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Kate Schapira  00:12

A lot of education, the way that education works, public and private education, from what I can tell, is predicated on the idea that things are going to stay more or less the same, that status is going to stay more or less the same, that power is going to stay more or less the same, that where food comes from, that what people get paid for, are all going to stay more or less the same, that where people live is going to stay more or less the same, and we’re already seeing the ways in which that is not true, and some of the projections that we’re seeing suggest that that’s going to be even more untrue as kids who are in school now grow up.

David Case  01:09

Because climate change is not formally taught in New York City High Schools, City Atlas started this podcast to connect high school students directly with experts to find out how they would design a high school curriculum for climate. My name is David Case, and I’m a senior at Hunter College High School. In this episode, I speak with Carolyn McGrath and Kate Shapiro. Carolyn is an art teacher at Hopewell Valley Central High School in New Jersey. Kate is a professor of writing at Brown University, and for the past 10 years, has set up a climate anxiety counseling booth in public spaces.

They both work with the Climate Psychology Alliance, where Carolyn is the current chair of the Educators and Counselors Committee. Together, they wrote an Educator’s Guide to Climate Emotions. The goal of the guide is to give teachers a resource for helping students who are anxious about an issue society hasn’t yet fully addressed.

I guess the first question, just to get the ball rolling I had, was like, if either of you had to say, like, what the most interesting finding was that you made while researching for your guide.

Carolyn McGrath  02:07

One of the things that more recently has struck me is the uniquely vulnerable ways that climate change impacts young people, and that the ways that those are different from the ways that climate change impacts adults.

Some of that is because people growing up today have grown up with the knowledge of the future, the present and the future being changed because climate change, biodiversity loss, and all of the kind of collective crisis, crises that we’re facing, whereas people my age, people older, it’s been sort of this dawning realization.

So there’s sort of that psychological perspective that’s different for both groups. The other thing is that young people are uniquely vulnerable for other reasons, both physically to the impacts of climate change, but they don’t have as much power as adults. There’s a number of sort of reasons that for young people, climate change impacts them differently and more. So I think for me, that’s something that’s really struck me, especially as I meet with teachers.

David Case  03:37

Yeah.

Kate Schapira  03:39

Can I add to that? 

David Case  03:40

Please, go ahead. 

Kate Schapira  03:41

I kind of come to that from the other side of things. One thing that surprised me as we started putting the guide together is how many resources were already out there and how deep the knowledge was on all of the things that Carolyn was just describing. Like it’s known by some people and published and written by some people that you know, children and young people are affected different ways, physically, mentally, emotionally by this stuff than adults that that interacts in specific ways based on inequality and hierarchy. Right? So we talk about climate change being a threat multiplier, if you have other things going on, if you’ve marginalized in certain ways, if you’ve been disempowered in certain ways, climate change is going to interact with that, as well as with your age. All of that is information that is around.

There are also, there’s also, lush and rich information about how to work with emotion, how to kind of relate to one another when things are difficult in the classroom, how to have difficult conversations. All of that is out there.

And I was like, this is great. We can just bring this stuff together. That’s amazing. We can share that with everybody. And then, as we were having these conversations in our meetings and hearing from our reviewers, what we were also starting to hear was resources are not the problem, right? The resources are there. That’s great, but nobody has time. Everybody is tired. Everybody has tests to administer or to take. Everybody has expectations from their families or from their bosses. All teachers are overworked. Many teachers are also underpaid.

So there’s also questions about work, and can people do a good job? Is it possible to do a good job? Is it possible to be an emotionally responsible teacher when you’re talking about climate change, or anything. So that was something that, like, I kind of knew that, in a way, experientially, but it was brought together for me by this kind of, like lushness of resources and then this strain on the ability to put things in practice.

David Case  06:03

Yeah, just to, like, build on that strain a little bit. Are there maybe certain steps that either of you think needs to be taken to kind of allow for a large scale dedication to climate education? Or, you know, certain, I know you guys mentioned meeting with teaching and meeting with teachers and like teachers groups. Is there something else, or some other strategy you guys think might work to help, you know, actually be able to use these resources that do exist?

Kate Schapira  06:34

Breakfast programs, free lunch, no grades. I’m not I’m not joking. I am not joking. I’m trying to think about how to word this.

