city centre. Food Works was giving away baby Chards to encourage the children to grow some of their own food at school or home. The Development Education Centre had a fantastic collection of useful books and resources for students and teachers, the Royal Horticultural Society stall encouraged sign-up to the National Education Nature Park which alongside Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust’s stall encouraged care for nature. Twinkl were promoting their Made in Sheffield educational resources.   Greener Practice were explaining how we need to Green the NHS and were particularly concerned about asthma. Did you know for example that the gases used in asthma inhalers are extremely strong greenhouse gases having an equal contribution to climate change as the aviation sector?  West Yorkshire Eco Educators had useful information about the Joint Union Heatwave Protocol, which advises teachers on what to do when classrooms overheat. 

This year SCESY added musical entertainment from Lucy and Hazel. One song was composed on the spot, including relevant words chosen by the youngsters. The words were Bees, Climate Refugees, Trees, Politics, CO2, Glaciers, Cyclones, Melancholic and Hope! Quite an achievement fitting all those in!

The day concluded with a Q&A session. The panel, hosted by Radio Sheffield presenter Sile Sibanda, included Django, a 17-year-old student at King Edward VII, He represented Teach the Teacher, a UK organisation encouraging Primary and Secondary students to teach their teachers about climate change. Students are given resources to lead a one hour workshop on climate change with their teachers. They talk about climate justice, climate anxiety, climate science and climate expectations. This idea went down very well with the audience! Django hammered home to me how little climate change education happens at present. It urgently needs legislation to ensure all students are properly educated in this subject. Also on the panel were Green Councillor for Hillsborough Toby Mallinson and Lindy Stone from South Yorkshire Climate Alliance. 

One question was what does a good school Eco Committee look like? It must be student-led and include students with different ages and backgrounds. The environment sector is the second least diverse sector in the UK and we need to start tackling that issue in schools.  It needs a good supporting teacher to encourage and facilitate the group’s work. 

A lot of the questions from the students were about how we are feeling about the climate emergency. Django said climate anxiety is becoming a significant mental health issue. “When we see the scary headlines such as the floods in Pakistan and wildfires in America it can make people feel hopeless, but while it is scary it’s not good for you to become anxious about it. To tackle it we need to work on hopefulness, to take action to make things better.” Toby agreed and said “Most people put climate change in the back of their mind but it does need to be in the front of their minds so we can help society change. By talking to and persuading people society can and will change. That’s what I want to do for the rest of my life, help people make those changes.” 

Greg asked, “How can we reach out to politicians and people with power?” Lindy suggested asking Councillors and their MP to come and speak to them at school about what they are doing about climate change but also emphasised that the youngsters have a job to talk to the adults in school and see what else they can do too. 

Mark Lallemand, coordinator of SCESY said they had an amazing group of volunteers and were proud of what they had achieved. He said “The 20 trained Climate Fresk facilitators can now carry this on beyond the climate conference, visiting schools and using adult Climate Fresck in workplaces and community groups. Many of the students were selected by their schools because they are part of a Green scheme or Eco scheme in their school, so are engaged in this already. They are the ones who are going to go back to their schools and work with teachers and headteachers to help schools decarbonise. It’s also really important that their teachers partner with them as well otherwise those young people will be left with a message that it’s all down to them. That is one of the ways that Climate Anxiety develops. Climate Psychology Alliance is really important to our work. In our approach to Climate Anxiety, we must acknowledge the young people’s emotions and ensure they are supported.” 

SCESY needs more funding so it can increase its reach and is looking to partner with organisations that can support it with capital. By 2025 the Government wants every school to have a Green Team and they are developing the Climate Leader awards. However, the Department for Education has only provided guidance for Climate Education, not a statutory framework. Organisations like Teach the Teacher and Teach the Future want legislation to ensure climate education is embedded in the curriculum. Scarlett Westbrook has been working with political parties to write a Climate Education Bill to make sure there is a more statutory element across the curriculum in terms of climate education rather than it being siloed in Science and Geography at the Secondary level and perhaps more holistically in Primary Schools. 

This was an amazing day. SCESY is an entirely voluntary organisation and everyone involved should be highly commended!