Come and explore the connections between the teaching and learning of science, CTE, and climate literacy, including intersections with workforce development.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees learn strategies for interweaving science, CTE, and climate learning into a variety of learning contexts and courses.

SPEAKERS:
Johanna Brown, Carol ODonnell, Deb Morrison

Learn about Educating for Environmental Change (EFEC), a free Indiana University program that helps educators teach the science and policy of climate change and participate in exemplar activities. This workshop will introduce the EFEC project and provide information on how teachers can get involved. The presenter will also facilitate exemplar activities from the project that are designed to engage students in the practice of scientific argumentation. Surfacing student thinking, addressing student misconceptions, and alignment to the NGSS will also be emphasized. The EFEC project is designed to elucidate and deepen understanding of environmental issues through hands-on lessons co-designed by IU's Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, the School of Education, and veteran K-12 science teachers. EFEC utilizes the following driving questions: how do we know the climate is changing; what are the impacts of these changes; what can be done moving forward; and how do we cultivate optimism in our students?

TAKEAWAYS:
The Educating for Environmental Change (EfEC) project utilizes the following driving questions: how do we know the climate is changing; what are the impacts of these changes; how can we mitigate these changes; and how do we cultivate optimism in our students while teaching them about climate change?

SPEAKERS:
Adam Scribner

Explore the phenomena of shorebird migration to figure out the amazing journeys of these birds. Engage in What  Can I Eat investigation connecting to how internal and external features support survival. Many birds such as loons, hummingbirds and ospreys  migrate using the flyways but this  session focuses on the  migration data and flyway maps of sanderlings and other shorebirds. We will figure out how patterns of parental behavior influence migration..

We will demonstrate how to use phenomena-based learning tools as we explore the migration of a sanderling called Gilbert during a fall migration...

We will use an interactive read aloud guide to demonstrate the connections between science and literacy. Discussions will include how we leverage migration to do science and how we are explicitly  teaching  reading at the same time.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will leave with inquiry investigations to use in their classroom, access to real time data, strategies for using phenomena-based and place-based pedagogy in the elementary classroom, a read-aloud guide and a list of resources for using literary to teach science.,

SPEAKERS:
Kathy Renfrew

Engaging place-based Pacific-Coast-centered storylines are presented that allow students to develop sensemaking skills for investigating up-to-date, research-driven climate science and how it relates to their home communities. For example, the Pacific Ocean El Niño / La Niña cycles greatly influence the climates of the U.S. West Coast, including regional temperature and precipitation variations and therefore the timing and locations of floods, droughts, and wildfires. Increased global warming due to increased greenhouse gases is amplifying some of these impact. A recent example is the Southern California wildfires of 2025, where global warming has now extended the lengths of La Niña droughts into January, so they are now overlapping with the start of the winter Santa Ana winds. Another example is how increased Pacific Ocean surface temperatures increase the likelihood of future atmospheric rivers that can cause severe flooding along parts of the West Coast.

TAKEAWAYS:
Students effectively develop sensemaking of NGSS performance expectations concerning weather and climate using place-based storylines anchored by Pacific Coast regional phenomena. Instructors will leave with multiple ideas for incorporating the latest climate science into their classrooms.

SPEAKERS:
Michael Wysession

This poster highlights The Great Indoors, a free, NGSS-aligned climate and health unit for grades 6–8 that connects cutting-edge research with practical classroom strategies. Built around case studies and data-rich activities, the unit helps students explore how climate-driven events—such as wildfires, flooding, and pesticide use—affect indoor environments and human health. Students engage in experiments, analyze data, and use design thinking to propose solutions that build community resilience. Aligned with NGSS and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the unit integrates frameworks such as Causal Learning in the Classroom (CliC) and the 5E instructional model. Lessons are modular, adaptable to various schedules, and accessible to diverse learners. Teachers will walk away with free, classroom-ready resources that support sensemaking, foster student problem-solving, and make climate science engaging and relevant to middle school learners.

TAKEAWAYS:
Teachers will discover a ready-to-use, research-backed climate and health unit. They’ll learn strategies to engage students with case studies, experiments, and design challenges that make climate science relevant, inclusive, and action-oriented.

SPEAKERS:
Chris Link, PhD

Explore an April Earth Month calendar that offers a diverse range of daily engaging and educational activities designed to inspire environmental consciousness. The resource can be printed or distributed digitally, and all actions can be done at home or school. This provides attendees with an accessible tool to participate in events that promote a healthier, more sustainable future for our planet.

TAKEAWAYS:
Explore an April Earth Month calendar that offers a diverse range of daily engaging and educational activities designed to inspire environmental consciousness.

SPEAKERS:
Benjamin Charles

The National Earth Science Teachers Association (NESTA) empowers educators to advance their instructional practice through professional learning, high-quality resources, and a supportive community aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). This session highlights how NESTA—through strategic partnerships—helps teachers integrate Earth and space science phenomena that inspire student-centered inquiry and authentic sensemaking. By fostering educator resilience, collaboration, and leadership, NESTA promotes excellence in Earth and space science education. Participants will explore NESTA’s wide range of offerings, including timely classroom resources, professional development opportunities, access to best practices through our peer-reviewed journal The Earth Scientist, and strategies for building interdisciplinary connections across the sciences.

TAKEAWAYS:
Learn about a community that elevates Earth and space science teaching! NESTA helps educators connect, grow, and lead—transforming curiosity into discovery through shared resources, collaboration, and real-world phenomena that inspire student learning.

SPEAKERS:
Kellyn Hardin, Natalie Macke

This poster highlights the Water Replenishment District’s free education programs designed to inspire students, teachers, and community members to become water-wise leaders. Through hands-on learning and discovery, participants explore: Water Careers – Introducing students to diverse opportunities in science, engineering, and environmental stewardship. Albert Robles Center Field Trips – Immersive experiences where students see water purification and sustainability in action. Eco Gardener Workshops – Community classes that teach sustainable landscaping and water conservation practices at home. Together, these programs connect classrooms and communities to the importance of protecting our most precious resource—water—while opening pathways to future careers and sustainable living.

TAKEAWAYS:
Educators will discover free WRD programs that bring real-world water science to life—field trips, Eco Gardener workshops, and career exploration—equipping students with hands-on learning and pathways to sustainability.

SPEAKERS:
Monica Sijder

This poster presents a lesson that has students explore how single phrases can allow you to pick up on a source’s tone towards climate change. Students begin by highlighting and coding an article using a key provided with the goal of identifying biases in the news source. Then, students create a blackout poem using the key phrases they identified to focus attention on the source’s bias towards climate science. This lesson combines critical reading & creative writing with climate science communications and is adaptable for students ranging from middle school to graduate school.

TAKEAWAYS:
Students will learn how to identify hidden biases in news sources discussing climate change.

SPEAKERS:
Zachary Krauss

This session showcases a forward-thinking place-based curriculum model aligned with NGSS, integrating the expertise of local water authority professionals. Designed for middle-schools, the curriculum seamlessly connects scientific concepts with real-world applications, linking classroom learning directly to career opportunities in water management. This collaboration not only provides students with a practical understanding of environmental science but also inspires future career paths in the sector. The curriculum model equips students with essential skills, preparing them for success in the evolving job market. Attendees will discover how to adopt this model to advance science education and career readiness, laying the groundwork for further workforce development initiatives in schools.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn to implement a place-based NGSS-aligned curriculum that connects classroom learning to real-world careers through collaboration with industry professionals, enhancing student engagement and workforce readiness.

SPEAKERS:
Trevor Harder

Discover data-driven activities that challenge environmental science students to investigate global population trends, resource use, and climate change connections. In this hands-on session, participants will engage with interactive simulations and data analysis that foster systems thinking, modeling, and defending arguments from evidence. Lessons connect directly to NGSS standards (HS-LS2, HS-ESS3) and APES topics including population ecology, land and water use, and global change. In collaborative groups, participants will analyze and discuss data sets from universities and international agencies to identify trends and patterns and make predictions. They will learn strategies to help students analyze complex sustainability challenges, evaluate solutions, and apply scientific reasoning to real-world environmental issues. Attendees will leave with adaptable classroom tools that promote critical thinking, environmental literacy, and informed decision-making.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn NGSS-aligned, hands-on activities that build students’ environmental awareness, data skills, and problem-solving abilities while inspiring them to take informed action on real-world sustainability challenges.

