Building Climate Literacy with Children’s Literature and Media
with Marek Oziewicz and Nick Kleese
In this four-week program, teacher educators Marek Oziewicz and Nick Kleese will guide you to discover the power of children’s stories and media for ushering in an ecological civilization. You’ll engage with a variety of stories and learn about types of environmental literature(s). You’ll watch several films (as homework) and participate in discussions about how stories model climate literacy practices and lifestyles. You will also explore climate literacy as a broader competence that includes climate science but focuses primarily on developing attitudes and values aligned with how we should live to respect our planetary home.
This program is open to anyone interested in sharing transformational children’s stories with their families and friends. It will help you appreciate why stories for young people—books, films, and other narrative media—are the best technology for the social transformation our planet needs and why sharing insights about these stories is a necessary path toward building an ecological civilization.
Marek Oziewicz is a Polish Minnesotan author, climate activist, and scholar of children’s literature. Marek is the Sidney and Marguerite Henry Professor of Children’s and Young Adult Literature at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and the Founder of Climate Lit: an online resource hub for teaching climate literacy with children’s books and media. His recent publications include a special issue of The Lion and the Unicorn on Children’s Literature and Climate Change (co-edited with Lara Saguisag), and a collection Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene: Imagining Futures and Dreaming Hope in Literature and Media (coedited with Brian Attabery and Tereza Dedinová).
Nick Kleese is an Iowa farm kid turned literacy educator. Nick is currently a Lecturer in the Department of Writing Studies at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Editor at
Climate Lit, Co-Founder of
KidLitLab!, and an inaugural member of the
Whippoorwill YA Award: an award recognizing rural representation in young adult literature. He has taught middle school and high school English, undergraduate children’s literature courses, and outdoor immersion experiences for kindergarteners.