16 Comments

My heart thanks yours for this vital and hopeful approach. 👏🏼💗🙌🏽 All hearts on deck for climate justice!

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I'm so pleased that this topic is being addressed. The point about active listening strikes me as being particularly important, given that the subject of the climate crisis is so polarised. As someone interested in eco-spirituality, I know that one way of helping students as they gain awareness of the problems facing the planet is to encourage focusing on something particular, such as a nearby pond or clump of trees, and letting creativity flow through painting, writing or some other art or craft. This provides an outlet for feelings on the one hand and offers the student a chance to get into a flow state, where he or she stops fearing what will happen in the future and simply experiences his/her compassion in the moment.

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This is really exciting work, but I’m shocked that “let’s get youth outside to experience the joys and resiliency of nature” is not on your list. That for sure is the top way to counteract negative climate emotions.

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This is so important. I look forward to the compendium. My trilogy on the climate crisis, 'Katja's World Game', is designed to be used in school and university classrooms. I have found Rebecca Young's books very helpful in thinking about how to use climate crisis fiction in the classroom.

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Thank you so much! I plan to talk about this resource with my environmental education students at Warren Wilson College. I've been sharing with my students diverse stories from my book LOVE YOUR MOTHER: 50 States, 50 Stories, & 50 Women United for Climate Justice, and I'd love to develop a companion curriculum for different ages to use collective stories of climate action as an educational tool too. Thank you SO much and I look forward to the complete resource!

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Good day. No generation has been emotionally literate at such a young age. So, assign the slow rhythm of time it takes for an adolescent to ripen into early adulthood with human feeling as verb and feelings as nouns. Neuroscientists very recently discovered and named something eastern poets and natural science philosophers have known for a thousand years: humans are interdependent and interrelate with all other likewise organic and inorganic life forms from bird-bee-flower-mineral-star — an indra’s net that is whole and reflects itself and all other beings. The neuroscientists call it the interstitium — that juicy layer of nerve cells just beneath the epidermis that originates and maintains itself as the wholeness that is the human equivalent of indra’s net, as mindbodysoul. When humans understand better their wholeness and non-binary existence they will better understand their feelings or juicy layers and how these layers intra- and inter/communicate. We will have grown our awareness. Thank you,

Donna Fleischer

2.1.24

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this is great to read - I'd love to collaborate with some student leadership tools for direct action, done collaboratively to increase the number of high school students walking and cycling to school - links available!

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