SPEAKERS:
Barbara Huth

EL NINO is the largest year-to-year climate variable. There are numerous local science stories to use for relevance for students. But agency definitions, educational lessons, science-communicator descriptions, and Youtube depictions of this phenomenon are convoluted! A clear and concise conceptual lesson needs to be developed. Elementary school scaffolding can be used to build a simple and memorable model for students, teachers, and policy makers. Ocean and Climate Literacy's Principle #3 (The Ocean is a major influence on weather and climate) can be used as a 'bingo card' to help students build their models. And the NGSS 7 crosscutting concepts can be launch pads for students' discussion the interconnectedness of the ocean and the atmosphere; dance partners across a 10,000 long dance floor.

TAKEAWAYS:
A memorable conceptual model of El Niño: A wave, a water cycle, a geyser.

SPEAKERS:
Joe Witte

Bring climate education to life through seed saving! Learn how schools can establish seed libraries, track local adaptations, and build authentic connections between environmental science and community resilience.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will leave understanding how seed saving can empower schools to teach climate adaptation through hands-on, place-based science—while building student stewardship, preserving local biodiversity, and creating sustainable school seed libraries that grow learning year after year.

SPEAKERS:
Rebecca Newburn

We show how instructional materials can be adapted for local contexts—and how to elevate issues of climate justice and ethical responses to the climate crisis. Participants will learn about how a high school physics unit from OpenSciEd about reliable energy sources was adapted to attend to Indigenous land rights and sovereignty.

TAKEAWAYS:
Related to STEM projects in society (e.g., energy transition, ecological restoration), teachers will learn how to engage students in exploring moral and ethical dimensions of trade-offs in project approaches. A broadly applicable framework for equity-focused curriculum adaptation will be shared.

SPEAKERS:
Kelsie Fowler, Philip Bell

Addressing climate change can be challenging. Students are given tools for evaluating information then provided a series of myths about climate change. Using reputable data, they dispel the myths with accurate information and use multiple explanations to understand common misconceptions.

TAKEAWAYS:
Students are provided with a checklist to determine if information is accurate on a fictional web page. Through small group discussions, students share their perceptions of accurate data and what it means, then challenged to decide if this information is valid in helping to understand climate change.

SPEAKERS:
Laura Tucker

Learn about a sustainable school district model that supports teachers and students in weaving geosciences into every science discipline—from CTE to AP courses. Through professional learning (intensive summer institute and ongoing coaching) and collaborations with community science partners, teachers gain tools to co-design data-rich locally relevant mini-units. Students engage in field trips and work with real, contextualized data to build data skills and see the relevance of geosciences in their own lives. Evaluation shows teachers grow in confidence using authentic data and linking science to local contexts, while students strengthen their science identity, value geosciences more, and build confidence with data literacy. This session will feature program leaders, student reflections, and teachers sharing co-designed units, classroom outcomes, and strategies for effective partnerships.

TAKEAWAYS:
Learn about a model that helps teachers integrate geosciences across disciplines using authentic data, community science partners, and co-designed curriculum. Teachers gain confidence supporting data skills, while students build science identity and connect geosciences to local and global issues.

SPEAKERS:
Sarah Pedemonte

Indigenous practices of sustainability provide powerful entry points for teaching K–12 students about climate change. These traditions emphasize long-term relationships with the land, cycles of renewal, and reciprocity between people and ecosystems. By examining practices such as seasonal harvesting, controlled burns, rotational planting, and respect for biodiversity, students see concrete examples of how communities have lived in balance with their environments for generations. These practices highlight the importance of observing natural patterns, valuing interdependence, and considering the impact of decisions on future generations. In the classroom, Indigenous perspectives can help students move beyond seeing climate change as abstract science toward understanding it as a lived reality that requires responsibility and care. This approach not only deepens ecological literacy but also encourages students to think critically about sustainability solutions.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will learn how Indigenous sustainability practices can enrich climate change teaching, gaining practical strategies supported by handouts and classroom case studies to integrate cultural and scientific perspectives into K–12 learning.

SPEAKERS:
Alexandra Chester, Jordan Kobielus, Jim McDonald

Data sensemaking is the process by which students explore, analyze and interpret data as they seek to make sense of science phenomena (Griffith et al. 2026, in press). It is central to students’ ability to think critically, draw evidence-based conclusions, and engage in authentic science practices. In this workshop, participants will unpack what data sensemaking practices (e.g., interpret patterns in context) are and how they were designed to enhance students’ SEP 2, 4, 5, and 6 skills. We will explore various strategies (e.g., Hypothesis Array), in the context of real-word climate data and freely available lesson plans and resources, to broaden participants' toolkits for integrating data into their own curricula. Through hands-on learning with data, small-group collaboration, and whole-group reflection, participants will gain strategies for increasing students’ data skills and leave equipped with free, research-based resources to bring authentic data sensemaking into their classrooms.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn research-based data sensemaking practices and strategies, experience them with real-world climate data, and explore Data Puzzles lessons and Puzzle Piece resources they can adapt to strengthen NGSS-aligned data use in their own classrooms.

SPEAKERS:
Bridget Walsh, Kristin Hunter-Thomson, Annette Brickley

Students are witnessing the effects of climate change and want both knowledge and hope. This workshop introduces Seeds to Solutions: a free, solutions-focused set of supplemental K–12 units designed to help educators integrate climate change and environmental justice into their practice. Using an inquiry-based, storyline instructional approach, this interdisciplinary curriculum supports data literacy, place-based learning, and the development of models to explain the effects of climate change while allowing students a chance to plan local solutions. Lessons are aligned to California Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), and participants will learn how to adapt the units to their own state/local context. Participants will experience a sample lesson that fosters student inquiry and addresses different learning styles. The sample lesson is from a middle school unit, but the program offers resources for all K–12 educators.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will experience a sample middle school lesson to see how the Seeds to Solutions storyline instructional model engages a wide range of learners in grades K–12. Participants learn how to create a sense of agency in the face of climate change and adapt units to their state/local context.

SPEAKERS:
Holly Steele

Wildfires severely impact soil through physical, chemical, and biological changes. Physically, they destroy protective vegetation, causing immediate erosion, mudslides, and the formation of water-repellent hydrophobic soil. Chemically, fire releases some nutrients but removes vital nitrogen, leading to long-term soil deficiencies and disrupting the nutrient cycle. Biologically, intense heat kills critical microbial communities and beneficial fungi, slowing post-fire recovery for years. This science is translated into 3-D (DCI-SEP-CCC) aligned learning opportunities, including investigations in soil chemistry, microbiology, and physical properties. Climate change has made wildfires a personal issue for so many students, and therefore, culturally relevant pedagogies are addressed within the workshop and materials. All workshop materials will be freely available.

TAKEAWAYS:
Wildfires cause severe physical, chemical, and biological soil damage, leading to erosion, nutrient loss (nitrogen), and microbial death. This workshop will share freely available, and 3-D NGSS-aligned investigations that engage students in the science and issues related to wildfires.

SPEAKERS:
Margaret Holzer

Teaching about global change is challenging. The interdisciplinary science is complex, because it involves far more than “just” climate change —infernally complicated on its own. As important as climate change is, its effects on ecosystems and the biosphere act alongside other anthropogenic alterations to the biosphere including land-use change, industrial and agricultural practices, and more. To make things even more difficult, today’s students need the cognitive and analytical tools necessary to handle a tidal wave of misconceptions, misinformation, and disinformation. Misconceptions arise from gaps in knowledge. Misinformation and disinformation arise from intentional distortion for political, economic, or ideological reasons. So we must help students achieve functional scientific literacy: the ability to evaluate sources, interpret data, recognize logical fallacies or manipulative rhetoric, and make scientifically-informed decisions aimed at sustainable societal goals.

TAKEAWAYS:
Teaching about global change requires a full-court press to create an interdisciplinary effort involving ecology, geology, climatology, earth science, population biology, oceanography, atmospheric science, as well as socially-informed efforts to counter rampant misinformation and disinformation.

SPEAKERS:
Joseph Levine

In this hands-on 120-minute workshop, participants will engage in the design and implementation of data-enabled POGIL (Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning) modules using a no-code to low-code tool, such as CODAP (Common Online Data Analysis Platform), that lowers the barrier to data analysis. These modules are interdisciplinary, culturally relevant and foster natural collaboration around real-world, high social-impact challenges that intersect with science, specifically geosciences, food and water systems, environmental science and health disparities; this aligns well with the conference strand #Trending in Data Science Education. Participants of this workshop will be trained in POGIL and CODAP and will be provided with instruction materials to enable them to deliver data-centric content. Expected outcomes in students include: increased engagement, data analytic skill development and empowerment through action. This workshop material was created through NSF grant #2304100.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will receive training in both the pedagogical approach of POGIL and the technical application of CODAP. This will prepare them to help their students develop the knowledge and skills necessary to work with and learn from data.

