Super option for teachers going green
Teachers seeking a fun way to engage students in the serious work of climate change education now have a great new resource.
Researchers from the Disaster, Climate and Adversity (DCA) unit in the School of Population and Global Health at University of Melbourne have adapted their acclaimed ‘Climate Superpowers’ quiz website for schools, producing a set of classroom resources which includes a flexible lesson plan (with slides), a three-minute introductory video, activity sheets, and guidance on aligning with the Australian curriculum.
In 2022, the original Climate Superpowers website offered young people a quiz where they discovered over 100 ways they could use their unique qualities to learn more, act, transform society and take care of themselves.
Climate superheroes
Researcher Phoebe Quinn says her group heard from so many teachers about Climate Superpowers that they turned their attention to classroom applications of the program and the specific needs of educators.
Phoebe told The Point that her team’s job is to support community wellbeing ‘in the face of disasters and climate change’. The project came about because they had been ‘increasingly concerned about how climate change has been triggering feelings of anxiety, powerlessness, sadness and anger amongst many young people’.
‘We noticed that most of the existing resources aimed at this issue of climate distress amongst young people were designed for and by adults. And so we decided to collaborate with a group of children and young people as co- designers, to give them opportunities to create a resource that would help other young people engage with the issue of climate change in ways they thought would be helpful.’
With support from Teachers Health, the researchers have been collaborating with teachers to:
build upon these strengths-based teaching resources
conduct research and create resources focusing on teacher wellbeing in relation to climate change
pilot a whole-of-school Climate Superpowers approach in 2025, based on this evolving set of resources.
Phoebe’s group ran five workshops in 2022 with 31 people aged 12-25 to co-develop the content, structure, format and design of the resource that became the Climate Superpowers website.
‘The young co-designers told us about the strengths children and young people have, and how they can draw on these in the face of climate change. They shared stories and tips from their own experiences, as well as from the experiences of their friends, siblings, or young people they had read or heard about. These stories are the basis for the 100 plus action ideas that feature on the website.’
The workshops established that Climate Superpowers should be:
empowering: to make young people feel capable of making a difference by helping them identify their strengths and providing ideas for actions
inclusive and flexible: so young people with diverse backgrounds, experiences, skills and interests could choose what they wanted to focus on
participatory: developed with meaningful, not tokenistic input from young people
sustainable: the website is powered by renewable energy.
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Get involved: climate change and teacher wellbeing
As a teacher (primary or secondary), has climate change affected your wellbeing in any way? Would you be willing to be interviewed by University of Melbourne researchers to help shape resources to support both teachers and students? The interview takes an hour, and you receive a $50 gift card as thanks for your time.
The researchers aim to build upon the Climate Superpowers classroom resources and create resources focusing on teacher wellbeing. The aim is to better support teachers through climate change challenges, which may relate to:
students’ thoughts and feelings on climate change
teachers’ own thoughts and feelings on climate
tensions within school communities
systemic and resourcing issues.
To register: teacher interviews
Link: climatesuperpowers.org
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What teachers find most useful in the Climate Superpowers resources
Phoebe says teachers love the way the Climate Superpowers website ‘helps students to reflect on their personal strengths, and how they can use these in a wide range of ways to take action in ways that suit their skills, interests and circumstances’.
Teachers also say the quiz formats, artwork and flexibility of Climate Superpowers are ‘really engaging’ for students. Teacher wellbeing and climate change Phoebe said in building the Climate Superpowers site, her team had been inspired by teachers going ‘above and beyond’ in supporting their students to engage positively with the topic of climate change.
From her previous research, Phoebe knew the crucial role that teachers play in supporting students, families and communities after disasters like bushfires. However, the DCA was surprised to find ‘basically nothing’ when it searched for research and resources focusing on teacher wellbeing and climate change.
In the rare cases where teacher emotions or wellbeing about climate change are discussed, the focus remains on how they impact student learning and/or wellbeing.
Phoebe says the impact of climate change on teachers is rarely treated as an important issue in its own right.
Teacher wellbeing interviews
By interviewing teachers, the DCA hopes to learn more about how their wellbeing is impacted by climate change, and what teachers think would be useful in supporting them through any such challenges.
‘Since this is one of the first studies to look at this issue, we will publish what we learn,’ Phoebe says.
‘The insights will also feed directly into the resources that are being co-developed with teachers, which will be piloted in 2025 in schools along with classroom resources which focus on student wellbeing and learning.’