Lesson 1: Find Your Entry Point

Lesson 1

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Learning Outcomes

Students will:

Identify causes and effects of climate change.

Describe important climate change terms and concepts.

Explore a range of storytelling techniques and examples of successful CIC projects.

Consider the impact climate change has had on them, their families, and their communities.

Identify students’ relationships with the land, local communities, and their passions.

What is the climate?

What does climate change mean to you?

How do you feel about the role you play in our changing climate?

How can you tie your passions and skill sets into addressing climate change at a local level?

What tools do you have at your disposal to help tell your story effectively?

Before starting this lesson, you will want to give learners an overview of the workbook and the showcase.

Supplemental Resources:

Friendly Guide to Climate Change

- What is climate change in our National Language, Kiswahili?
- Show and discuss the video “Friendly Guide to Climate Change” (bit.ly/CAVU-Friendly-Guide) (16:52) by Henrik Kniberg.
- Follow up this video by discussing a few of the basic principles of climate change.
- What are greenhouse gases?
- What is the ozone layer?
- Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have dramatically increased since the industrial revolution due to the burning of fossil fuels.
- Increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere lead to higher global temperatures because they store and radiate heat back down to earth.
- Increased global temperatures have resulted in catastrophic climate change indicators like rising lake levels, worsening wildfires, aridification and drought, and many others.
- Climate change indicators are a set of parameters that scientists can use to gauge our changing climate. They can be tracked over time, providing data that indicates a change that can be directly correlated with greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere.
- Examples include rising temperatures, rising sea levels, and arctic ice and glacier melt.

Introduce Climate Advocates Voces Unidas (CAVU).
- CAVU inspires locally-led solutions to the climate crisis through visual storytelling and education programs.
Introduction:
Learners can work individually or in a group and discuss the questions below. How many parts does a story have? A beginning, a middle and an end. How do you share your stories? (ex. journaling, dance, fashion, beading, poetry, painting)
- What does storytelling look like in your family? Your communities?
- How are stories passed from one generation to the next?
- What kind of stories make an impact on you and your world?
- What makes a good story to you?
- What time are stories told at your home and in your community?
Storytelling Video Examples (pick and choose the videos best suited to your classroom):
- With respect to globalising our education we are giving the learners the following examples from around the world because climate change is a global crisis.
- A High Schooler’s Guide to Solar Thermal Energy (bit.ly/CAVU-Storytelling) (4:00), 2023 CIC Best Storytelling Prize
- Wild our World: (bit.ly/CAVU-Creative) (4:00), 2023 Most Creative and Engaging Project Elementary School
- Story of a Flood (bit.ly/CAVU-Flood) (3:50)
Discussion prompts:
- What caught your attention most in these 2 videos?
- Could you see yourself telling a story about climate resilience in a new way after watching any of these videos?
- What did you notice that was similar in these approaches to storytelling?
- What was different?
- What would you add if someone asked you what makes an impactful story?

Ideally, learners will begin to develop their project by identifying where they want to focus. To help them identify their path, we encourage learners to contemplate both how climate change impacts their life, environment, and community now and to consider the historical implications in and of communities they live in.

Freewriting Exercise

Ask students to think about the following:
- Stories from their lifetime
- Stories their family passes down
- Stories they hear from adults/elders in the community
- Stories shared within their culture
Select a few of the follow questions as prompts for their freewrite:
- What are you passionate about?
- What are you good at?
- What are some elements in your own life that connect you to the land, and if/how that has changed over time?
- What does ‘land relations’ mean to you?
- In what ways do you want to be responsible or in relationship to the land?
- In what ways are you in meaningful relationship with the land?
- Can you better understand your role in climate change work by understanding how your family and/or Ancestors were impacted?
- What is your relationship with the original peoples of this land?
- How might this inform your understanding(s) of the problems? Of the solutions? Who should be centered?
- How can you connect your histories, passions, and skills to engage in climate work?

Educator’s Note: Work with learners to brainstorm how their passions and interests might work together to create a solution that is meaningful for them.