Whatever happens next, things are already really tough, both because of climate and environmental impacts that already exist, and again, because of the ways that those things interact with the other strains on people’s lives.

Our supply chains are getting weird. Our industries are having to reassess what they do. There might not be college. When my friends young children are grown, college might not be a thing anymore. And a lot of education, the way that education works, public and private education, from what I can tell, is predicated on the idea that things are going to stay more or less the same, that status is going to say stay more or less the same, that power is going to stay more or less the same, that where food comes from, that what people get paid for, are all going to stay more or less the same, that where people live is going to stay more or less the same, and we’re already seeing the ways in which that is not true, and some of the projections that we’re seeing suggest that that’s going to be even more untrue as kids who are in school now grow up. Let it go. Let it go. Let the grades go, let the status stuff go, all of the like, you got to do this. So you got to do that, so you can do this, so you can do that, so you can get into a good school, so you can let it go. It’s time.

Carolyn McGrath  08:37

So just building on what she has said, I agree that I don’t think the way that things currently exist. I don’t think as that we’re preparing students for the worlds that they face, even now or in a few years, like we’re relying on this old model, and we’re clutching it sort of tighter and tighter.

I mean, I’m not saying anything groundbreaking here, but increasing stress, increasing pressure, increasing need to do perfectly on everything, and everything is very high stakes to get into the best schools to do what, right?

Do students know anything about food, how food is produced, how to produce their own food, how to work with community members, how to build coalitions with groups, with other individuals, the skills that we’re going to need going going forward, right?

How much do students know about the quote environment, right? So last year, I took a group of students at my school out, we walked around campus just trying to identify what’s here. And it was, it was a bit of a wake up call for me, because the students, many of the students, unless they had intentionally experienced things like, through Boy Scouts, or through family outings or things like that, like just had no relationship to the world, to outside of school.

So we have this, like, very narrowly defined view of what we’re preparing students for and I, like Kate said, I don’t think, well, I don’t know, this is exactly what you said, Kate, but I don’t think we’re fully preparing students for the future that that lays, you know, not too far ahead. So I will say just in terms of, like, practicalities. I know. So, for example, New Jersey has climate standards for all subjects, and that that just happened in the last few years, and that that was one of the things that really kind of motivated me that started integrating climate Biodiversity, Climate Justice, sort of, all of these different aspects into my art classes, and make connections between, you know, what we were doing in school and what’s what’s going on outside of school.

David Case  11:41

Yeah, and that’s really interesting, they were able to kind of fuse climate education. And I mean, our class didn’t really expect, I didn’t think about that. And I mean, I guess you guys also really answered what I was going to ask almost next, which was what reevaluating standards and benchmarks for success in the context of our climate realities mean. And you guys definitely really spoke to that. So thank you.

Carolyn McGrath  12:04

Can I interrupt you for a sec? You’re, you said, a high school senior, a senior.

David Case

High School, yeah, a senior.

Carolyn McGrath

So what? What’s I mean, what’s been your experience of things that we’ve talked about so far? So we’re talking about it from the other end of things. I’m interested in just hearing your perspective. 

David Case  12:25

So I’ve actually had like, very limited access to, like, climate education courses. My school occasionally offers a climate science elective, either for juniors or seniors, which they’re now no longer offering, at least this year. It’s taught by, you know, one of the physics teachers, and he has other classes to teach, and it’s just like, it’s very difficult for them to kind of incorporate that. And we have some things where we’ll have speakers come in, and we’ll get to hear a little bit about maybe what their organization is doing, or something else, which I’ve found really interesting, but honestly that’s maybe like an annual, like a twice a year type of thing.

And so while you got all your guide right about, you know, having breaks between climate lessons so that people can, like, properly process these things, the breaks are really too big. It’s very rare that will have that sort of an experience, and even so, that’s maybe one 40 minute period a day, and it’s just, it’s really sporadic, honestly, and that’s how I see it.

