In what may be a first in the nation, the Portland, Oregon school board passed a sweeping “climate justice” resolution that commits the school district to “abandon the use of any adopted text material that is found to express doubt about the severity of the climate crisis or its roots in human activity.” The resolution further commits the school district to develop a plan to “address climate change and climate justice in all Portland Public Schools.”
On this episode of Locus Focus we talk with Bill Bigelow, retired Portland Public Schools social studies teacher and Tim Swinehart, who teaches at Lincoln High School in Portland, about their efforts to bring climate justice to the classroom.
Bill Bigelow is curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools magazine and author or co-editor of several Rethinking Schools books: A People's History for the Classroom, The Line Between Us: Teaching About the Border and Mexican Immigration, Rethinking Columbus, Rethinking Globalization: Teaching for Justice in an Unjust World, and Rethinking Our Classrooms--Volumes 1 and 2. Recently he co-edited A People's Curriculum for the Earth: Teaching Climate Change and the Environmental Crisis, published by Rethinking Schools
Tim Swinehart teaches social studies at Lincoln High School, in Portland, Oregon and co-edited A People's Curriculum for the Earth
Teaching Climate Change and the Environmental Crisis, published by Rethinking Schools.
Watch video of the Portland School Board hearing the climate justice resolution.
Read Bill Bigelow's "Common Dreams" article: Abandoning Doubt & Denial, School District Officially Embraces Climate Literacy
- KBOO