Summer Institutes

Schools for the Planet: Toward Universal Climate Literacy with Children’s Literature and Media Summer Institute for Educators

This year's Institute will be held in-person, June 16-18, 2025, 9:00am - 1:30pm central, in Peik Hall 330 on the UMN-TC East Bank Campus. The Institute is free for all. 13.5 CEUs will be awarded at the conclusion of the Institute.

In order to ensure that facilitators have time to fully prepare, registration will close on June 1, 2025 at 11:59pm. All registrants will then receive an email asking to confirm their participation. Confirmations will be due by June 8. 
 
Please direct any questions to Nick Kleese at [email protected].
 

We are a climate illiterate civilization that has sleepwalked into climate breakdown, biodiversity crash, and unprecedented social inequalities that exacerbate planetary ecocide. To turn this around, we need to transform our wealth-based, extractive civilization into a sustainable and equitable ecological civilization. This transition requires that we build universal climate literacy. It makes our classrooms ground zero for this effort. 

In this three-day summer school, literacy educators will guide you to engage with pedagogical practices of envisioning, embodying, and enacting climate literacy education in your classroom. You will learn why traditional climate change education (CCE), focused on scientific and environmental facts, is inadequate to address the social, racial, and political dimensions of climate change. You will explore climate literacy as a broader competence that includes climate science but focuses primarily on developing attitudes and values aligned with how we should live to respect our planetary home. You will learn why stories for young people—in books, films, games, and other narrative media—are the best technology for the social transformation that ensures everyone’s future: a technology that makes climate literacy accessible to every student everywhere and our students are eager to engage in action around climate change.

This summer school will be offered in person from 9:00 am-1:30 pm. Participants will receive 13.5 CEUs, a picturebook, resource kit, and more. This course is appropriate for teachers across grade levels and subject areas, and is offered in collaboration with the Minnesota Writing Project and the Institute for Global Studies.