Apply for a Hawaiʻi climate change teacher fellowship

Calling all Hawaiʻi-based K-12 educators! Are you looking for support on building climate education into your curriculum?

⁣Elemental Excelerator and SubjectToClimate are looking for Hawaiʻi educators of all disciplines and grades to participate in a Climate Champion Teacher Fellowship. Each teaching fellow will collaboratively build sessions over the course of six weeks, delivering three exemplar climate change lessons that align with the Hawaiʻi Department of Education’s goals. Fellows will present their experiences and complete progress reports.⁣

The program will be split into three modules:

• A broad overview on the science of climate change and basic climate change concepts;
• An exploration of examples of how to teach climate change in the educator’s specific subject and how to incorporate environmental justice principles;
• A guide for educators through the process of developing lesson plans for their classroom that integrate climate change into the curricula that they are already teaching.⁣⁣

The fellowship offers a $3,500 stipend and runs from June 10 to July 19. Fellowships are open to educators statewide. The deadline to apply is April 26.⁣⁣

Ten Hawai’i educators participated in the hybrid 2023 program, which blended asynchronous online work with in-person trainings.

“In most districts, learning about climate change is not required; especially not learning about the ways it disproportionately impacts disenfranchised communities,” said Olivia Dulany, former Root for Innovation teacher fellow. “This work is impactful because it represents an effort to increase access to education about things that we don’t traditionally teach in our nation’s public schools.”

Through this partnership, Elemental Excelerator and SubjectToClimate produced 31 Hawai’i-centric lesson plans that are both scientifically credible and can be integrated into existing curriculum. While multiple states in the U.S. work on statewide shifts to require climate change education to be taught across all grade levels and subjects, Hawai’i educators have been quick to integrate climate change into their curriculums and are well positioned to implement these lesson plans for K-12 education.