Carolyn McGrath  13:33

And I think your experience, it sounds like just, just from what I’ve read, that most most students want more climate education and are not receiving the climate education that they would like. So that sort of reflects that. And I think our guide presumes a teacher or an educator who is already ready to sort of dive into doing this work. But you’re right, there’s, there’s sort of that first step of like, how do we do more of this? And then another question that I’ve been thinking of lately is, as we as people, are doing more of this, are they doing it in a way that is helpful for students? Because you can teach climate in a lot of different ways, and some of those ways, I think we talk about this in the guide, some of those ways can empower students, but some of those ways could not,,

Kate Schapira  14:46

And some of them can also, like, reinforce inequality, and some of them can start to break down inequality. I mean, I know Carolyn, one of the things that you’ve talked about is, like, kind of worrying about people who take the materials in the guide, in kind of like an eco fascist direction where it’s like, well, like, you know, there’s too many people using resources, or something else, you know, orders need to be stronger, or something else that kind of combines, like scarcity with racism and starts chatting into a conversation about who deserves to live well, if somebody kind of has that idea in their head anyway, or if the school or the district is kind of set up that way, these conversations are vulnerable to that, and it’s it’s tricky to kind of like defend against them or repurpose them to also say, Wait a minute. As we’re addressing these climate concerns, we also have to simultaneously address the other things that are making it hard for people to live well. And that’s not a matter of you deserve to live and you do not.

David Case  15:59

I mean, the disproportionate impact that you guys wrote about in the guide was something that was really interesting to me. And I guess the segue from that question that we had was, you know, there’s some working class people who don’t have the chance to really process their climate emotions because they don’t have the language, or they don’t have the time after working long hours. And instead, like, for those who have the time the money to do so, there’s definitely a lot of opportunities to take part in things like climate aware therapy or going to climate anxiety support groups. And I was just wondering what you guys thought about that disparity, too.

Kate Schapira  16:34

So I guess a few things, um, first of all, I kind of want to push back on the like not having the language thing. I wouldn’t go assuming that people have a number of ways of talking about things. When I talk with people at the climate anxiety counseling booth, what kind of like people come up and they say things like, I’m stressed, I’m overwhelmed, I’m tired, and then we kind of go into that a little bit.

You know, sometimes climate change and its effects and certainly its causes are a factor in that, and sometimes they’re not as much. But people have ways of talking about this that make sense for their lives, I think, generally.

And then the trick becomes like, how do people with different ways of talking about it come and talk to each other, right? So that’s, you know, I think that that’s actually something pretty cool that can happen in a classroom. Is that instead of going like, well, this is the right way to talk about it, and then this is the wrong way to talk about it, you can go like, Okay, well, how do you talk about it? Okay, well, how do you talk about it and create a shared language that works for that particular confluence of people. Um, so that’s one, one thought that I had for your question. I think the other thought that I had for your question is, if somebody is under a lot of financial strain, social strain, um, it’s quite likely that they’re not going to have the resources to talk to a professional about anything, right, not just climate change.

Carolyn McGrath  18:13

I feel like Katie covered a lot of what I would say, I think it’s important to understand that when we refer to quote climate like that refers to so many different things, and what the quote impact of quote climate is for one person is going to be very what it sounds like and looks like is going to be very different for another person, right?

And so I just was reading this morning about a study that came out at the UK, and this was looking at school age kids and how girls were identifying or with terms like eco anxiety, climate anxiety distress, whereas boys were feeling more optimistic, courageous, etc, there was even happy, so I think there are also gendered, you know, there’s there’s certainly class differences. There’s also gender differences in the way that we interpret climate you know, it’s an umbrella term, and then the ways that we’re allowed in our culture to express those concerns.

So there’s so many different factors, and I think to go back to your question, are people who are showing up in these eco distress groups primarily upper middle class folks. I don’t think that’s true for Gen Z groups that are focusing on climate distress, at least based on my understanding and knowledge, those groups seem to be more diverse.

I think, at least in my own experience with climate cafes, in terms of older groups, I think it does skew middle class. 

Kate Schapira  20:35

And I will add that in, you know, so I have a format where I set up in public, and then whoever comes comes, right? And I get a range. I would say, I mean, you can’t always know by looking at someone, like where they’re coming from, or like what their background is, but in terms of what people say about themselves as they go along, I get a big range, but I don’t at the climate anxiety counseling booth really get a lot of people who I would describe as teens or kids. I think because a teenager or a child is not necessarily going to like come up to a strange adult and start talking about their feelings.

