Tiffany Boyd is known for her work in the area of climate action. Inspired by Greta Thunberg in 2019, Tiffany started Classrooms for Climate Action to connect teachers and students with local climate action. After growing up in Boulder, Colorado Tiffany taught in the Boulder Valley School District for 27 years and understands the unique challenges facing educators today. Throughout her teaching career, she has been passionate about getting students civically engaged and has focused that attention on climate. Some of Classrooms for Climate Action’s units of study have focused on: Decarbonization, Electric school buses, Soil health, Protecting Pollinators, Flood mitigation, Fire mitigation, CO animals and migration, Tree planting, Plastic reduction, and raising money for an Anti-racism and Climate Justice mural. Tiffany Boyd is the Executive Director of Classrooms for Climate Action which is located in Boulder County, Colorado. You can connect with Tiffany at https://classroomsforclimateaction.org/.
You can find C4CA's public documents here.
To cite this episode:
Persohn, L. (Host). (2024, Apr 9). A conversation with Tiffany Boyd (Season 4, No. 10) [Audio podcast episode]. In Classroom Caffeine Podcast series. https://www.classroomcaffeine.com/guests. DOI: 10.5240/F6FB-67D9-0477-A54E-B522-7
Connect with Classroom Caffeine at www.classroomcaffeine.com or on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Tiffany Boyd is known for her work in the area of climate action. Inspired by Greta Thunberg in 2019, Tiffany started Classrooms for Climate Action to connect teachers and students with local climate action. After growing up in Boulder, Colorado Tiffany taught in the Boulder Valley School District for 27 years and understands the unique challenges facing educators today. Throughout her teaching career, she has been passionate about getting students civically engaged and has focused that attention on climate. Some of Classrooms for Climate Action’s units of study have focused on: Decarbonization, Electric school buses, Soil health, Protecting Pollinators, Flood mitigation, Fire mitigation, CO animals and migration, Tree planting, Plastic reduction, and raising money for an Anti-racism and Climate Justice mural. Tiffany Boyd is the Executive Director of Classrooms for Climate Action which is located in Boulder County, Colorado. You can connect with Tiffany at https://classroomsforclimateaction.org/.
You can find C4CA's public documents here.
To cite this episode:
Persohn, L. (Host). (2024, Apr 9). A conversation with Tiffany Boyd (Season 4, No. 10) [Audio podcast episode]. In Classroom Caffeine Podcast series. https://www.classroomcaffeine.com/guests. DOI: 10.5240/F6FB-67D9-0477-A54E-B522-7
Connect with Classroom Caffeine at www.classroomcaffeine.com or on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Education research has a problem. The work of brilliant education researchers often doesn't reach the practice of brilliant teachers. Classroom Caffeine is here to help. In each episode, I talk with a top education researcher or expert educator about what they have learned from their research and experiences.
Speaker 2:In this episode, tiffany Boyd talks to us about empowering young people, climate action and how retired teachers can support practicing teachers to develop and implement special programs. Tiffany is known for her work in the area of climate action. Inspired by Greta Thunberg, in 2019, tiffany started Classrooms for Climate Action to connect teachers and students with local climate action. Tiff Boyd is the Executive Director of Classrooms for Climate Action, which is located in Boulder County, colorado. You can connect with Tiffany at classroomsforclimateactionorg. For more information about our guest.
Speaker 1:stay tuned to the end of this episode, so pour a cup of your favorite drink and join me. Your host, lindsay Persaud for Classroom Caffeine research to energize your teaching practice. Tiff, thank you for joining me. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Thank you, lindsay. It's wonderful to be here, looking forward to our conversation.
Speaker 1:So am I. So, from your own experiences in education, will you share with us one or two moments that inform your thinking now?
Speaker 3:Sure, I feel like two of those moments happened the year after Donald Trump was elected and we had students in our school who were very worried that ICE was going to come to the school and was going to actually remove them from school, go to their homes. So that was a very terrifying time for students in our school who were Latinx and we had a club, an after-school club called Global Citizens Geography Club and that particular incident really got our club and the students in the fifth grade classroom to want to learn more about immigration, immigration policy, immigration rights, so those real world things that are affecting the kids and the families of our school. I think wanted us to dig into the background knowledge and then lead to the civic engagement and to do something about it. So that was one incident. Another incident was a fracking site that was being proposed near our community and there was a huge community meeting about what this fracking site was going to entail and a lot of the students worried about the quality of the water, the quality of the air, things they've been hearing about cracking.
Speaker 3:I live in Colorado and Colorado is on top of a lot of shale. Our state is very, very heavily cracked right now, very heavily cracked. So those two incidents in particular when you have students that are worried about their safety and about their health that, as an educator and as someone who is with kids six hours a day, it moves you to action. It moves you to giving kids a chance to feel empowered with their knowledge so that they can really embark on their own level of civic engagement and take charge of things that are happening around them their own level of civic engagement and take charge of things that are happening around them.