SPEAKERS:
Earvin Balderama, Marc Boumedine, Ravanasamudram Uma

When students approach complicated science issues through multiple disciplines, they gain the depth needed to find meaningful solutions. Using the 19th century forced diaspora of Native Americans and its lasting impact on the Great Lakes watershed as a lens for understanding today’s environmental challenges. For thousands of years, Native peoples were wise stewards of North America’s waters, protecting ecosystems of great richness. In contrast, non-Native settlement and declared ownership brought devastating consequences—rivers that caught fire, freshwater seas declared “dead,” the evaporation of saltwater lakes, and the collapse of the Colorado River basin. Today, Native communities, such as the Water Walkers, are leading efforts to heal these waters and inspire change. Through storytelling, music, science, writing, and debate, attendees will experience strategies they can take back to their classrooms—helping students imagine, collaborate, and act as responsible stewards of water.

TAKEAWAYS:
Addressing complex environmental issues requires integrated teaching connecting multiple disciplines. Presenters will show how integrating learning helps students make connections, understand complexity, and develop thoughtful, real-world solutions.

SPEAKERS:
Deborah Draper

A Framework for K-12 Science Education identifies critiquing, arguing, and analyzing as evaluative processes that are foundational to science learning. However, misinformation and the influence of social media make it challenging for students to think critically and scientifically about controversial topics. This session introduces a scaffold that can be used as a formative assessment tool to help students purposefully evaluate connections between lines of evidence and alternative explanations of phenomena for sensemaking. In doing so, middle grades and high school students not only construct a deeper understanding of science topics, but exercise negotiation, evaluation of claims and argumentation among peers which are skills that intertwine with English Language Arts. These resources are available through funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) as a collaborative effort for the Lateral Reading & Model-Evidence-Link (LR/MEL) project.

TAKEAWAYS:
The Model-Evidence-Link instructional scaffolds are assessments designed to assist learners as they evaluate the plausibility of evidence connected to models and to exercise negotiation and argument-building skills from evidence. Participants receive access to all instructional materials.

SPEAKERS:
Margaret Holzer, Derek Piper, Lorraine Ramirez Villarin

How can we break down barriers between classrooms and empower students as agents of change in their communities? This session showcases a replicable partnership between UCI, AUHSD, and IUSD that is #trendinginscienceeducation. Eleven teachers across 7 disciplines and 6 schools participated in professional learning to co-design and enact climate justice units. Using a co-developed, transdisciplinary framework, teachers collaborated across content areas and moved beyond sensemaking to help students develop critical agency, care for human and more-than-human communities, and take informed action. Units investigating local food waste and the community impacts of genetically modified foods demonstrate our core finding: when students tackle authentic problems, they develop profound civic agency. Attendees will learn best practice to build similar partnerships and foster compassion and community action in their own classrooms.

TAKEAWAYS:
Explore a university-district partnership where educators from multiple content areas craft transdisciplinary climate justice units. This model merges diverse knowledge systems, empowering students as change agents to foster civic agency through local issue engagement.

SPEAKERS:
Jessica Yett, Hosun Kang, Becky Friedland

Tracking hurricanes and typhoons offers a powerful way to engage students with the three dimensions of NGSS while exploring real-world climate science. In this session, participants will learn how to use the WUnderground website to monitor global storm development and movement. As they analyze real-time data, students will begin to formulate questions and engage in meaningful discussions about atmospheric processes, climate, and human-environment interactions. This approach promotes scientific practices such as data interpretation, modeling, and evidence-based reasoning. At the same time, it connects disciplinary core ideas in the ESS standards to crosscutting concepts like patterns and cause-and-effect. Teachers will gain strategies for integrating these tools into inquiry-based lessons that make complex phenomena accessible, relevant, and engaging for all learners. Ready-to-use lessons will include options for various grades and classroom situations.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will explore inquiry-based lessons focused on the phenomenon of global storms as a method to explore Earth’s systems.

SPEAKERS:
Shefali Mehta

Crickets, Climate, and Claims. Ready for a science lesson your students will actually dig into (maybe even literally)? In this hands-on session, you’ll experience a full, classroom-ready Claim-Evidence-Reasoning (CER) cycle that helps students make evidence-based arguments in science. Step into your students’ shoes as you explore a real-world 3D task connecting protein, planet, and persuasion. Using OER data on land and water use by different protein sources and a short reading on insect protein (yes, eating bugs!), you’ll learn how students can build and defend a claim with strong evidence and clear reasoning. Practice quick scoring with a simple three-row rubric that separates Practice, Crosscutting Concept, and Core Idea, and explore multilingual supports that maintain rigor and access for all learners. Leave with a ready-to-use task, anchor samples, and next steps to elevate climate literacy, student voice, and curiosity—all aligned with California AB 285.

TAKEAWAYS:
Reflect on the value and challenges of implementing CER in science classrooms and explore how scaffolded CER supports critical thinking around complex climate-related topics. Walk away with a ready-to-use 3D task, rubric, and strategies that spark inquiry and meet NGSS and CA AB 285.

SPEAKERS:
Lucretia Anton, Lauren Reh

Learn how local industry can provide pathways to sustainable careers for students through a novel project-based learning Science & CTE course. Gain development insights and resources to empower students with skills for the growing clean energy sector and beyond. See Sprocket for the OER curriculum.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will gain tools to implement this curriculum in their own contexts, as well as an understanding of the development process, enabling them to expand the work into other topics and promote an educational movement that integrates sustainability and career readiness with academic content.

SPEAKERS:
Adrian Baez-Alicea

This session immerses educators in the process of designing an interdisciplinary, project-based unit that uses the phenomenon of climate change to drive sense making and real-world application. Teachers will experience strategies that connect science, social studies, and engineering as students explore the causes and impacts of global warming, examine the historical roots of industrialization, and confront issues of environmental equity affecting marginalized communities. Participants will learn how to scaffold inquiry, integrate NGSS-aligned practices, and use student-driven projects, from 3D-printed sustainable city models to DIY hydroponic kits and climate PSAs, to deepen learning. The session models real classroom examples of step-by-step strategies, rubrics, and classroom-ready tools that empower teachers to transform complex global challenges into authentic, local learning experiences.

TAKEAWAYS:
Teachers will learn to design interdisciplinary, NGSS-aligned projects where students investigate climate change, explore environmental justice, and engineer sustainable community solutions through hands-on design and activism.

SPEAKERS:
Glenroy Foster, Nicole Marcellin

Our best science learning labs are within easy walking distance and are free and equally accessible to every teacher and student! We start with the sky to illustrate how simple daily observations of changing weather patterns can be combined with easily-accessible images and data from the National Weather Service to demonstrate basic scientific concepts in motion. We will find countless examples of how weather and climate are impacting our water resources, plants and animals, and shaping our landscapes and lives. We will use California’s outdoor laboratories as premier examples of how nature reminds us to use the scientific method to understand the complex natural systems and cycles that are shaping our world and providing us with essential resources for survival. Join earth science professor, author, and naturalist William Selby as he shares discoveries from his California Sky Watcher book and four decades of teaching field classes. Our website: www.rediscoveringthegoldenstate.com .

TAKEAWAYS:
How to more effectively learn from the free outdoor laboratories that are easily accessible to all. Starting with our sky shows, we will share specific scientific concepts and natural science lessons on display every day right outside our windows and doors for grades 6-postsecondary levels.

SPEAKERS:
William Selby

How can storytelling bridge the gap between science and society by supporting youth to grapple with the complexity of real-world sustainability issues? This session showcases contextual storytelling to create nuanced understanding. We will explore ways youth can tell their own stories to establish personal relevance, gather place-based community stories through participatory action research, and analyze causality through storytelling. Through a combination of hands-on activities and student work examples, participants will learn about visual, oral, and narrative storytelling as a method of transdisciplinary sensemaking in a science classroom. Skills covered will include developing systems, futures, and critical thinking through storytelling. The Smithsonian Science for Global Goals team will share how they leverage storytelling as an engaging tool to develop knowledge of complex global issues and build youth confidence in their ability to take action to create the future they envision.

TAKEAWAYS:
Storytelling is an important tool to understand complexity. When learning about sustainability issues this tool can allow youth to localize global topics, engage in community-based research, explore different perspectives, make sense of the world around them, and express their ideas in an engaging way.

SPEAKERS:
Khadijah Thibodeaux, Erika Bonnett

Sponsoring Company: HHMI BioInteractive

Wondering how you can better support your students to effectively analyze and interpret data? Join us as we engage with HHMI BioInteractive’s Data Explorer, a free, student-friendly tool, to visualize and analyze changes in atmospheric carbon. In this session, we will journey beyond the Keeling Curve and explore data at different scales and time periods to develop a deeper understanding of how data informs climate science. This session will be of particular interest to those who teach life or environmental science with a quantitative focus or those who want to incorporate quantitative skills.

