This op-ed was co-written by two of the youth who helped develop the curriculum, Sophia and Katinka, and is featured in Teen Vogue!
[Image Description: The image shows a promotional graphic for Global Nomads Group featuring a teal background with the organization’s logo in the upper left corner. At the center, a hand with a medium-brown skin tone is holding a smartphone displaying a Teen Vogue article titled “Climate Change Will Be Taught in California Middle Schools, Thanks to Our Curriculum.” The byline credits two student co-authors, Sophia Bishop and Katrina Lennemann, with the date January 15, 2025. The article preview highlights the addition of a youth-designed climate change curriculum for seventh graders in California, emphasizing its focus on understanding the impacts of climate change and exploring actionable solutions. Below the smartphone, an orange banner labeled “Nomad Update” is shown, followed by the headline: “Global Nomads Brings Youth-Designed Climate Curriculum to California Schools!” A prompt at the bottom encourages readers to “Read more on teenvogue.com.” End of image description.]
California’s Central Valley, a crucial agricultural hub for the entire world, is sinking — and young people living there are about to learn why. Soon, seventh graders across California will have access to a curricular unit that will help them understand how climate change is impacting the state and explore what can be done about it. This new unit is not a typical doom-and-gloom story of environmental disaster, however; it was designed by a group of young people from 19 countries across four continents for our California peers to learn about climate change, environmental justice, and what actions young people can take.
As college students (one from Minas Gerais, Brazil, the other from California), we were excited to be part of the global youth team designing this curriculum. Our generation has grown up knowing that our planet is suffering under the intense duress of climate change. Terms like “forest fire,” “sea level rise,” and “climate risk” have been familiar to us since we were very young. We are from different countries and cultures, yet we share a common concern about how to tackle our inherited climate crisis because it impacts us all.
Global Nomads Group, a nonprofit organization that connects youth across the world to collaboratively create curricular content on social issues, provided us the opportunity, training, and support to work with global peers on this youth-designed environmental justice curriculum. After being field-tested and reviewed by multiple educators in California, it will now be used in California schools.
