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NJ Climate Week
Where New Jersey teachers can start with climate learning: standards context, lesson sources, and local field-trip ideas.
An original orientation guide for teachers.
New Jersey incorporated climate change across its K-12 student learning standards, so climate learning belongs in science, social studies, arts, and career readiness, not just one unit.
This starter kit points teachers to the state's climate education resources, suggests local program types that work as field trips (watershed walks, shore science programs, repair cafés), and explains how to bring a guest speaker into class through this platform's partner network.
Yes. New Jersey incorporated climate change across its K-12 student learning standards, so climate content appears across subjects including science, social studies, arts, and career readiness rather than only in science.
Start with the New Jersey Department of Education's standards documentation for the requirement itself, then draw lessons from the NJ Climate Change Resource Center at Rutgers and from Sustainable Jersey for Schools, both of which produce New Jersey specific material.
The Classroom Climate Starter Kit is an original orientation guide published by NJ Climate Week for New Jersey teachers beginning climate instruction. It covers standards context, where to find lessons, and local field-trip ideas.
Because New Jersey incorporated climate change across its K-12 learning standards, climate content belongs in science, social studies, arts, and career readiness. Treating it as a single science unit understates what the standards ask for.
Local programme types that work well include watershed walks, shore science programmes, and repair cafés. They connect classroom material to a place students already know, which is usually what makes the content stick.
The Classroom Climate Starter Kit explains how to reach a guest speaker through this platform's partner network. Teachers can also approach organisations listed in the NJ Climate Library directly.
Yes. The Classroom Climate Starter Kit is published by NJ Climate Week and is free for teachers to use.
The kit is written against New Jersey's K-12 student learning standards, so it is relevant across grade levels. The specific lesson sources it points to are organised by grade band on the publishers' own sites.
No. Because New Jersey's standards place climate content across subjects, much of it is taught by teachers outside science. The starter kit exists to give a non-specialist a defensible place to begin.
Sustainable Jersey runs a separate certification programme and grant track for school districts. It is the usual route for a New Jersey school looking to fund or formalise climate work.