SPEAKERS:
Kathlyn Van Hoeck, Jim Lane

Dive into Earth's climate history through the lens of paleoclimatology and proxy data in this hands-on workshop designed for middle and high school STEM educators. Participants will explore evidence of climate change while engaging in authentic explorations of data, engineering design challenges, and strategies for sharing scientific thinking that will easily translate to a variety of classroom settings. We will model oxygen isotope fluctuation, simulate ice core extraction, engineer solutions for core transport, and synthesize data from a wide range of sources to build a compelling case about Earth's past climates and the current rate of climate change. With skills developed in this workshop, educators will help students understand that scientific claims become stronger when supported by multiple lines of evidence, just as no single piece of evidence proves a case in a courtroom, the convergence of many climate indicators provides confidence in our understanding of climate history.

TAKEAWAYS:
Explore how scientists develop an understanding of prehistoric and modern climate change by analyzing proxy data from multiple sources in a hands-on, interactive workshop for middle and high school STEM educators.

SPEAKERS:
Stephen Kos

Explore a free 2-week set of lessons that guides secondary students on an adventure, tracing microplastics from local systems into the Arctic. Students experiment and use models to investigate the potential impacts of microplastics in the Arctic while building optimism as they take action for change. The lesson plans will help you, as their teacher, use storytelling, guided research, experimentation, sensemaking and optimistic student action to explore the paths and impacts of microplastics in the Arctic. This workshop will allow you to explore the lab set ups and access all materials - which have been collaboratively developed by teachers and students working as part of a research project that spans five institutions. You will also explore some of the questions students will grapple with such as: What impact could microplastics have on Arctic ice, climate, and us? Are microplastics in the Arctic a mega-problem? How do we know and what steps can I take now?

TAKEAWAYS:
You can use storytelling, guided research, lab experiments, global models, and sensemaking to help secondary students explore the paths and potential impacts of microplastics in the Arctic. By doing this, students learn standards-based interdisciplinary STEM while finding solutions & taking action.

SPEAKERS:
Barbara Steffens

This interactive workshop highlights The Great Indoors, a free, NGSS-aligned unit for grades 3–5 that blends storytelling, inquiry, and design challenges to turn science learning into real-world action. Students follow Mira, a curious learner investigating the air in her new home, and conduct hands-on experiments to test factors such as ventilation, humidity, and particulates. As they observe, ask questions, and design solutions, they build the competence to apply science in meaningful ways. Students share findings and make plans with their families and extend ideas into their communities. This unit integrates the three dimensions of NGSS, fosters sensemaking through authentic phenomena, and builds student agency. Lessons are modular, adaptable to different schedules, and accessible to all learners. Teachers will participate in sample activities, discuss implementation strategies, and leave with turn-key resources that make science engaging, empowering, and action-oriented.

TAKEAWAYS:
Teachers will discover strategies from a ready-to-use unit that engages students in investigating indoor air quality and empowers them to take meaningful actions - first at home and in class, then in their wider communities.

SPEAKERS:
Chris Link, PhD

Science education has a key role to play in supporting a just transition to the climate crisis.. Participants will learn about 20 priority areas associated with climate and environmental justice—and then will explore educational approaches, resources, and groups related to these areas. Many free resources that support climate justice education will be shared.

TAKEAWAYS:
Working towards climate justice involves a multifaceted set of issues and priorities. Teachers will identify which priority areas relate to their goals and context and learn about related resources. A climate justice framework will help teachers learn about different dimensions of climate justice.

SPEAKERS:
Deb Morrison, Kelsie Fowler, Philip Bell

In this workshop, participants will learn how to incorporate alternative methods for visualizing data into their lessons. Data doesn’t always need to be represented through charts and graphs; when translated into art, it can evoke a more visceral and impactful response. Artistic approaches can be used to represent a wide range of data sets—from personal narratives to environmental and climate data. Example student projects include using fiber arts to illustrate climate change data, and creating pour paintings to visualize historical water quality data from major U.S. waterways, highlighting changes over time and across locations

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will gain tools to guide students in creating art that tells the story behind data. Through visual art, students explore data from new perspectives. The session includes student examples and hands-on practice using environmental and climate data sets.

SPEAKERS:
Amy Bebell, Melanie Hardy, Eileen Koenig

Participants will experience two engaging methods to uncover student misconceptions about this foundational concept in teaching climate change. These tools can be used with any topic as teachers strive to support students in developing their understanding of complex concepts.

TAKEAWAYS:
Understanding misconceptions in this component of climate change is critical prior to teaching the subject. Discover how engaging, open-ended opportunities for students to dive into their ideas and revise them as they share information with others are effective ways of teaching complex topics.

SPEAKERS:
Laura Tucker

Youth need opportunities to learn about green colonialism and how Native Science and Indigenous sovereignty are fundamental to addressing the climate emergency. Workshop participants will engage in talk activities designed to support non-Indigenous youth in learning and processing these topics.

TAKEAWAYS:
This session will support educators in understanding that climate experts across the globe are calling for the broad recognition of Indigenous sovereignty and climate expertise as fundamental to mitigating climate change and building a just future.

SPEAKERS:
Kelsie Fowler, Philip Bell

This session is about learning to analyze and interpret weather and climate data using a custom designed graphing tool that simplifies visualizing and analyzing data. It includes time scales of hours, days and weeks (for weather) to decades and centuries (for climate). A large range of parameters or measurements are available for visual display using the tool, including humidity, wind, temperature, and precipitation. Participants will investigate relationships between variables such as barometric pressure and precipitation, using data from a wide range of geographical stations in the United States. Selected stations represent sites with contrasting latitudes, altitudes, proximity to water bodies, and other elements, in order to best study the effect of these variables on weather and climate. The session will analyze data to look for patterns of change over time and to investigate regional patterns and region-specific effects of climate change.

TAKEAWAYS:
Explore weather and climate data through an online graphing tool that simplifies data visualization so students can focus on analysis and interpretation. Local and National data at http://uanyc.science/pwc

SPEAKERS:
Jasmina Nikolov, Rachelle Travis

Innovative chemistry labs focused on current topics play an essential role in inspiring and educating students at the undergraduate and high school levels. A timely example is the ongoing accumulation of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. One promising approach to mitigate the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is the electrochemical reduction of CO2 into carbon monoxide (CO), a valuable precursor for renewable fuels. This presentation shows the development of a low-cost H-cell system so that CO2 electrolysis can be explored in the classroom laboratory. Different variables, including electrolyte source/concentration, voltage level, and CO2 source (compressed tank, human breath, mineral water, and dry ice), were investigated to determine their impact on CO2 production. With the results from these trials, a hands-on, accessible laboratory experiment was designed to make these complex scientific concepts become real for students.

TAKEAWAYS:
This new laboratory activity empowers all students to actively explore key principles in electrochemistry and current trends in renewable energy, promoting engineering, collaboration and problem solving in a hands-on, innovative, and accessible experiment.

SPEAKERS:
Kyra Morris

This poster session highlights climate change lessons and units developed by teachers who participated in a year-long professional development and research experience funded by an NSF grant. The work responds to California Assembly Bill AB 285, which mandates that educators include content on the causes, effects, and strategies for mitigating and adapting to climate change, with implementation required no later than the 2024–25 school year.

TAKEAWAYS:
Teachers will take away classroom-tested ideas for teaching climate change in the areas of water justice, sustainable energy, and waste upcycling.

SPEAKERS:
Bobbi Hansen

Teachers have expressed a desire to incorporate authentic climate data into their curricula, but struggle to find accessible and meaningful datasets that can be easily integrated into modern teaching practices. In response to this problem, climate scientists and instructional specialists from the University of Colorado Boulder have collaborated to create "Data Puzzles", a free resource that utilizes instructional practices as outlined by Ambitious Science Teaching to engage students in data analysis in the context of important scientific research. Data Puzzles challenge students to analyze and interpret climate datasets to construct explanatory models for important questions like, "What is causing the megadrought in the Colorado River Basin?” and "Why might the Arctic be warming faster than. the rest of the world?".

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will be introduced with Ambitious Science Teaching practices and authentic climate datasets in the context of the Data Puzzle resources.

SPEAKERS:
Bridget Walsh

Freshwater salinization has been an increasing issue as the use of road salts has become more abundant. Many studies focus on the impacts of salinization on aquatic invertebrates and neglect the impacts on aquatic plants. Additionally, less is known how the formulation of the road salts impact the growth of the aquatic plants. The objective of the current study was to evaluate road salt formulations on Lemna minor survival and growth. If freshwater salinization from various road salt formulations impacts L. minor survival and growth, it may not only impact the health of this species but also pose a threat to other freshwater species in aquatic ecosystems that rely on aquatic plants.

