Climate Change and Environmental Justice Program

The State of California invested $6 million to create curricular resources to help teachers promote students’ understanding of climate change and environmental justice, leading to action in their communities. The units will be free open education resources, standards-based, and they will integrate California’s Environmental Principles and Concepts.

With support from a Steering Committee, Ten Strands will oversee and organize the production, testing, and initial dissemination of the curriculum units. The Climate Change and Environmental Justice Program (CCEJP) Synopsis offers a detailed description of the vision, design principles, instructional approaches, strategies, and equity focus of this program. One 15-hour unit of instruction will be created at each grade level.

After implementing a process to solicit and evaluate Letters of Interest, Ten Strands selected seven community- and student-centered organizations to write the K–12 curriculum units. We convened these writing teams in August of 2022. Read more about the convening here. These organizations have diverse experience writing curriculum and providing professional learning, and they demonstrate the following values: 

• Community-centered work with diverse communities across California;
• A focus on environmental justice, social justice, and/or equity for the communities most impacted by climate change;
• Student-centered practices in the development of curriculum and resources; and
• Access to networks or communities of educators in California to write, pilot and/or field test curriculum.

The writing teams are:

• Grades K-2: Children’s Environmental Literacy Foundation
• Grade 3: GISetc
• Grade 4: Community Resources for Science and Oakland Teachers Advancing Climate Action
• Grade 5: Currently being restructured
• Grade 6: Center for Ecoliteracy
• Grade 7: Global Nomads Group
• Grade 8: Environmental Education Collaborative
• Grades 9-10: Mycelium Youth Network
• Grades 11-12: UCI EcoGovLab

We are excited to introduce each of our writing teams through feature stories in our bi-monthly newsletters. Check out their stories in the list below, which we will continuously update.

• Community Resources for Science and Oakland Teachers Advancing Climate Action: The Power of Story: Building Connection, Understanding, Agency, and Hope
• Children’s Environmental Literacy Foundation: Cultivating Love of Place and Planting Seeds for Lifelong Civic Engagement with California’s Young Learners
• EcoGovLab: Teaching with Storylines that Call Students In
• Center for Ecoliteracy: Nourishing Students in the Cafeteria, Classroom, and Garden
• Global Nomads Group: Climate Justice Curriculum by Youth, for Youth
• Mycelium Youth Network: Wisdom and Expertise That Live in the Collective

In addition to the writing teams, Ten Strands has identified larger organizations that have broader experience in writing open education resources on climate change and environmental justice curriculum and professional learning. With oversight from Ten Strands, these organizations will provide support and capacity-building to the curriculum writing teams to ensure coherence and consistency within and across grade levels.

• BSCS Science Learning: Provide broad curriculum development support and design the curriculum framework, including unit and lesson design.
• California Subject Matter Project: Provide expertise related to the California state standards, Environmental Principles and Concepts, content, cross curricular design, and professional learning.
• Concord Consortium: Provide access and support related to online modeling and data tools such as SageModeler and CODAP.
• The Climate Collective: Provide expertise related to climate change curriculum frameworks and development.

If you are interested in receiving updates and opportunities to get involved with this new program, as well as receive California environmental literacy news through the Ten Strands newsletter, please fill out the short form here.