CMSCE has leveraged their expertise in pedagogical practices in STEM to work with leading experts from around Rutgers in climate change to create resources for k-12 educators. Rutgers University and New Jersey Audubon have been awarded one of the NJDOE Climate Change Grants - Expanding Access to Climate Change and NJ Student Learning Through Climate Change Learning Collaborative. The overarching goals and expectations of this grant program are to:
Establish a statewide network to support LEAs in implementing climate change education through the creation of a Central NJ CCLC at Rutgers-NB, with the support of CBO, NJ Audubon to engage in place-based environmental education in each region.
Increase the number and content-area diversity of K-12 educators well prepared to teach high quality, standards-aligned climate change education through our CCLC.
The CCLC at Rutgers University serves the following New Jersey counties: Hunterdon, Middlesex, and Somerset.
Upcoming Climate Change PD
Teachers and administrators from New Jersey public schools are eligible to attend Climate Change Learning Collaborative events and use services provided by the Climate Change Learning Collaborative. PDs are sponsored by the NJDOE Climate Change Grant allowing for the PDs to be free of charge. Please make sure to register for any of the PDs you would like to attend.
To register please head to this tab: PD for Teachers
Teachers from New Jersey public schools are eligible to receive a stipend for attending Climate Change Learning Collaborative events outside contracted hours and substitute teacher coverage for attending Climate Change Learning Collaborative events held during contracted hours. Teachers will be required to complete a post-event survey to receive a stipend or substitute teacher coverage. If you have any questions please email climatechangeeducation@docs.rutgers.edu.
Please note there are several PDs that are repeated to give access to as many teachers. Make sure when signing up you have not previously attended the PD. If you have any questions don't hesitate to reach out to us.
| Date | Time | Title | Description | Location |
| January 7, 2025 | 12:00pm - 2:00pm | EcoSchools Project and Placed based Learning | Teachers will be provided an overview of place-based and project-based learning opportunities with examples of student actions projects. Teachers will learn to use the EcoSchools portal to support and document student action projects that mitigate climate change impacts. | Virtual |
| January 22, 2025 | 5:30pm - 7:30pm | Evening Teacher Learning:Lesson Support & Coaching for Climate Change Curriculum | Come with lessons, activities, and ideas on how to integrate climate change into the classroom. We are going to be working as teams in the STEM or Humanities areas to share what we have been doing in the classroom, as well as the chance to work on a new climate curriculum. Participating teachers and Rutgers faculty will be supporting this work as well, specifically Jorge Marcone, Professor & Associate Dean of Humanities will join us with his graduate students to provide supports for MLL. | Virtual |
| January 23, 2025 | 4:00pm-6:00pm | Climate 101 for All Educators | Prepare Teachers of All Subject Areas to teach Climate Change Standards that are required in NJ! With the adoption of the NJ Climate Change Standards you may be wondering how to implement them into your classroom or wanting a better understanding of climate change. Through this PD you will get an overview of climate change and the newest research/data that Rutgers has to share for NJ specific data. | Virtual |
| January 23, 2025 | 6:15pm-8:15pm | Introduction to Project Based Learning (PBLs) | How do teachers of different disciplines collaborate to create cross curricular units? Using a project based approach to drive the instruction teachers will learn tools and tips on how to develop cross curricular units. Bring a fellow member of your teaching team to help with the collaborative process. | Virtual |
| January 24, 2025 | 10:00am-2:00pm | Investigating Climate Change through Dance: How to leverage climate change standards in your content’s curriculum. | Come one, come all! A dance workshop for ALL content areas! This session will focus on the latest New Jersey climate change standards, and how you can use movement as the key to bring them to life in your classroom through arts strategies, arts enhancement, and arts integration. You will walk away with a reinvigorated approach to your teaching and lesson ideas you can implement immediately. | Rutgers MGSA |