Carolyn McGrath  21:16

Can I just add one more thing? I’m just thinking specifically about a group that’s that’s heavily impacted by climate, and that is farmers, for example. I don’t know the extent to which farmers have come to speak with you, but you know, if you think about farmers as a group, they’re being heavily impacted by climate, at least in my own narrow experience, I’ve not been in any climate emotions group where someone who’s a farmer is showing up to talk about their emotions. So again, going that’s just personal experience, but anecdotally, that seems for me to be true.

So going back to that sort of who’s, who’s identifying with these, like supports, who’s identifying with, Oh, I feel climate anxiety, and I’m going to go to an eco anxiety group and talk with other people for whom is that okay? And I don’t think that means that lots of other people outside of those groups are also not experiencing these intense emotions, as Kate indicated. And I think one of the things, and probably, you know, Rebecca Weston from Climate Psychology could talk talk more about this, but where are the gaps where we’re not meeting people’s distress because it doesn’t look like what we expect support to look like? 

Kate Schapira  22:59

So yeah, and I will also add that, because I do the climate booth at farmers markets, I do get to hear from farmers. And interestingly, I get to the farmers that I get to hear from tend to be people who both own and work the farm that they’re connected with, right? And yeah, no, they see it. They see it. They feel it, yeah. 

David Case  23:26

I mean, that’s, interesting. There’s farmers markets here. I live in New York City, and so there’s pretty big established farmers markets. But I’ve never really had that perspective, or those conversations with people who are definitely extremely impacted by climate and climate change, just to touch back a bit on the emotional aspect in terms of how it affects students. Could either of you, or both of you expand a bit on the impact of eco anxiety or climate grief, and what might be done to support those feelings in students, and maybe how approaches could differ based on age and other factors.

Carolyn McGrath  24:01

So yes, we know from studies, both international and national, that students are experiencing a range of climate emotions. If you think of it as an umbrella, it’s not just eco anxiety, it’s grief, it’s sometimes feelings of sadness, loss, anger, but sometimes it can also be positive emotions. It could be motivation. It could be a feeling of hopefulness or excitement about the future. So if you think about this range that we know people are feeling young people, they do tend to lean more towards what we would describe as negative emotions. The majority of young people do not have that sort of positive, motivated outlook.

At the same time, we also know that young people and everyone experience multiple emotions, so I and and other people may feel both sad, angry and motivated, or maybe feel grief, frustration and hopefulness, or it might change from day to day, right? And even quite young kids have feelings as well. I think you know, some people might assume that younger children, they’re too young to discuss or learn about climate change, but many of them are already impacted. They maybe have experienced increased heat. They may be, they maybe have not been able to go outside and play because of the smoke that, for example, we had on the East Coast from wildfires, their homes may have flooded, their schools may have closed. So climate change is impacting very young children as well. So this the whole purpose of our guide was just, very simply, to give educators some tools for making space for those emotions that we know from the research exist, and there’s a variety of ways of doing it.

Kate Schapira  26:37

The other day, I was doing a climate booth at a community event in a town where I’m supporting some community and climate resilience work. And as usual, most of the people who talked to me were grown people. But I also talked with Kyle, who was, I think, around eight. And Kyle said that he was he was there with his family, his mom and his stepdad, and he said that he was worried because he had heard that the ice caps were melting and he was worried that everything was going to be underwater. And I said, Oh, where did you hear that? He told me, I can’t remember where it was. I think maybe he said, I think maybe he said he heard it from someone at school, but I don’t know if that someone was his teacher or someone else, sure. And I said, Okay, well, I can tell you that the thing about everything being underwater is not true. That’s not going to happen, but definitely there’s going to be more flooding, and more things are going to be underwater. How do you feel about it, you know, what do you what do you feel about about that, when you think about it? And he said he felt worried. And I said, Well, you know, what could people do? What are some of the things that people could do? And he said, Well, maybe we could lift the roads up and the houses. And I said, Cool, do you know, like, who’s, you know, like, whose job that is? And he said, No. I said, well, but you know, that’s an engineer’s job, and that’s like a thing that you know people can can do, and you can find different ways to live with the water. Imagine that together a little bit.

