COLUMN: Lessons on climate change come to children's entertainment

To help break the silence, This Is Planet Ed has now launched a Planet Media initiative, dedicated to encouraging creators to create more scientifically accurate and entertaining media that engages children about the causes, solutions and even opportunities offered by our changing climate.

Planet Media supported the creation of Encantos Media's new This is Cooler video series, aimed at tweens. It uses a combination of live action and animation, with snappy editing, lots of humor and positivity, to convey basic information in terms children can understand. For example, he compares greenhouse gases that trap heat to too thick a blanket that warms the planet. The series also examines green career opportunities, like a solar panel installer or sustainable fashion designer.

Jaramillo said she was inspired by successful YouTube influencers who inform while entertaining. It's super engaging, she says. This is not your typical climate education video.

Much like the tweens she spoke to, many children's media creators also mistakenly believe that climate change equals pessimism. I'm currently conducting an informal survey of people working in the children's media industry for a chapter in an upcoming book on climate change education. More than four in five respondents agree that children's media should cover climate change, its causes, impacts and solutions, in a developmentally appropriate way.

But when asked why there wasn't more coverage on the topic already, the top three answers were that the creators didn't have the basic knowledge, too scary, and too controversial. One interviewee, who works in climate change education, said: My children (aged 6 and 8) no longer want to watch nature documentaries because they always manage to describe how the Climate change threatens or kills wildlife and their ecosystems. It's too scary and they feel helpless.

Related: How school board students are leading climate action

One of the most successful creators of children's science media says that's not necessarily the case. It is important to meet children where they are. To care about the planet, you first have to love it, said Mindy Thomas, co-host of Tinkercast's Wow in the World. The science podcast for kids reaches around 600,000 unique listeners per month. And at least one episode in five touches on the environment.

Thomas and his team participated in Planet Media's recent pitch fest, an open call for more content that presents the basic facts of climate change in an age-appropriate way, as well as solutions. We wanted to use our platform to help elevate this important initiative,” said Meredith Halpern-Ranzer, co-founder of Tinkercast. Climate activism has always been something we're really passionate about.

Often, Halpern-Ranzer and her team find joy in focusing on emerging climate solutions, like a plant-based substitute for single-use plastic or white paint that can freshen up a city. Last fall, they launched Tinker Class, a National Science Foundation-funded platform for teachers to use podcasts in their elementary school classrooms as an instigator of podcast-based learning activities. (the Wow in the World team really likes puns). Around 2,000 teachers have participated so far. Likewise, This is Planet Ed has created an educational guide to reinforce the key messages that Planet Media content attempts to convey.

Ashlye Allison teaches fifth grade at a Title I elementary school in South Seattle. It is developing its own program on climate change, following the Next Generation Science Standardswho seek to improve science teaching using a three-dimensional approach.

I want this to be connected to their daily lives and what's happening in Seattle, and what can we do about it? She showed the This Is Cooler video to her students and said they found it more interesting than other videos she used in class.

Just as Jaramillo discovered, Allison said her students particularly enjoyed videos referencing solutions like solar power and electric school buses. If it's just a disaster, nothing can happen, and so I don't care. That's what my children learned from it: solutions. That's what they cited the most, is how to fix it. And I think they would be interested in more ways that people solve different problems.

This column on climate change awareness was produced by The Hechinger report, an independent, nonprofit news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Register for Newsletter Hechingers.

Related Articles