As Climate Week NYC comes to a close, it seems fitting to highlight the fact that the Illinois Climate Education Hub launched earlier this month. The hub offers a collection of resources to assist K-12 educators in IL with teaching their students about climate change.

This is a crucial new resource, both because of the existential threat of climate change, and since beginning next fall, IL K-12 public schools are required to provide climate change education. Public Act 103-0837, signed into law by Governor J. B. Pritzker in August 2024, provides that, “Beginning with the 2026-2027 school year, every public school shall provide instruction on climate change, which shall include, but not be limited to, identifying the environmental and ecological impacts of climate change on individuals and communities and evaluating solutions for addressing and mitigating the impact of climate change and shall be in alignment with State learning standards, as appropriate. The State Board of Education shall, subject to appropriation, prepare and make available multi-disciplinary instructional resources and professional learning opportunities for educators that may be used to meet the requirements of this subsection.”

An organization called SubjectToClimate led efforts to develop the Illinois Climate Education Hub. I’m proud to say I served on the advisory committee for the hub! Learn more about the hub’s development and the people and organizations involved at https://illinoisclimateeducation.org/about-IL. SubjectToClimate previously coordinated the creation of similar hubs for New Jersey, Oregon, Wisconsin, Maine, New York, Connecticut, and Michigan. The IL hub (like its sister hubs in other states) provides free, educator-vetted teaching resources, professional development opportunities, lesson plan examples, and relevant news articles for students. All resources on the hub can be used for educational purposes with proper attribution to the content provider.

In the “Teaching Materials” section of the site navigation, you can explore lesson plans and activities created by educators, teaching resources from trusted external sources, and news articles for students at differentiated reading levels for 5th-12th graders. Search parameters for lessons and resources include grade, subject, resource type, standards, providers, locations, and languages. The “Educator Support” section of the site includes professional development opportunities for teachers, teacher guides (with advice from real teachers), climate change explainers (written by educators from MIT), and guidance for school administrators. You can also suggest teaching resources and professional development opportunities to be considered for inclusion on the hub via online forms.

Teachers can register for an account on the hub at https://illinoisclimateeducation.org/register. Check it out today!

Dive Deeper

For more school-related sustainability resources, check out my recent “Back to school sustainability resources” post on the ISTC Blog.

Also on the ISTC Blog, check out this recent post I wrote on starting climate conversations. As you’ll learn in that post, research shows that a majority of people in the United States agree that climate change is happening, and that it will also harm plants, animals, and future generations of humans, but two-thirds of the population NEVER talk about climate change, even occasionally. We can’t address problems that we never discuss. In this ISTC blog post, I provide guidance on how to broach the topic with the people in your life, and reassurance that you don’t need to be an expert or too concerned that others won’t be receptive to the subject matter.