TAKEAWAYS:
By looking at how road salts impact freshwater plants, this opens the question as to what else the addition of the road salts may do to the environment. This can connect to the high school setting, as students can get hands-on experience while seeing things that directly impact their environment.

SPEAKERS:
Myah Shier

K–12 students explore climate science and real-world climate solutions. Developed by the UCAR Center for Science Education, these interactive resources engage learners in systems thinking, modeling, and decision-making. We share learning games for a range of ages and learning targets, including simulations that explore carbon emissions and energy choices, paper-based role-playing games about greenhouse gases and the nitrogen cycle, and playful games from our SkySci for Kids website for early elementary learners. All resources are designed to build understanding, spark curiosity, and empower students to see themselves as agents of change. Participants will hear tips from one of our seasoned educators about integrating these resources across grade levels to foster climate literacy and action.

TAKEAWAYS:
Discover free, classroom-ready climate games and simulations that engage K–12 students in systems thinking and real-world problem solving. Learn how to integrate these tools to build climate literacy and inspire student action.

SPEAKERS:
Melissa Rummel

This poster highlights The Great Indoors, an NGSS-aligned unit for grades 3–5 that blends storytelling, inquiry, and design challenges to help students explore indoor air quality and practice problem-solving. Students follow Mira, a curious learner investigating the air in her new home, and conduct hands-on experiments with variables such as ventilation, humidity, and particulates. They make observations, ask questions, and apply engineering design to create simple solutions that improve the spaces where they live, learn, and play. Developed with university partners, the unit integrates the three dimensions of NGSS, builds action competence, and supports sensemaking through authentic, place-based phenomena. Each lesson is modular, adaptable to different schedules, and accessible to all learners. Teachers will be introduced to lesson designs, experiments, and free resources that make science engaging, inclusive, and relevant to the air we breathe indoors.

TAKEAWAYS:
Teachers will explore a ready-to-use, NGSS-aligned unit where grades 3–5 students investigate indoor air quality through storytelling, inquiry, and hands-on experiments, building sensemaking, action competence, and problem-solving through design thinking and engineering.

SPEAKERS:
Chris Link, PhD

Wipro Climate V-CCLS This is a course study with Stanford/Wipro/SFUSD. Climate Science, Climate Anxiety, Climate Change, and Climate Justice. This was a research study through research articles at Alice Fong Yu K-8 in SFUSD. The research was done by four educators, 6th grade, 7th grade, 8th grade and the Middle School Music Teacher, along with entire Middle School student body. The lessons are aligned to the Common Core, SEL and the NGSS. Along with the research and lessons, AFY was filmed by the Sustainability Office of SF Gov, which was played on SFGov.. The final component was the students were Climate Change Agents at the SF GOV 2nd Annual Climate Action Youth Summit. The students designed stations for the 2500 students, along with writing and performing a Climate Change Summit Song for the event. This summit, has and will continue to be part of the fabric of Alice Fong Yu and commitment as stewards of change.

TAKEAWAYS:
The main takeaway is aligned to creating a culture where Science Research at a school site can impact and not only a student, their family but the community at large. The collaboration, creativity, curiosity, collaboration, communication was demonstrated by the educators, for the students.

SPEAKERS:
Stephanie Yue, Lisa Ernst

El Niño is the most energetic year-to-year climate variation on Earth. El Nino impacts food, water resources, health safety around the world. Climate change will likely increase El Nino’s impacts.. But practically all definitions of this important Earth Systems phenomenon are convoluted: “a condition, a cycle, characterized by, climate pattern, a weather pattern, etc.” The Decade of the Ocean gives us an opportunity to collectively build a basic conceptual model based on the scaffolding from elementary school: a water wave and the water cycle. The Ocean Literacy Essential Principle #3 (MS) provides a ‘bingo card’ structure for applying the seven crosscutting concepts that will yield a memorable visual and textual model.

TAKEAWAYS:
You will go away with an easy-to-remember and easy-to-share conceptual understanding of El Niño: how the ocean and atmosphere are dance partners of our Earth System of Systems.

SPEAKERS:
Joe Witte

Learning Ecosystems Northeast is a network of in- and out-of-school educators who prioritize relationship building between and among educators and institutions for the benefit of youth STEM learning. Local groups of educators are led by two peers, often from different learning contexts. These leaders not only plan and facilitate meetings and events, but create safe and supportive spaces for their peers to grow and connect. We’ll share examples of leadership structures, trainings, and activities that position these educator-leaders to leverage the strengths and address the challenges of their regional groups. In particular, we’ll share resources and activities designed to help leaders develop and sustain a sense of belonging amongst the educators in their communities. Participants will leave with example facilitation strategies to support relationships with and between educators and will receive articles and book lists to support further learning around supportive peer leadership.

TAKEAWAYS:
Session participants will come away with examples of how they can foster and sustain meaningful relationships with and between educators. Participants will also receive articles, book lists, and facilitation strategies to help support further learning around supportive peer leadership.

SPEAKERS:
Molly Auclair, Laurie Spooner, Tonya Prentice, Rachel Wolf

This Speed Sharing session highlights two free, ready-to-use NGSS-aligned units that bring climate and health science into grades 3–8 classrooms through storytelling, experiments, and case studies. In the elementary unit, students follow Mira as she investigates indoor air quality and proposes simple solutions. In the middle school unit, students analyze data and explore how climate-driven events like wildfires, flooding, and pesticide use affect indoor environments and human health. Both units end with a community-focused design challenge. Developed with university partners, the lessons integrate the three dimensions of NGSS, foster sensemaking, and build student action competence. They are modular, adaptable, and accessible to diverse learners. Teachers will leave with ready-to-use resources and strategies that make climate and health science engaging and relevant.

TAKEAWAYS:
Teachers will discover free, ready-to-use, NGSS-aligned units for grades 3–8 that use storytelling, experiments, and case studies to connect climate science, indoor environments, and human health. These units empower students to ask questions, solve problems, and take action.

SPEAKERS:
Chris Link, PhD

Over the long history of our planet sea levels have always been changing. After the last ice age, sea level rose about 120 meters or about 4 feet per century. We have real time data records about sea level rising the past 150 years ago and the impacts of sea level rise are being felt along the coastlines of the United States and its territories. Attendees will learn about where to find information about the causes of sea level rise and local information about the amount of rise for a coastal locality. Attendees will then experience a role-playing simulation from NOAA, Beat the Uncertainty, that asks students to choose strategies that can help coastal communities to be more resilient with one of the most dangerous climate impacts of our time, sea level rise. The simulation is appropriate for upper elementary through adult ages. The results of the simulation provide opportunities for discussion on how coastal communities can be prepared in the face of sea level rise and severe weather.

TAKEAWAYS:
Educators will learn how to set up and run the simulation in their own classroom and how to find resources that relate to sea level rise and community resilience strategies.

SPEAKERS:
Margaret Holzer, Peggy Steffen

The UCAR Center for Science Education provides free educational resources for your K-12 students to learn about Earth systems science- hands-on activities, curriculum, videos, images, online games, STEM at home activities, and more! Learn about our free virtual programs and sign up for our free or low cost teacher professional development workshops.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn about different free educational resources we offer, including games, activities, and virtual programs that work great in informal learning environments.

SPEAKERS:
Melissa Rummel

In this session, STEM4real will share how our partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), Michigan State University (MSU), and Richmond Public Schools is helping teachers bring equity to life in science classrooms. Together we used lesson study to support teachers as they planned, taught, and reflected on NGSS-aligned lessons that center student voice, culturally relevant phenomena, and equitable access. Through this work, teachers were able to adapt high-quality materials to meet the needs of their own students while strengthening their practice. We will share professional development and classroom examples from Virginia, including climate and ecosystem storylines, that show how students engaged in real sensemaking. Participants will also get to try out one of the discourse protocols we used during lesson study and walk through a mini-cycle of collaborative reflection.

TAKEAWAYS:
Educators and teachers will gain knowledge on how lesson study strengthens collaboration and supports equitable, discourse in science teaching.

SPEAKERS:
Neotha Williams

Climate change is one of the most important scientific topics of our time—and students are eager to learn about it. SubjectToClimate is an innovative and free online platform that provides teachers with a suite of engaging and interactive climate change teaching resources and lesson plans that are aligned to NGSS standards. In this 10-minute presentation, our presenter will introduce SubjectToClimate's science resources and demonstrate how they can be used to enhance climate change education. We will walk through the platform's features, including lesson plans by teachers, news for students, teaching guides, and more. Attendees will leave this presentation suite of free resources they can immediately access to effectively teach climate change, no matter their grade level or subject. Join us to learn how SubjectToClimate can help you educate and inspire the next generation of climate leaders.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will leave this presentation suite of free resources they can immediately access to effectively teach climate change, no matter their grade level or subject.