And so I feel like the things that I did there that are sort of replicable to a classroom situation are find out what the people you’re talking with already think or already know or already have heard, find out how they feel about it. In retrospect, I probably should have asked him that first, before I told him anything we live and learn, then kind of help them sort out the parts of it that are, that are certain versus uncertain. It’s less about like what’s true and untrue, and more about what’s certain versus uncertain, and involve them in imagining what living with the the changes might be like. So those, I think, are things that could all be incorporated into a classroom structure, if you had some sense that people were explicitly worried, or if the place where you were teaching had undergone some noticeable and severe climate impacts that people were aware of, like if you’d been through a hurricane, if you’d been you know, if you’d been through a fire evacuation, something like that, you know what happened? Why is it happening? What have you heard about what’s happening? How are you feeling about what’s happening? Let’s think together about how to respond to this.

Carolyn McGrath  30:02

Just to amplify what Katie is saying. I think what what she’s describing, it is a process of listening, identifying what you’re hearing, making space for emotions, and then that in a natural progression, moving forward to action, or, you know, the sort of, what can we do? And, you know, going back to, you know, earlier in our discussion, talking about, you know, we’re in a really exciting time in climate education where, I mean, it’s unfortunate that there’s not as much climate education as there needs to be, but we’re in this space when people are engaging in and getting on board. And one of the things I hear quite a bit is we need to teach solutions. We need to focus on solutions, but it bypasses all of those important steps that Kate was talking about, the active listening and making space for what is, and that sort of teasing apart gently maybe what is likely versus unlikely, um, and then sort of letting that naturally evolve into a discussion about, well, what can be done?

Kate Schapira  31:35

Want to build on that, because I know that a lot of classrooms have 25 people in them, besides the teacher and maybe a couple of special needs kids, that’s a lot of people. It’s Kyle and I had a pretty good time talking, because it was one on one, trying to do that process with 25 people, some of whom didn’t have breakfast, and some of whom are maybe like putting ants in the hair of some of the other ones, and who have auditory processing difficulties. And some of you know, you know, right? Yeah, all the different ways you know that people can be with each other. You need structures for that. You need to do it in small chunks, right? 

David Case  32:27

Yeah. I mean, just going off that line of thinking of working with people individually and in terms of what they specifically know or have read or have heard. I mean, just anecdotally, a bit, it brings me to the point of like, most of what I read or hear about climate comes from the news, and because I have very limited access to climate education through my school, what information I’m getting, it seems like it’s almost more negative and less solution oriented, because it’s headlines, it’s newspaper articles. And I was wondering if either of you had experience with that, and whether you think maybe there’s a correlation between the sort of media that people consume regarding climate and whether they’re more or less likely to feel things like climate anxiety versus, you know, that positive, motivational aspect you guys addressed earlier,

Carolyn McGrath  33:18

I would just, I’m curious what sort of how are you consuming the news? Are you getting it through social media? Is it, you know? Are you reading a newspaper? Are you, you know, subscribing to newsletters? So I’m just curious, because the ways that you access news are going to impact the sort of way that the news is presented, right? So I’m just curious.

David Case  33:50

yeah. I mean, personally, as a young person like I do spend a lot of time on social media. It’s inevitable that you come across, like, certain reports with certain accounts. And if there’s something that’s you know, that I see there and I want to know more about it, I’ll just look it up and I’ll go read through whatever is being said about it. But I think social media is definitely like a really big vehicle for spreading positive information, negative information, newsworthy information, and and it’s definitely the future.

Carolyn McGrath  34:20

Absolutely so. So I didn’t want to assume before I jumped sort of onto that, but I know you know that a lot of younger people do just based on what I’ve read and my students and you know, I certainly get directed towards certain news through social media as well, right? The way that algorithms work. And, you know, I think if you’re looking at something that’s like getting lots of views, why is it getting lots of views? Is it inflaming emotions? Is it causing distress among people, is it outrageous, right? And these are things that we know get lots of clicks and likes, dislikes or some sorts of engagement.

I know that there’s quite a number of young people, Gen Z age in that Gen Z at range, who are really active on social media and who are very committed to presenting accurate information and also not presenting information in a way that’s just sort of meant to get lots of likes and clicks, even though many of them do. But I’m saying I’m thinking of Alana Woods — she’s Elena, sorry — and she’s been on Tiktok for quite a while, and she does these videos where it’s, you know, some are informational. Some of them are here’s an action that you can do. This is a protest that you can go to. This is an action you can take. Some of them are more informational.

