Climate Wayfinding Seminar: Teaching for Climate Healing
In this six-week intensive seminar, participants look inward, look outward, and look forward to create a pedagogical practice that meets the needs of a changing world. This heart-centered learning community explores how to address the emotionality of the climate crisis, incorporate climate content and competencies across the curriculum, infuse ecological values throughout the classroom experience, and make a plan for next steps and implementation. Participants leave with a fuller understanding of their own climate engagement, a plan for supporting students in theirs, and a climate-informed teaching artifact for their teaching portfolios.
In Spring 2025, Climate Wayfinding: Teaching for Climate Healing will be facilitated by Abby Schroering from the CTL’s Graduate Student Programs and Services team. This program is offered in partnership with the All We Can Save Project.
For those enrolled in the Teaching Development Program (TDP), this seminar satisfies the Advanced Track Intensive Seminar requirement.
Apply now!
Applications for the Spring 2025 run of this seminar are being accepted through February 17. The seminar will convene on March 26. Send any questions about applying for this seminar to CTLgrads@columbia.edu.
Who
Columbia University graduate student and postdocs who are interested in. . .
- Deeping their climate engagement and incorporating it into their teaching and learning
- Discussing how to create classrooms that incubate just and sustainable futures in a community of practice
- Incorporating ecological content, competencies, and values across the curriculum
- Communicating about climate with students, peers, and future colleagues
When
Climate Wayfinding is running in Spring 2025, in person, from 10:10 am – 12:00 pm in Butler Library room 212 on six successive Wednesdays, March 26, April 2, April 9, April 16, April 23, April 30. Lunch will be available at the end of the first and last sessions.
Program Description
Are you interested in incorporating climate justice into your teaching practice? Apply for Climate Wayfinding: Teaching for Climate Healing to experiment with new pedagogical practices to meet the needs of a changing world. Throughout the six meetings and modules, we will explore how to address the emotionality of the climate crisis, incorporate climate content and competencies across the curriculum, infuse ecological values throughout the classroom experience, and make a plan for next steps and implementation. Participants will leave with a fuller understanding of their own climate engagement, a plan for supporting students in theirs, and a climate-informed teaching artifact for their teaching portfolios. In short:
- We look inward — exploring our climate emotions, core motivations, guiding values, and skills and “superpowers.”
- We look outward — exploring climate solutions, accelerators for change, and our unique contexts and communities.
- We look forward — exploring our visions of the future and creating a personalized “climate compass” and plan.
This in-person seminar is presented as a learning community in which participants engage with learning materials outside of the session, then come together as a cohort to digest and activate those materials together. Note that this seminar invites participants to share motivations and experiences that can be deeply personal, so please join with an openness to vulnerability and collective care.
Participants who attend all workshops and complete all assignments will receive a letter from the CTL certifying completion. Completion of this seminar also fulfills the Intensive Seminar requirement of the Advanced Track of the Teaching Development Program. This program is offered in partnership with the All We Can Save Project.
Sessions
Click on the toggles below to read the session descriptions. Completion of brief, online, self-directed modules are required ahead of each session.
Session 1: Opening Session
In session 1, we begin by reflecting on where we’re starting, setting goals and intentions, and planting the seeds of our community. What experiences and places have shaped your climate engagement? How can we create a community rooted in ecological values, in this seminar and in our classrooms? What changes do we already feel ready to bring to our teaching and learning, and where would we like to grow? What questions are we holding? We will get to know each other, set a community agreement, engage in reflective exercises, and consider how to apply these strategies in our teaching contexts.
Session 2: Emotions + Motivations
We start this session by looking inward to explore the emotions we bring with us to climate engagement, and the emotions that students bring to learning experiences. How can we approach our emotions, and those of our students, with care, and use them as critical grounding, guidance, and fuel for teaching and learning? We will engage in structured activities to deepen our emotional understanding of the climate crisis and continue building community as a cohort before exploring strategies to help our students shape and make sense of their experiences.
Session 4: Skills + Superpowers
This session, we’ll look inward to reflect on the skills and superpowers we can bring to climate engagement. How can we engage in this monumental project without burning out, and support our students in doing the same? Where is our power, and how can we help our students find theirs? What tools can we use and provide for our students to discern next steps in our work and development? We’ll use the lenses of authentic power and deep joy to illuminate our unique roles in the vibrant, diverse ecosystem of transformation.
Session 4: Skills + Superpowers
This session, we’ll look inward to reflect on the skills and superpowers we can bring to climate engagement. How can we engage in this monumental project without burning out, and support our students in doing the same? Where is our power, and how can we help our students find theirs? What tools can we use and provide for our students to discern next steps in our work and development? We’ll use the lenses of authentic power and deep joy to illuminate our unique roles in the vibrant, diverse ecosystem of transformation.
Session 5: Context + Community + Values
This session, we’ll look outward to consider the contexts we’re nested within and communities we’re a part of (or could be), with attention to what feels kindred to us. We’ll also look inward to explore the values that guide how we show up in spaces and relationships of teaching and learning. How can we infuse deep relationships, a sense of place, and ecological values throughout our teaching and learning? Through a series of reflective activities, we will begin to answer these questions for ourselves, and help our students to do the same.
Session 6: Vision + Compass + Plan
In our final session, we’ll look forward, surfacing visions for our climate engagement and pedagogy. We’ll synthesize all the threads of our exploration in a “compass” to guide our paths forward, plan for next steps on our journey of teaching and learning, and celebrate the work we have done and the community we have built.
Seminar Objectives
By the end of this seminar, participants will be able to . . .
- Cultivate a learning community based in generosity, equity, trust, growth, courage, and joy
- Reflect on their own climate emotions and motivations, and support their students in doing the same
- Incorporate climate content, competencies, and values across their teaching and learning work
- Identify and nurture the relationship between their various, contexts and communities, climate engagement, and pedagogy
- Create a vision and plan for their future climate engagement and pedagogy based on their interests, values, skills, and superpowers
Contact
Email CTLgrads@columbia.edu with any questions about this seminar.
The CTL is here for graduate students.
The Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning provides an array of support for graduate students in both their current and future teaching responsibilities.