Third graders at Public School 103 in the north Bronx sat on a rug last month while their teacher, Kristy Neumeister, led a book discussion.
The book, “Rain School,” is about children who live in a rural region of Chad, a country in central Africa. Every year, their school must be rebuilt because storms wash it away.
“And what’s causing all these rains and storms and floods?” asked Ms. Neumeister.
“Carbon,” said Aiden, a serious-looking 8-year-old.
Ms. Neumeister was one of 39 elementary school teachers from across the city who participated in a four-day training session in the summer called “Integrating Climate Education in N.Y.C. Public Schools.” Its goal was to make the teachers familiar with the topic, so they can work climate change into their lesson plans.
The summer workshop could be just the beginning. Last year, New Jersey, the first state to mandate climate change lessons, introduced them in its public schools. Several similar bills are being considered in New York, one of which proposes to teach climate change across all grades and subject matters and has the support of over 115 educators and nonprofits like the National Wildlife Federation.
“Climate change is not a future threat; it’s a present reality,” said State Senator James Sanders Jr., a Democrat who represents sections of southeast Queens like the Rockaways that are vulnerable to sea level rise and flooding. He is a sponsor of another bill that would include the topic in science classes.
While New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and California are actively incorporating climate change into curriculums, other states including Texas, Virginia and Florida have resisted, said Glenn Branch, the deputy director of the National Center for Science Education. Reasons include community opposition in more conservative states and outdated science standards, he said.
Even in regions that embrace climate change education, there is some pushback. In Connecticut, State Representative John Piscopo, a Republican, wants to amend standards to include more questioning of whether man-made greenhouse gases are the main source of global warming.
“The current policy ties the science teacher’s hands of challenging hypotheses and theory, which is the very basis of science,” Mr. Piscopo said. “This amounts to indoctrination of our youth instead of fostering the vibrant debate and individual learning that they deserve.”
(Numerous studies have found that an overwhelming majority of scientists focused on the Earth’s climate agree that the planet is warming and that humans are the primary cause, as does nearly 60 percent of the general population of the United States.)
New York City, the country’s largest school system, is getting a head start on a possible curriculum mandate with its efforts to compost lunches, decarbonize school buildings and prepare older students for careers in the clean energy sector. In February, the Department of Education will co-host a larger climate change training session, along with the United Federation of Teachers, for up to 500 educators at all grade levels.
The more outreach, the better, said Oren Pizmony-Levy, the director of the Center for Sustainable Futures at Columbia University’s Teachers College, a sponsor of the summer workshop along with Columbia and the city school system.
The summer’s crash course in climate change was intimidating at times, Ms. Neumeister said. In one session, Jason Smerdon, a professor at the Columbia Climate School, discussed the life cycle of carbon, sometimes veering into scientific terms like “isotopic rates.”
But the workshop also provided more accessible resources, like the website Subject to Climate, which helps teachers develop and share their lesson plans, as well as ideas for interactive activities, like a nature walk to measure carbon dioxide in the air. In one session, an instructor from Teachers College suggested talking to children about “zombie fires” (underground fires in the Arctic).
By the end of the week, Ms. Neumeister had grasped enough to introduce the subject to her students, she said. But she felt that she and her fellow teachers were under pressure to convert what they had learned into engaging classroom lessons. “I felt like we were kind of the guinea pigs,” she said.
For the subject matter to resonate with students, there should be more teacher training and instructional resources, said Mr. Branch, alluding to past studies that have revealed a lack of teacher exposure to climate change. He would like to see more states join California, New Jersey, Maine and Washington, which have earmarked funds for professional development on the topic.
Another concern shared among the teachers at the four-day workshop was how to incorporate climate change into packed class schedules that include preparation for state tests.
“It’s not about adding more, it’s more about weaving in,” Mr. Pizmony-Levy said of working climate change into subjects like math and English language arts. Ms. Neumeister was able to achieve this in her reading comprehension lessons by using articles about the environment that were paired with short quizzes.
Monica Pagan-Guzman, who also participated in the summer workshop, teaches third grade at Public School 83 in East Harlem. She developed the “Rain School” lesson plan with Ms. Neumeister, and both women intended to teach it in the fall. But when the school year started, Ms. Pagan-Guzman found herself in a classroom where only a handful of students were at reading level.
In response, Ms. Pagan-Guzman shifted her lesson plan. She hopes to start a lunch club this winter to discuss climate change and package it with another study on animal welfare. “They know that animals need, you know, positive homes, positive environments,” she said of her students. “So I figured that would be an easy way to go back and not give up on this process.”
In the north Bronx, Ms. Neumeister’s students continued their book discussion of “Rain School” and were exploring ideas for weather-resistant schools.
The group talked about stilts, and how they were used in the United States to elevate buildings. “You can put sandbags around the water so it won’t mess up your house,” said Ameena, 8.
“I think that they’re starting to get parts of it,” Ms. Neumeister said. But she would like to see children introduced to climate change even earlier.
“If they start this in kindergarten with those basic concepts, then by the time students come to third grade, there will be so much more knowledge,” she said. “They would become kind of little experts, and it would become a part of their lifestyle, and their parents would know about it, too.”