SPEAKERS:
Benjamin Charles

Effective climate education is more than teaching environmental science – it is about transdisciplinary learning that is coupled with meaningful, real-world climate action. Join us as we share recently-launched tools that support this vision! This session will (1) introduce Action-Oriented Pedagogies (AOP; Weinberg et al., 2024), which position students to contribute to culturally- and locally-relevant climate solutions using content knowledge and science and engineering skills; (2) navigate a website created by the Empowering Youth Climate Action research team, which can be leveraged to make climate topics and data more accessible to teachers and students; and (3) explore examples from real classrooms featuring the use of AOP and digital climate learning resources. In a time of prevalent climate denial and misinformation, effective climate education is critical. Attend this session and come away with tangible resources and insights for supporting climate action in your classroom!

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will be introduced to Action-Oriented Pedagogies and gain access to recently-launched digital resources that support the bridging of students’ academic learning and skills development with real-world climate action to bring about more just and sustainable futures.

SPEAKERS:
Michelle Jordan, Brianne Loya, Sarah Suloff

Sponsoring Company: Adventerra Games

Explore Adventerra Games’ 14 environmental education board games and puzzles (including My Eco School, Hungry Bins, Mission Ocean, Recycle Rally, WaterGame, PowerHaus, and Global Warning) and how you can use them to teach environmental concepts. Games are linked to the NGSS DCIs, SEPs, and CCCs, while helping to build environmental literacy. Come play a game, then share ideas with other participants about using eco games in your classroom, including ways to convince your school administrators that playing games helps students better retain environmental content. Adventerra is dedicated to studying the evidence for using environmental education games to support learning. Find out how you can participate in upcoming research projects to study the use of Adventerra’s and others’ eco games. Three lucky lottery winners will win an Adventerra game or puzzle of their choice!

SPEAKERS:
Bryan Mundell, Cynthia Crockett, Peter White

Without local data it is impossible to fully understand community environmental and climate problems and their effects on different groups. Attendees will explore different environmental and climate data sets and learn how to use these with students to create well-informed solutions.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participatory methods for collecting and acting upon environmental and climate data is more important now than ever. Yet students are not taught about this data or how to use it. Resources and examples for supporting youth in collecting and using data to create real community change will be shared.

SPEAKERS:
Deb Morrison, Kelsie Fowler, Kathryn Boyd

Finding relevance in real-world scientific events increases students’ motivation for learning. Elementary schools have neglected to include science as a main part of the curriculum hindering students’ development of critical thinking and argumentation-building skills. This session introduces storytelling to enhance science understanding. As a scaffold, Rosita the pink dolphin, helps students purposefully evaluate connections between lines of evidence and alternative explanations of human impact to the environment. The story promotes content integration between science and English Language Arts to further scientific literacy among children. As a collaborative effort, preservice candidates will create the art and a second storybook-like scaffold focusing on mitigating actions to promote awareness of anthropogenic damage. In its initial phase, this project is a modified version of the model-evidence-link (MEL) resources on middle grades and high school Earth and Enviromental science.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will learn how elementary pre-service teacher students interpret and extend model-evidence-link (MEL) relationships within a story about mitigating actions to promote awareness of anthropogenic damage. Their work samples should incite discussion about elementary MEL interpretations.

SPEAKERS:
Omah Williams-Duncan, Lorraine Ramirez Villarin

"Teek and Tom Explore Planet Earth", investigates the relationship between the ocean, weather and climate on global to local scales. This workshop introduces ten hands-on activities for upper ES and MS students to reinforce Earth science concepts related to oceanography, meteorology and climate. The short videos provide a spark of interest and briefly introduce the main focus of further investigation. They are intended to be used with classroom activities that provide learning strategies to translate complex earth science interactions into a format that is understandable to upper elementary and middle school students. The educator guides focus on up-to-date graphs, visualizations, hands-on labs and data that will help students understand the concepts and to engage in sense-making through-out the lessons. The main focus of each lesson was developed by a teacher team who provided guidance and advice on the best ways to help student understanding of Earth, atmosphere, and ocean systems.

TAKEAWAYS:
Educators will sample the range of activities that incorporate graphing, data analysis, visualizations and sense-making to introduce Earth/atmosphere/climate connections on local and global scales.

SPEAKERS:
Peggy Steffen

Many students are quite concerned about climate change, but surveys show that most do not know what actions they can take. Come explore ways to engage students in community centered collaborative climate action now and on into the future. This workshop will engage participants in frank conversations about avoiding indoctrination, designing for varied forms of action, and building community collaborations.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will gain skills in how to weave different forms of climate action into their current learning resources as well as design new lessons that center locally contextualized and appropriate collective action efforts; such work can be framed for the goals of any educational environment.

SPEAKERS:
Deb Morrison, Sarah Sterling

This session uses a human-centered lens to help students find their research spark and outline a project that is relevant to the students’ community and that they are personally concerned about. Hands-on activity and resources will be shared with attendees to boost their in-class mini-research activity.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will walk-through a mini-research project on the topic of climate education. During this session, we will discuss a flowchart of science practices, strategies to address student connection with real world problems related to climate science., and how to embrace a human-centered research

SPEAKERS:
Josephine Mesina, Brianne Loya, Nicole Rosen

In this workshop, we’ll highlight several strategies to support and celebrate educators, drawing on examples from Learning Ecosystems Northeast (LENE): a network of in-school and out-of-school educator communities dedicated to engaging youth in authentic, data-rich, climate-focused learning experiences. We’ll start with an asset-mapping activity- identifying relationships, opportunities, spaces, and materials that can support your professional growth, connection with other educators, and students’ learning. Then, we’ll share key infrastructure elements that have emerged as crucial to support educators throughout LENE. We’ll also share engagement models from regional groups that highlight strengths that leverage community assets and tackle unique challenges like expansive geographies, conflicting schedules, and diversity of learning contexts. We’ll end with time to consider how these models resonate with your community assets and to brainstorm strategies you can adopt to uplift them.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will leave this session with several practical examples of structures that support regional communities of educators. They will also leave with concrete ideas of how they could create similar systems of support in their communities, grounded on assets they identify in the session.

SPEAKERS:
Molly Auclair, Suzanne Kahn, Rachel Wolf

Join this interactive session to examine how environmental literacy as operationalized through the free California-focused Seeds to Solutions units, can serve as a bridge across statewide efforts—from civic engagement to the Native American Model Curriculum to science implementation. Participants will analyze examples and consider how to bring this integrated approach to their own classrooms, schools, and districts.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will explore how to braid together statewide efforts (e.g., civic engagement, Native American model curriculum, and science implementation) using Seeds to Solutions instructional units.

SPEAKERS:
Holly Steele, Rachel Myers

Attendees will explore tools to help students see themselves as engaged citizens who can address environmental and health issues in their communities. We will use primary sources from key moments in U.S. history to learn how scientists, researchers and members of the public made a difference in an environment- or health-related issue. Examples will be taken from high-quality, trusted organizations like PBS, Library of Congress and National Archives. We will split participants into groups so they can examine these documents as part of a warm-up activity. We will then use civic-based tools in which participants can learn to problem-solve and invent solutions to health and environmental issues they care about.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn how to examine primary sources to identify environmental and health issues where they live and the role of civic and invention education in creating and sharing solutions.

SPEAKERS:
Elizabeth Osborn, Victoria Pasquantonio

This engaging lesson, designed for K-2, introduces the concept of weather to students. During the 60-min workshop, participants will learn from SubjecttoClimate’s elementary lesson plan on how to activate students to inquire, investigate and inspire with regards to earth & climate science. Key elements will include: learning ‘what is weather?’, watching and reading Fabienne’s Wild Weather Adventure, starting individual weather journalling as well as designing a weather wheel to predict Earth’s climate in 30 years. Attendees will engage in turn-and-talks and guided usage of activities. We’ll also discuss classroom applications, adaptations, and differentiation strategies. Walk away with a classroom-ready NGSS aligned lesson and ideas on how to implement climate change into what you’re teaching now.

TAKEAWAYS:
During this 60-min workshop, participants will learn from SubjecttoClimate’s elementary lesson plan on how to activate students to inquire, investigate and inspire with regards to earth & climate science.

