“Teaching Climate Change with Confidence”: an NCSE workshop

Teaching climate change can be challenging for a number of reasons. The science is complex, teachers may not have the resources or training they need, and students come to the classroom with their own ideas, misconceptions, and misinformation. Climate change can also evoke a wide range of emotions and reactions, from denial and skepticism to anxiety and fear. Increasingly though, students are not just learning about climate change in the classroom; they are experiencing its impacts in real time within their own communities. These experiences can add another, very personal, dimension to teaching and learning about climate change.

At NCSE, one of our goals is to directly support educators in navigating these challenges. Along with free, classroom-ready lessons grounded in accurate climate science, we also provide teachers with tools, strategies, and training for meeting students where they are. I was reminded of how important this support is to teachers during a recent NCSE professional learning workshop in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Over 20 educators from across the state joined me for our workshop “Teaching Climate Change with Confidence” at the Science House at NC State. In North Carolina, the connection between climate change and students’ lived experiences felt particularly relevant. Just about two years ago, in late September of 2024, Hurricane Helene became one of the deadliest and most destructive storms to hit the state in recent history. But, unlike the hurricanes that typically just threaten North Carolina’s coast, some of Helene’s worst impacts occurred hundreds of miles inland. Intense rainfall triggered catastrophic flooding and more than 2,000 landslides across the southern Appalachian Mountains (Hagen et al., 2025). In North Carolina alone, the storm damaged more than 125,000 homes, affected thousands of miles of roads and bridges, and resulted in at least 106 deaths (Erdman, 2025). Estimates placed the economic costs as high as $47 billion (Nuccitelli, 2024).

For the teachers who joined us for the workshop, the continuing impact of Helene on their own and their students' lives was not abstract. They were looking for concrete ways to help students navigate the science of climate change, yes, but also the emotions and reactions that can come with experiencing its effects firsthand.

So during our workshop, before diving into how to teach climate change directly, we started thinking about our students and the differing experiences and backgrounds they bring with them into learning. As Katherine Hayhoe writes, we dove into how “facts, feelings, and identity” are shaping students' understanding and interaction with climate science. The teachers particularly connected with resources from the Climate Mental Health Network, including the Climate Emotions Wheel and strategies for building emotional resilience. Research suggests that simply recognizing and labeling a negative emotion, such as anxiety or fear, is an important first step to building emotional resilience and helping students move towards feeling more agentic (Dooley, 2025). We also unpacked ways to create a space in the classroom for students to share their ideas and feelings, through our BRAVE classroom practices. These resources set the stage for diving more firmly into teaching climate change.

NCSE has a number of climate change resources, but our story short “Climate Change in Your Backyard” was a great fit for this group. The first lesson begins by asking students to analyze more than 20 years of data from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) and look for patterns in billion-dollar weather and climate disasters. One pattern quickly stands out: these costly events have increased over time.

But noticing this pattern is only the beginning. Next, students investigate what is driving that increase and discover that, while there is no single cause, climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of many types of extreme weather. For the North Carolina teachers, the connection to Hurricane Helene was immediate. They could see how the lesson could help students move from their own experiences with extreme weather to asking questions and investigating the science behind those experiences.

The Story Short continues with a dice-rolling simulation, modeling how global warming can change the likelihood of extreme weather. Just as loading a die makes certain rolls more likely, adding energy to Earth’s atmosphere and oceans can make some extreme weather events more frequent or intense. Students then build on this idea by exploring climate attribution (how scientists determine whether, and to what degree, climate change made a particular event more likely or intense) before examining climate impacts and adaptation strategies in their own state. As we worked through the story short, the connections to Helene were hard to miss. Teachers could see how a resource like this could give students a way to investigate the science behind an event they had experienced, while still making room for the questions and emotions that experience might bring up.

Spending the day with these passionate educators reminded me why the work we do at NCSE matters. These teachers care deeply about their students and want to help them make sense of climate change in ways that are scientifically accurate, relevant, and meaningful. Providing free, classroom-ready resources is part of that work, but so is giving teachers the time and support they need to confidently use them. With the right support, teachers can help students move from experiencing a changing climate to understanding it and, ultimately, feeling more prepared to take action.