Climate Smart & Energy Wise
Advancing Science Literacy, Knowledge, and Know-How
- Mark S. McCaffrey - National Center for Science Education
Foreword by Eugenie C. Scott and Jay B. Labov
“Climate Smart & Energy Wise provides a roadmap to teachers to assist them in acquiring the background and resources to bring climate and energy education into their classrooms . . . It provides a wealth of information to help teachers find resources, including the very useful Climate Literacy and Energy Literacy frameworks, developed by scientists and master teachers. This book is packed with suggestions for where a teacher can find more information and classroom guidance for the teaching of global climate change."
- From the Foreword by Eugenie C. Scott, Ph.D., former Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education, Inc. and Jay B. Labov, Ph.D., Senior Advisor for Education and Communication for the National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council
Today’s answers to our most urgent climate issues
The twenty-first century ushered in a set of unmistakably urgent global challenges that are too important to be an afterthought in today’s classrooms. Just in time, here’s a resource to improve your students’ understanding of the intersection of science and social policy by making climate and energy literacy the centerpiece of your curriculum.
What recommends Climate Smart & Energy Change in particular? That there’s no more informed expert on the subject than Mark McCaffrey. His book offers a virtual blueprint to climate and energy education, packed with resources and strategies, including:
- A high-level overview of where climate and energy topics fit (or don't fit) in to your current curriculum
- A discussion of the new Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and how you can meet them with well-planned pedagogical strategies
- Proven methods to teach climate change and related topics in a grade-appropriate way
- Sample learning activities and high-quality online resources from the Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN)
Students, educators, and parents must pool their diverse skills and abilities to ensure our schools produce graduates that are able to respond to the global imperative facing us all. Climate Smart & Energy Wise is the key to making a better future our reality.
"The climate change education cavalry has arrived! Climate Smart – Energy Wise: Advancing Science Literacy, Knowledge and Know-how by Mark S. McCaffrey is a must-have resource for all educators striving to increase climate and energy literacy of our K-12 student population. In a nutshell, this book is a roadmap beginning with climate and energy basics and ending with a bold ten year action plan to “tackle the climate and energy challenges of the 21st century through improved literacy and learning environments”. Along the way the reader learns best practices for teaching climate and energy issues with each chapter ending with numerous links to educational resources listed by grade level. These resources are worth the price of the book alone."
"Climate Smart and Energy Wise is an honest and realistic take on what’s possible for the future of climate and energy education. McCaffrey’s optimism about society’s ability to cope with the alarming reality of global change is founded on the potential of our educational system and its ability to inform and improve students’, teachers’, and parents’ understanding of our world. McCaffrey ties the disparate aspects of climate science together. This book is a resource with many more resources within it so that educators can begin addressing climate education in their classrooms right away."
"This is an excellent resource for all educators – from novices to master teachers – who are struggling to decide when and how to teach about climate change. It contains a well-researched and well-organized compendium of factual information and relevant concepts in both life sciences and earth sciences, along with strategies and links to diverse and detailed resources for teaching. McCaffrey has been working in the field of climate education for years, knows both the field and important players well, and presents a number of interesting new ways to present this vital information. McCaffrey also does an excellent job coordinating important facts and concepts related to climate change with new national standards, in the process, putting this material into the larger context of revitalizing and reinvigorating science education."
"Climate Smart – Energy Wise provides a roadmap to teachers to assist them in acquiring the background and resources to bring climate and energy education into their classrooms . . . It provides a wealth of information to help teachers find resources, including the very useful Climate Literacy and Energy Literacy frameworks, developed by scientists and master teachers. This small book is packed with suggestions for where a teacher can find more information and classroom guidance for the teaching of global climate change."
"How do we prepare students for global change? This book envisions schools that are “living laboratories of innovation,”that provide students with the knowledge they will need to live in a very different—and much warmer—world. The book shows how climate can act as an integrative thread bringing together science, math and “virtually any other topic or discipline and how Climate change effects every aspect of our lives.” The book also emphasizes that we must teach about climate change through a lens of hope, focusing on the positive things we all can –and must--do. Climate literacy provides a unified concept that makes STEM education and the Next Generation Science Standards relevant through natural links to the most important issues of our time."
"The United States has a serious science literacy problem as witnessed by the statements made by local, state, and federal officials about global warming and other topics. One way to combat this is to improve science education at the K–12 level by providing the instructional materials needed by science teachers. This should be a valuable reference for those involved in science education."