Speaker 1:What you've just brought to light, tiff, is something that maybe the general public may not have the best feel for, is just how quickly and how strongly policy can impact the feelings and the understandings of children, and just to see that really emotional reaction from kids, particularly when it's a topic that they're just learning about or that has just happened and sort of being in as a teacher, you're in a little bit of a triage kind of position, where they're coming to school, which for many kids we know is sort of their safe space, and they bring these real world concerns with them, and so I love the idea of empowering kids to learn as much as they can about the issues that they care about and helping them to think about how they themselves can work to take action, to make their thoughts and their feelings known to a wider audience, because in my mind, that's what education is really about.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. And inquiry-based learning and project-based learning is something that takes a lot of bandwidth of teachers and after COVID a lot of this bandwidth has been zapped. So thus was the birth of Classrooms for Climate Action to try and support teachers in the classroom to do project-based learning around climate action but to have their bandwidth and their personal capacity increase so that they could be present with their students. I mean, we all know that the mental health issues of students post-COVID have really really been on the rise and teachers are really tapped out. I was reading a scary article today from the Colorado Sun that was talking about how a recent survey of Colorado teachers said that 60% of them are thinking about leaving the field. It's so discouraging, right? It is such a hard job, it's such an important job that you know. The civic engagement aspect of education and getting kids to feel empowered, I feel like, is becoming more and more paramount so that students are leaving with the skills to advocate for themselves and their situation. So I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 1:Right, and it seems to me that so much of policy around education is taking us further and further away from student choice and student interest driven learning, research skills. You know all of those things, so I know that you've been doing quite a bit of work in that area. So it leads nicely to this next question what do you want listeners to know about your work?
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure. So I taught in the public schools for 27 years and I retired in 2019. And I retired right before COVID, so it was just dumb luck. But I was truly inspired by Greta Thunberg and the level of worldwide engagement that she was able to garner around climate action, and because we had had this club, the Global Citizens Geography Club, and because, throughout my career as a teacher, I've been very involved with empowering students through civic engagement and having a voice in the things in their community that matter to them, that this kind of transition to climate education was a natural fit. But also, you know, with a couple goals in mind A, to help teachers, because teachers' plates are so, so, so, so full. And B, to give students hope and agency.
Speaker 3:I am very frustrated when adults say, well, it's up to the kids back into the classroom to be this bridge to community resources. We all know that project based learning is amazing and it's also exhausting and it's very hard to manage when students have so many different lovely project based learning choices that they've. I'll do that. I'll do that. So, in order to make it enriching, in order to make it authentic, teachers need help. So climate, in particular, one of the things we really focus on is what is close by and what matters to the students in that school. The other thing that's wonderful about climate that I would love all teachers that are listening to this to know that you can integrate climate into anything you're teaching. We're trying to get this word out to all teachers, to all pre-service teachers, community members, who feel kind of frozen and helpless about what to do right now to help teachers and what to do about climate change. So this is kind of a win-win in terms of helping with both.
Speaker 3:There are lots of organizations that are doing things focused on decarbonizing local communities, focused on nature-based climate solutions flood mitigation, fire mitigation but not that many of them are involving teachers and students, and so our organization is truly this bridge to these things that are already happening in your communities. Whether it's about sea level rise or regenerative agriculture or the placement of wind turbines in your community, no matter what the issues are, there's a social science component, there's a science component, there's a civic engagement component, there's a chance for students to work on their literacy skills. I can't tell you how many students we've prepared to speak in front of city council members, in front of legislators, to speak on Zoom to decision makers. We had 60 fifth graders last week that wrote letters to the Colorado Drought Task Force about issues happening in the Colorado River Basin and then three of the students were able to present live on Zoom to the task force and share with them their priorities for conserving water and some of the indigenous perspectives that they had learned from indigenous groups that came in and talked with the students about stewardship and about water. So giving teachers the type of support that allows their students to engage in authentic, real world climate action things in their community is really what our organization is all about, and we're very invested in what's happening near us.
Speaker 3:I live in Boulder, colorado. We have a lot of issues with wildfire. We have a lot of issues with flooding. Flooding and fire are very integral. We have a unit coming up which we're really excited about with second graders and it's a social studies unit. It's called we Are Changemakers, and so it's. We Are Changemakers for Climate Solutions Act Like a Beaver, and it's all about how beavers are restoring ecosystems and are being reintroduced and the importance coexistence we need to have with beavers and the roles that beavers play in flood mitigation. So, really, climate fits everywhere and teachers need help, and so that's kind of where we're coming from, and our work with Classrooms for Climate Action is very replicable.
Speaker 3:So if you're listening to this now and you're a classroom teacher, but you have a good friend of yours that just recently retired, that is missing, being back in the classroom and has a little bandwidth, I fully believe, a that teachers are superheroes and, b that retired teachers are superheroes with time. So, as a retired teacher, I can write emails, I can make phone calls, I can set up field trips, and we've just found this amazing capacity of retired teachers to really help people in the classroom. So, and if you are a pre-service teacher, find retired teachers to really help people in the classroom. So, and if you are a pre-service teacher, find retired teachers to help you. Right, retired teachers are amazing. We have all the skills and we get a good night's sleep and we don't have to reply to parent emails, so we have a lot of time that we can help.