| January 29, 2025 | 6:00pm-7:30pm | Help our wildlife! Using schoolyard gardening and restoration to mitigate climate impacts on local wildlife and the plants they depend on. | Join NJ Audubon to explore how you and your students can help support wildlife that are being impacted by climate change in NJ. First we will learn how birds and other wildlife are impacted then discuss how different types of gardens can support them and lead to restoration. | Virtual |
| January 30, 2025 | 9:00am-12:00pm | Help our wildlife! Using schoolyard gardening and restoration to mitigate climate impacts on local wildlife and the plants they depend on. | Join NJ Audubon to explore how you and your students can help support wildlife that are being impacted by climate change in NJ. First we will learn how birds and other wildlife are impacted then discuss how different types of gardens can support them and lead to restoration. | New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman |
| February 5, 2025 | 12:00pm- 2:00pm | EcoSchools Project and Placed based Learning | Teachers will be provided an overview of place-based and project-based learning opportunities with examples of student actions projects. Teachers will learn to use the EcoSchools portal to support and document student action projects that mitigate climate change impacts. | Virtual |
| February 8, 2025 | 10:00am-2:00pm | Investigating Climate Change through Dance: How to leverage climate change standards in your content’s curriculum. | Come one, come all! A dance workshop for ALL content areas! This session will focus on the latest New Jersey climate change standards, and how you can use movement as the key to bring them to life in your classroom through arts strategies, arts enhancement, and arts integration. You will walk away with a reinvigorated approach to your teaching and lesson ideas you can implement immediately. | Rutgers MGSA |
| February 11, 2025 | 7:00pm-8:00pm | Teaching about climate action with place-based and Project-based learning using EcoSchools | An international and national program, EcoSchools is a free platform that helps engage in student-guided project- and place-based learning for sustainability. This workshop with the NJ EcoSchools coordinator will guide you through how to use the platform and give your students choice in how to address climate change, support wildlife and biodiversity, and create healthy and resilient communities. | Virtual |
| March 12, 2025 | 9:30am - 2:30pm | Local Voices, Global Choices Student and Educator Summit on Climate Action | As part of the CCLC Higher Ed we are hosting a conference March 12, 2024 that is open to all K-12 Public School Teachers in NJ. Rutgers Faculty and NJ Audubon would like to invite you to our Climate Change Summit where we will be presenting on different topics of climate change. Teachers will walk away with a better understanding of how to integrate climate change into their classrooms through a variety of activities and sessions. Opportunities will be provided for teachers to share and showcase with their peers what lessons, activities, programs, and any other climate-related ways teachers are implementing climate change in their classrooms. Throughout the day teachers will have the chance to take part in different sessions on topics dealing with climate change in different grades and subject areas. | Rutgers LLC |
Climate Change Learning Collaboratives
Looking for more support, information, and resources to Climate Change Education check out the following sites.
Climate Change PD Reviews & Feedback
- Rutgers Today - Rutgers Partners with New Jersey Schools to Develop Historic Climate Change Curriculum
- NJ Spotlight News - Climate Change: Rutgers helps teachers to include it in curriculum
- NorthJersey.com -Climate Change is now part of NJ school curricula. Rutgers shares its resources.
- The Daily Targum - NJ First Lady Tammy Murphy visits U., speaks to public school teaches about climate education
Feedback from our April 27, 2023 Climate Change Workshop:
A NJ High School teacher said "Thank you so much for hosting an amazing event. I have been teaching a bit, and sometimes I can be jaded about workshops and conferences, my standard for success is if I have a meaningful takeaway, and yesterday I had a ton of takeaways, I am very grateful for the live document (that is brilliant) and even with that, I have 4 pages of ideas I wrote down during the workshop. The content was very meaningful and will be changing the content I am working on for the rest of the year, and how I will be doing things next year. Seeing different disciplines each talk about the same graph left me gobsmacked. That was a wow, and I hope that it was filmed, and can be put as a vignette on youtube or somewhere other platform."