She’s been doing it for a number of years, and I know that one of the I don’t want to speak for her, but just from what she said, one of the motivating factors for her has been the distress of people who have been just in taking climate information through social media, and have just gotten to the point that they’re so unregulated in terms of their emotions that they can’t function. And so we know that that exists. And I think you know this is some of why I love that there’s, you know, Elena and lots of young folks, Gen Z, folks on social media who are doing excellent work, and also, I think it’s it’s why it’s really important that kids hear about this from trusted adults in schools, and in that vacuum of not enough climate education or not enough good climate, not information. Education, not enough good climate education. Kids are going to seek that information out on their own. So I’m not sure if that answers your question.

Kate Schapira  37:36

I have a follow up question for you, David, when you watch or listen to news climate news, or when you read up on something that you saw on social media, how do you feel?

David Case  37:57

I mean, it’s it’s definitely worrying to an extent, because even if a lot of the time it’s something that you don’t tangibly feel, or that isn’t directly impacting you, it has this sort of impending feel to it, and that, like, there’s going to be more and it’s going to be more widespread. And so definitely, like, there’s an element of worry for me, because it just feels like these things also keep happening. And there’s, I mean, I’d say worry is the first emotion that definitely comes to mind. And like reading the guide and thinking about positive, positive emotion and, like, motivation, I think that’s definitely something that I do realize is present, and it is motivating to think, you know, I have the power to be able to actively contribute to a change and be able to work towards a future that isn’t like, isn’t this, but I think the very first thing that props up is definitely worry.

Kate Schapira  38:59

Thanks. Do you talk to people about it?

David Case  39:05

I don’t really, I mean, like, if it’s something where, when we have guest speakers, like at my school, it’s definitely something that, like, fuels discussion, like afterward, like running the auditorium, or leaving, like it’s time to talk about it but I don’t spend as much time as maybe I’d like to actually talking about climate and climate change, and it’s always like when people do talk about it, almost is also laced with this negative connotation of, oh, did you hear about this or that? And it’s definitely something that is brought about negatively.

Kate Schapira  39:42

Yeah. One of the things that I kind of like to think about is like, if there’s if there is a gap between kind of like, what you want to do and what you are doing, whether that’s like talking about this with people, or finding some way of taking action, or whatever it might be like, What are the obstacles like, you know, let’s take them seriously. Let’s and you don’t have to answer that right now, but just thinking about, like, you know, is there something that’s kind of in between? Like, we had this speaker come and talk about this thing, and now I’m going to have a conversation with my friend about it? Is it like, I don’t want to get into the negativity of it, or is it something else? And again, you don’t have to answer that right this second, but I ask about it because I think it is something that also it’s probably not just you right, that you know that has that gap, and teachers as well as people who are learning in school, as well as drug people in other contexts. You know, may also be experiencing that gap. And one of the things that we were interested in with the guide is, how do you get across that gap? 

Carolyn McGrath  40:56

I would just also add that, you know, in hearing your experience of, you know, consuming media, taking this information in, and the emotional experience that comes with that that I don’t think that we do a very good job as teachers of kind of teaching students about, like the emotional landscape, you know, for lack of better expression. And one of the simplest things teachers could do is explicitly teach about climate emotions. This is one of the things that’s a great relief for people, because we feel so isolated in our experiences, right? And it sounded to me at least, who weren’t in your mouth, but there was the element of like, worry, but also maybe sort of not knowing what to do with that. Yeah. I mean,

David Case  42:08

That’s something interesting, because even in terms of this whole like naming it, like climate emotions, that’s something that, even though I’ve felt them before, I wasn’t really giving a name to it. I hadn’t really heard of the idea of climate emotions as like on a greater scale, and so definitely informed about that can be a great step forward. 

Carolyn McGrath  42:28

And of course, there’s also the, I don’t know if you’re familiar with this, this is something any cabinet did with the climate mental health network is based on having peakless research. It’s a climate emotions wheel, which essentially is psychologists and therapists have used emotions wheels, but this is specific to climate change, and often even with adults, sometimes it’s really helpful to just have names associated with and to be able to go, oh, yeah, I do feel that too, and to just be able to identify the things that culturally we don’t have a lot of space to talk about this stuff.