SPEAKERS:
Benjamin Charles

Climate change will affect every part of our lives, from health care to food systems and business. Understanding climate change and how we can respond is critical knowledge for the next generation of experts, leaders, and citizens. Today’s students are the best advocates for climate mitigation we have, and are eager to act. Students deserve the chance to interrogate information—free of fear and bias—to learn how to reduce impacts, build resilience, and contribute to a zero-carbon future. Integrating knowledge of causes, impacts, and solutions into the science classroom will prepare them to face these challenges and envision their role in shaping the future. OER Project: Climate offers free, accessible resources that can be integrated across disciplines. Science standards create a natural opportunity to bring climate into discussions of energy, carbon cycles, the environment, and more. Discover essential information, strategies, and support to bring climate literacy to your students.

TAKEAWAYS:
OER Project: Climate helps students explore climate change critically, without fear or bias, building the skills and motivation needed to shape a better future. Explore ways to teach it in your science classroom and leave with a clear plan, grounded knowledge, and free, ready-to-use materials.

SPEAKERS:
Erik Christensen

Air quality data can be used as an entry point to data collection and analysis, citizen science activism, and phenomena-based learning. By providing air quality monitors and professional development to both science and social studies teachers, we have witnessed growth in pedagogical content knowledge and civic action taking pedagogies among teachers. Yet more powerful is the work the students create when presented with personally meaningful data that their school’s air quality monitor produces. This presentation will demonstrate how to use real-time air quality data in the science classroom and even link it to health and wellness data and environmental changes. A central focus of the workshop will be different pedagogical techniques and assessments for students using air quality data including research projects, public service announcements, and cross curricular activities.

TAKEAWAYS:
The importance of personally meaningful data as a method of student engagement, motivation, and civic action taking.

SPEAKERS:
Stephen Farenga, Salvatore Garofalo

Action-Oriented Pedagogies (AOP; Weinberg et al., 2024) is an innovative framework that supports educators in moving beyond knowledge-centered student outcomes, towards more participatory and action-focused teaching and learning. Join us as we dive into AOP and workshop ways to couple student STEM learning with real-world work that truly matters to them. This session explores the key elements of AOP: Imagining Preferred Futures, Planning for Co-Produced Impact, Taking Agentic Action, and Leaving a Legacy. Participants will collectively discuss how to incorporate these elements into their unique teaching contexts, with guidance and examples from practicing educators who use AOP in their own classrooms to foster locally-relevant connections to content, develop students’ transferable science and engineering skills, and amplify student voice in their communities. Participants will leave with tangible strategies, tools, and insights to support their own students’ agency and action.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will gain a foundational understanding of Action-Oriented Pedagogies and tools, insights into how they can be used to support community-based student action and amplify student voice, and tangible ways in which they might incorporate the framework into their own learning spaces.

SPEAKERS:
Brianne Loya, Janet Ankrum, Sarah Suloff

How are storms changing in our warming world? And how can we make sense of the flood of information we encounter, especially on social media? A joint project between the UCAR Center for Science Education and Michigan State University developed two teacher-reviewed classroom activities that help students build scientific understanding and media literacy through the lens of storms. The first lesson explores storm formation, how weather patterns are changing, and community impacts using a mix of engaging activities. In the second activity students evaluate social media posts to build media literacy through a fun, interactive game. Together, these lessons provide opportunities for students to make sense of the world around them using relevant evidence, while strengthening critical thinking skills. For instructional designers, the project offers a model for creating learning resources that empower both high school students and non-science undergraduates to engage with scientific topics.

TAKEAWAYS:
Explore two engaging activities to help your students build scientific understanding and media literacy by exploring storm science and real social media posts—preparing them to think critically about real-world information.

SPEAKERS:
Melissa Rummel

How can schools move beyond single lessons toward districtwide systems that make sustainability and civic engagement central to science education? This session shares Laguna Beach USD’s journey to embed environmental literacy and sustainable practices across classrooms and operations, culminating in student-led, competency-based civic projects. Grounded in NGSS, California’s Environmental Principles & Concepts, and the U.S. Department of Education Green Ribbon Schools Pillars, our work links dashboards, zero-waste initiatives, outdoor learning, and wellness programs to interdisciplinary instruction. Participants will see project-based units, Green Team leadership, and Seal of Civic Engagement projects using local data (energy, waste, water, health) as phenomena for inquiry. Attendees will leave with practical strategies, rubrics, and resources to transform campuses into living laboratories where students analyze evidence, design solutions, and act for sustainability.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will learn how to design and scale districtwide systems that connect NGSS-aligned environmental literacy, sustainability practices, and authentic community engagement into student-led, project-based civic action rooted in local data and global issues.

SPEAKERS:
Chad Mabery

Discover how student-driven, community-based climate projects can transform concern into action. This session highlights interdisciplinary strategies that promote systems thinking, reduce eco-anxiety, and foster collective, meaningful impact. Through case studies, participants will explore how students use claim–evidence–reasoning and real data to design tangible solutions—ranging from climate action plans to partnerships with municipalities and local organizations. Learn how teacher teams across grade levels and content areas can guide youth to connect global issues to local contexts, build empathy, and create sustainable change that benefits schools and communities alike.

TAKEAWAYS:
Implement project-based learning frameworks that promote systems thinking and community engagement around local climate challenges and guide students in using data, research, and claim–evidence–reasoning to create tangible action plans.

SPEAKERS:
Edward Cohen

This NIH-funded, randomized control trial (RCT) studied the implementation and impact of a 2-week long NGSS-aligned environmental science unit, "HeatViz," on high school students' knowledge and attitudes about science. Students use cutting-edge mobile sensors to gather data in their own communities, visualize areas of excess heat, and interpret data to explore and understand the urban heat island (UHI) effect, how it might be ameliorated, and potential impacts of excessive heat on human health. Pre/post surveys, assessments, and teaching logs were collected from over 100 8th-12th grade environmental science and biology classes. Using aggregated data and examples from one classroom implementation, we will share how HeatViz supported students’ deep engagement with science and engineering practices, such as analyzing and interpreting data, and supported learning cross-cutting concepts addressed across many grade levels in topics as varied as Earth Science to AP Biology.

TAKEAWAYS:
Teachers will learn strategies to use mobile sensors to teach cross-cutting concepts, like human impact on the environment and energy and matter. Collecting, analyzing and interpreting data to address real-world problems creates conditions to support students’ interest in science.

SPEAKERS:
Mellissa Pfaff, Jessica Karch

This section aims to share research findings from three years of partnership with teachers in two school districts. We will unpack the meanings of transdisciplinary, justice-centered teaching, and introduce possible images of teaching that embodies the ideas, along with tools. The participants will have opportunities to analyze student work produced from the co-designed transdisciplinary units. We will also present how collaborating teachers of our project navigated and disrupted the current de-contextualized, disciplinary-centeric, siloed culture of teaching and learning in secondary classrooms. We will present both research findings and practical tools that help teachers to expand their repertoires of practices.

TAKEAWAYS:
Transdisciplinary, justice-centered teaching involves crossing the boundaries of both disciplines (science vs. math) and institutions (school vs. community/home).

SPEAKERS:
Hosun Kang

Innovative chemistry labs focused on current topics play an essential role in inspiring and educating students at the undergraduate and high school levels. A timely example is the ongoing accumulation of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. One promising approach to mitigate the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is the electrochemical reduction of CO2 into carbon monoxide (CO), a valuable precursor for renewable fuels. This presentation showcases the development of an accessible laboratory activity that could be utilized by students of all levels of chemistry, by focusing on electrolysis of CO2 to form CO, with the explanation of how this produced CO can be utilized in a “flow-battery” system reliant on renewable energy derived fuels.

TAKEAWAYS:
This new laboratory activity empowers all students to actively explore key principles in electrochemistry and current trends in renewable energy, promoting engineering, collaboration and problem solving in a hands-on, innovative and accessible experiment.

SPEAKERS:
Kyra Morris

The presenter/author demonstrates how to address NGSS’s three-dimensional learning in an engaging way by using the storyline in the NSTA Kids book, Too Much Quiet!. Second grader Patsy Beth has just learned about climate change at school. With the help of her teacher she convinces fellow students to take small, but inspiring, action to help slow down climate change and help nature. Teachers will recognize best practices used by Ms. Green and will discover ways to use the story conflict (change in natural habitat) as a driving phenomenon to integrate science and ELA using real Project-Based Learning. Takeaways: 1. Crosscutting concepts and science and engineering practices within life science lessons modeled in this book. 2. Using literature to engage and inspire young students to realize the importance of understanding science. 3. Best practices in teaching modeled in the book. 4. Free online resources for the primary classroom that extend the scientific teachings in this book.

TAKEAWAYS:
Second grader Patsy Beth may be a drama queen, but she has BIG IDEAS! Jump into her fictional world to explore factual life science and climate change while discussing Ms. Green’s clever teaching tactics. Combining science and ELA, Too Much Quiet! models practical science teaching strategies.

