This video outlines five ways to cope with the anxiety around climate change.
Students learn how to filter climate change information, process their feelings, and make changes in large or small ways.
Teaching Tips
Positives
Engaging visuals accompany this video.
It could be used to encourage students to talk about their anxieties about climate change.
This video features Mitch Prinstein, the Chief Science Officer of the American Psychological Association.
Additional Prerequisites
Students should be familiar with the effects of climate change.
Differentiation
Students could work in groups to identify common fears about climate change and brainstorm ways to support each other.
Teachers could use this video to help students unpack their feelings about climate change and encourage them to write in a journal about it, create an art piece about it, or create a song or dance to express their feelings about it.
Science and civics classes could use this video after learning about climate change or one of the many topics connected to climate change, such as deforestation, biodiveristy loss, the sixth mass extinction, ecosystem declines, toxic air and water pollution, human migrations, and the devastation caused by extreme droughts, fires, heat, storms, or floods.
Scientist Notes
Misinformation about climate change is happening. The resource explains the need to acquire climate information only from credible sources and organizations to reduce panic and anxiety about the impact. This is recommended for teaching.
Standards
College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards
Dimension 2: Civics
D2.Civ.5.9-12 Evaluate citizens' and institutions' effectiveness in addressing social and political problems at the local, state, tribal, national, and/or international level.
Dimension 4: Taking Informed Action
D4.7.6-8 Assess their individual and collective capacities to take action to address local, regional, and global problems, taking into account a range of possible levers of power, strategies, and potential outcomes.
