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 |
| December 3, 2024 | 4:00pm-6:00pm | Placed Based Learning: Climate Change and the Impact on Birds | How climate change impacts birds and migration in New Jersey and how students can make a difference. | Virtual |
| December 10, 2024 | 4:00pm-6:00pm | Placed Based Learning: Climate Change and the Impact on Birds | How climate change impacts birds and migration in New Jersey and how students can make a difference. | Virtual |
| December 11, 2024 | 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. | Rutgers Lifelong Learning Center |
| 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. | 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 |
| February 4, 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 |
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."