SPEAKERS:
Kottie Christie-Blick

Data science skills are critical for success in STEM careers and a science-informed citizenry as noted in the NRC framework. Students transitioning between high school and college are often new to working with complex large datasets and need structured guidance on skills dealing with outliers, gaps, or messy trends. Instructors also face challenges accessing these datasets and lack time to create activities. One source of easily accessible large datasets is the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). The OOI Data Lab Manual is an open educational resource that provides scaffolded activities related to topics covered in many science courses. It allows students to engage with scientific data visualizations to develop skills and apply concepts which increase student confidence and data literacy. I will demonstrate teaching strategies, available activities and new labs that focus on emerging topics in climate change such as ocean acidification and the impacts of forest fires on the ocean.

TAKEAWAYS:
This session will introduce attendees to the OOI Ocean Data Labs, an open educational resource that can be used to increase students’ data skills. I will highlight the use of lab activities in the classroom and show how they relate to NGSS earth science concepts and NRC science practices.

SPEAKERS:
Jean Anastasia

Are you interested in teaching about climate change, sustainability or the environment? Come explore open educational resources and design practices from a variety of organizations with expertise in these areas! These include professional learning, curriculum, and pedagogical resources!

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will be able to interact with experts in climate change and sustainability instruction and walk away with free resources and design advice to support their own teaching practice.

SPEAKERS:
Deb Morrison, Kelsie Fowler, Philip Bell

Introduce your students to key connections between science and civics using primary sources from high-quality, trusted organizations like PBS, Library of Congress and the National Archives. Attendees will examine news articles, photographs and political cartoons from the past to the present on topics including the polio vaccine, Space Race, ocean pollution, aviation and medicine. We will then discuss the role that civic participation has played in the work of the scientists, inventors, and advocates involved in these historic events. We will share specific primary-source based lessons and tools that science teachers can use to connect their lessons to civic education. We will conclude by sharing specific examples of students who have demonstrated strong civic participation through their work in science class.

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will learn meaningful connections between science and civic education using specific examples from U.S. history.

SPEAKERS:
Elizabeth Osborn, Victoria Pasquantonio

During this workshop, participants will learn about the Data Initiative for Environmental and Climate Action in California's TK–12 Schools, an equity-informed, data-driven approach that paints a landscape of progress towards sustainability, resiliency, and environmental literacy across all of California’s public school districts. We will explore how to use this groundbreaking dataset focused on school sustainability policies and initiatives with your students to drive agency towards change. Participants will experience activities and resources as part of a solutionary PLB framework to explore local environmental issues and learn about current mitigation solutions being implemented in school districts across the state. The session will end with resources to support your students with advocating for action in their communities in California and beyond.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will learn how this real-world data set can support students to ask authentic questions, use computational thinking to determine problems, and empower students to advocate for positive change in their communities.

SPEAKERS:
Sarah Watanabe

Explore a seabird study and the effects of climate change. We will share our integrated curriculum: authentic data analysis, field techniques, seabird biology, the Arctic ecosystem, and talking about climate change with students. Come try a fish foraging simulation, bird banding technique, and research tools!

TAKEAWAYS:
Attendees will explore an integrated curriculum centered on a 51-year Arctic seabird study and the impacts of climate change on the Arctic ecosystem. Hands-on: fish foraging simulation (very fun!), bird banding activity, research tools, and strategies for talking about climate change with students.

SPEAKERS:
Katie Morrison

This interactive STEM workshop integrates GLAD strategies and Place-Based Learning to explore the role of Indigenous knowledge and storytelling in science education. Designed for educators familiar with Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, the session offers tools for integrating themes like reciprocity into classrooms and labs. Participants will engage in observation charts, a Cognitive Content Dictionary, and a read-aloud of “Windigo Footprints,” followed by text marking and discussion. We’ll connect these strategies to NGSS and Since Time Immemorial-aligned classroom and lab activities that bridge Indigenous and scientific ways of knowing. Participants will co-design culturally sustaining, locally grounded science lessons and review an adaptable scope and sequence.

TAKEAWAYS:
Educators will learn how to use GLAD strategies and Place-Based Learning to integrate themes from Braiding Sweetgrass—especially reciprocity—into science classrooms and labs through observation, vocabulary, storytelling, and inquiry.

SPEAKERS:
Christie Ryba

Understanding how to constructively respond to the diverse emotions youth express and experience as they engage in climate learning is essential work for educators. We will explore approaches for responding to youths’ eco-emotions, and how these can help students make better sense of the world.

TAKEAWAYS:
Climate anxiety is a sign of the times. This session gives attendees conceptual ideas as well as practical instructional activities to engage and channel student’s emotions. We will model teaching strategies and how to use students’ eco-emotions for furthering their scientific thinking and action.

SPEAKERS:
Deb Morrison, Kelsie Fowler

This interactive workshop introduces a free, turn-key, NGSS-aligned middle school unit that connects climate and health science to students’ daily lives through case studies, data analysis, and experiments. Participants will engage in sample activities that mirror student experiences, such as reading cases, analyzing data, and exploring how climate-driven events such as wildfires, flooding, and pesticide use affect indoor environments and human health. They will also examine CER graphic organizers and assessment rubrics to see how the unit fosters sensemaking and student success. The unit integrates the three dimensions of NGSS and incorporates frameworks such as Causal Learning in the Classroom, the 5E instructional model, and NSTA’s case-based approach. Lessons are modular and adaptable to different schedules. Teachers will leave with turn-key resources and strategies that make climate and health science engaging, relevant, and empowering.

TAKEAWAYS:
This free, ready-to-use NGSS-aligned unit empowers middle school students to connect climate and health science through experiments, case studies, and design challenges. Participants will leave with classroom-ready strategies and resources for engaging learners.

SPEAKERS:
Chris Link, PhD

Participants will connect with one another through the launch of an anchoring phenomenon with Land Surface Temperature data with a free digital dashboard from the SoCal Heat Hub at Scripps Oceanography at UC San Diego. From exploration of this data, participants will use the Understanding Global Change (UGC) framework and explanatory modeling tools to construct rough draft explanations from the data. Following this instruction and connections activity, participants will reflect on the modeling practices they experienced and how the UGC framework is designed to support students’ systems thinking with global change based phenomena. Participants will then use either a provided unit of instruction or their own to plan how to integrate UGC within a storyline of learning. Last, participants will prepare an action plan on how to share the UGC Framework and Earth system modeling tools with your students and colleagues.

TAKEAWAYS:
Experience the nature and processes of science by constructing explanations about a global change phenomenon with the Understanding Global Change framework and explanatory modeling practices.

SPEAKERS:
Rachel Stein Meisner, Alec Barron

FREE multimedia tools showing how technology has and can help to feed our communities. A short and easy tie-in to a genetics unit, these materials highlight how today’s farmers and scientists might feed more people in challenging growing conditions. Includes a beautiful interactive highlighting genetic technology solutions in crops, an engaging classroom activity using comics to explore agriculture trade-offs, and a fun crop-growing simulation!

TAKEAWAYS:
Gene editing, transgenic technology and traditional breeding are applications of genetic knowledge that offer solutions for growing crops in challenging conditions. There are tradeoffs involved with each method, yet they offer hopeful solutions to address challenges to human health.

SPEAKERS:
Jen Taylor

Local ecosystems provide real-world scenarios for students allowing them to better understand science content while also using science and engineering practices. For instance, Muskegon Lake, a lake in western Michigan, is an ecosystem that students in the community are familiar with due to recreational activities such as fishing and boating. During the summer of 2025, two pre-service teachers (KF & RL) worked with a professor (CAS) to conduct research and write corresponding lesson plans. Here, we will explore issues related to Muskegon Lake that are tied to NGSS disciplinary core ideas such as nutrient cycling, parasitism, and experimental design. Participants will conduct hands-on activities related to fish populations in Muskegon Lake, and they will also consider how these activities can be modified for different grades/learners. Additionally, participants will brainstorm ecosystems near their school that provide relevant phenomena for student learning.

TAKEAWAYS:
Participants will leave with lesson plans related to Muskegon Lake. These lesson plans are ready for classroom use and include all the templates and rubrics. Participants will also leave with ideas on how to incorporate local phenomena and research into their classes.

SPEAKERS:
Rachel LeMaster, Kezia Fong, Carrie Sharitt

Using Black Panther as an anchor text, this lesson explores the carbon cycle, climate change, and environmental justice. Students analyze Wakanda’s ecosystems, engage in carbon simulations, and write CERs connecting fiction to real climate science. This unit promotes equity, climate literacy, and cultural connection in middle school science.

TAKEAWAYS:
Learn how to use culturally relevant pop culture to teach the carbon cycle and environmental justice in middle school science.

SPEAKERS:
Ricardo Padilla