Teaching Beyond the Classroom

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Issue Area: Climate & Energy

How do you empower young minds to tackle the global challenges that will shape their generation? At the Youth Leadership Summit, held this past summer in New York City, the UN Foundation’s The People Speak program illustrated how bringing together youth can literally change lives— inspiring action to solve one of the greatest threats facing our world today, the global climate crisis. 

Ann-Marie Henry-Stephens, a teacher from Paul Robeson High School in Brooklyn, New York, who attended the Summit with four of her students, gives her first hand account to of how her students were inspired into action.

For me, one of the greatest joys of being a teacher is being able to look at my students and see them enjoying the process of learning.  I love the curiosity, the questions, the thinking, the wonder, and the "ah-ha" moments.  Last week, when I took six students to the United Nations Youth Leadership Summit, I saw an abundance of that joyful learning taking place.

When these students started this whole-school interdisciplinary project several months ago, they had little sense of what to expect.  They knew very little about climate change, the United Nations, and its various organizational branches.  Now, they have not only learned a lot about those areas, but they have also learned a lot about themselves and their ability to participate in a global arena.  They are able to make more meaningful connections between what they learned in the classroom and in their research on the issues surrounding climate change. 

Through their participation in presentations, panel discussions, and workshops, they have developed a certain confidence that no classroom experience could have given them, and even more importantly, they have developed a greater sense of their responsibilities as citizens of this planet.  All of these students have already volunteered to take part in upcoming projects and have indicated that next time they want to go beyond the boundaries of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, both literally and metaphorically.

For these six students, this experience has not only been a memorable one, but it is one that has already launched a thousand dreams and ambitions.

It will take action from all of us to tackle the climate challenge, but together, with leadership from our youngest, we can solve it. 

For more information, please go to www.ThePeopleSpeak.org.

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