David Case  43:13

Something else that was interesting to me was the guide section about integrating indigenous perspectives. And I was wondering, what are some ways might be in which you’ve seen it being done, or what you might think the most effective way of doing this is

Carolyn McGrath  43:29

okay? So I’m thinking about some of the classes that I teach. I teach a class called World arts, and one of the things that I’ve been doing in that class is integrating first person indigenous perspectives, because so if we’re looking at art from indigenous cultures across the world, one of the main pressures and things that are affecting people is climate change and biodiversity loss as well. And I think, you know, I teach students in a suburban high school, and I think this is not necessarily their experience, so it’s really important for them to hear firsthand, not only about the struggles that indigenous people are facing in North America, for example, but across the world, to understand those struggles, and then also To understand the resistance that’s being put up. We know that indigenous people are great protectors of biodiversity across the world, and are also on there. Are on the front lines of climate change and biodiversity loss, but they are also on the front lines of fighting it as well, and so understanding that, and understanding the ways that we can support and uplift them, even if we’re not into from indigenous communities ourselves. I’m I know that there’s in terms of in New Jersey, there’s some early partnerships with native groups in New Jersey. I know that Princeton. I’m close to Princeton University has been working with the Muncie sisters, three sisters farm, and they’re doing a program I have to give website is called, it’s called the Seed Farm, and honestly, it’s, it’s something that I just learned about in this past year, but I think it’s partnerships like that. We have educational institutions partnering with indigenous groups, and bringing that so that partnership can enhance both, so the huge, wealthy institution like Princeton that can bring those resources and support to indigenous groups in New Jersey and the indigenous groups can, can bring forth their knowledge and wisdom as well. I just wanted to ask you, is that any of the sort of big picture stuff in terms of impacts on indigenous peoples or indigenous resistance, is that something that you’ve learned about at school?

David Case  46:44

Not? It’s not at school, really? No, it’s. It’s definitely a topic that doesn’t get very much attention, and it’s unfortunate that said. I’m just wondering if either of you have anything else you want to ask me, you want to add and about your guide, just in general you want to mention and if or if not. Thank you both very much for taking the time and getting on the call and having this discussion.

Carolyn McGrath  47:13

So I do have actually one last question for you, please time so you read the guide. Did we miss anything big? Is there anything that you as I mean, we partnered with, with young folks. We got, we had several young folks who reviewed that, that gave us feedback. But I’m always very curious to hear how it lives on. You know, we’re educators, but currently inside for you as a student, I

David Case  47:46

mean, it seemed pretty comprehensive to me. I wouldn’t like say, Oh, this was missing. This was that was not their thing. Um, something interesting. I thought I found was, like, the sort of next steps that I take in terms of, like, what to do once you’re kind of a bit more in touch with your climate emotions, or like what groups you might want to join, and like that sort of action that you can take as an individual. But I wouldn’t like go out of my way and say, oh, you know, this was missing from your guy.

Kate Schapira  48:18

I guess a thought about that that’s maybe also kind of connected to the to the last thing that I would want to say is a lot of the answers to those questions, as well as to, I think, to the questions of how schools that don’t have a majority indigenous population of teachers or students can work the reality the past and present realities of knowledge of indigenous people into their schools is it depends on where you are. A lot of it depends on where you are. If my I mean, this is partly my own bias. My own bias needs to lead me to kind of work locally and to investigate opportunities that are on the ground. But part of the reason for that, and I think this is especially important if you’re working with younger, like much younger people, who kind of need to see results in their own space, in real time for something to be meaningful to them.

Kate Schapira  49:29

The next step is to look around. The next step is to say, what’s going on where I live, and what kind of contribution could I make? But adding to that is this question of where, where is this happening? Where I live? Somebody who lives in in the Permian Basin in Texas, right? Or somebody who’s teaching the class there is going to answer that question a little bit differently than somebody who’s living in, oh gosh, rural Tennessee, or somebody who’s living in New York City as you are. But those questions, like, who is already out there doing something that I could join and contribute to, there are a lot of answers to that question, I think, in city and so then those other questions of what brings me joy, and what am I good at, or what do I want to get good at? Can really come into play? You find some answers, or you, or anyone really find some answers to that? Yeah, thanks.

David Case  50:36

All right. Well, thank you both again, very much, and it’s been a pleasure.

Kate Schapira  50:41

Great questions. Thank you.

Carolyn McGrath

Thank you so much. This was so awesome.

David Case  50:47

Yeah, thanks. Thanks for listening to Bridging the Carbon Gap.

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