Speaker 3:And so I guess the thing that I back to your original question what would you like people to know? I would like people to know that what we're doing in Classrooms for Climate Action is super replicable. This can happen anywhere in the world, in the country. I talked to someone the other day from Kenya. It's about engaging people other than teachers to support teachers with the really, really important work of climate literacy and climate action, and getting kids and teachers engaged and getting their hands on learning around the action that we all need to do in our local communities. So I guess the main thing I would want people to know is this is very replicable. Even though we're doing it in our little town, you can do it wherever you live too. It's just a matter of finding some of these retired teachers that have some bandwidth to support you to get this done.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I love this message because, you know, I think we often hear that old phrase it takes a village right, and I know a lot of the teachers that I talk with now they don't really feel like they have a village.
Speaker 1:In fact, I was talking with a current teacher who's actually one of my former students within the last couple of weeks and she said it just feels like we work all alone. And so I think that you know to your point earlier, I think that that's part of why teachers leave the profession, because it can be very lonely work even though you're surrounded by people all the time. You know it's just. It can be very lonely work even though you're surrounded by people all the time. You know it's just. It's a very unusual world of work, for sure, but I love this message of getting community members, retired teachers, involved in supporting classrooms. There's that village we need. If we can welcome folks into classrooms who are looking to support and to help that, that could make such a huge difference for so many of our teachers and potentially help us to, as a society, retain some of the wonderful talent that we have in classrooms right now.
Speaker 3:I agree. I agree, and teachers really appreciate people who can walk in. They understand pedagogy, they understand age appropriate curriculum, they understand classroom management, they can jump right in Right, and so it's much, much different than having parents volunteer. And, honestly, we're doing a unit for four to six or seven weeks, for example. We come in twice a week, an hour at a time, but in the meantime we're planning guest speakers to come in, we're planning field trips, we're setting up the permission slip with the people in the office, we're trying to take things off of teachers' plates.
Speaker 3:This allows them to do very extensive project-based learning, and these are the things that keep teachers excited about teaching right. We all get energized when students are guiding their own learning, but that type of teaching takes a lot of pre-work, a lot of setup, a lot of behind-the-scenes work to make it successful so the kids can hit the ground running. It's interesting because a lot of research I've read about when teachers are tired is they talk at kids because they're tired, and facilitating kids leading their own learning takes more bandwidth Right, and so it's a little bit counterintuitive, but it takes a lot of energy to allow kids to guide their own learning. So that's a little bit about what we're trying to do with climate literacy and climate education.
Speaker 1:As someone who is currently involved in an inquiry-based learning project with about 47th graders every Friday and there's a team of three of us who are planning this it really does take a lot of bandwidth. As you said. Making the arrangements for field trips, ensuring that resources are available, sometimes pre-identifying some things that will help get kids started on their research journey, setting up the structures that will allow them to do the work all of those things. It just takes quite a bit of energy and you're right, it's not necessarily energy that classroom teachers are able to tap into with all of the other responsibilities that they have throughout a school day. Is there anything else you want listeners to know about your work, tiffany?
Speaker 3:Back to your point about teachers being siloed and teachers feeling lonely, that it's kind of hard. There are a lot of us in the teaching profession. We don't like to think that we're perfectionists, but we kind of give off this vibe of I got it, I got it. But just to let, first of all, to let retired teachers, community members, know, don't just think about how to help actually make that first call. And the other thing too, which teachers are very good at, is to ask for forgiveness instead of permission. We did not start with the school district, we did not start with the principals. We just called teacher friends of ours and said how can we help? So I think, starting small and making it realistic, we started by. There were three of us, three retired teachers. We went out for lunch, schemed a little bit about how to get started. We all retired from the same school. So we reached out to the third grade team at the school where we were teaching.
Speaker 3:Every year they teach a unit on Colorado animals. So we called them up and said hey, how about this year? We help you guys and we do Colorado animals and climate change. What can we do to help? And all the animals that they research will like what are the impacts of climate change on those animals? And we'll find all the data and all the science for you guys around it and it'll just be one of their paragraphs that you have the kids write. We'll work with the art teacher. We'll figure out a way to show climate impacts, the art that you guys do. We'll bring in the guest speakers. We'll come up with a civic engagement and a way for students to share their voices about what's important with protecting Colorado animals because of climate change. And so we found some policy and some legislation that was coming up that was, you know, really linked to the impacts of climate change on Colorado animals, having to do with some of our native trout, having to do with some of our migratory animals. And the students were able to prepare and present to some of our local congresspeople to pass some bills that were connected to protection of some of these animals in light of what was happening with climate change. And so we turned their regular, you know, third grade animal unit into something that was impactful, that was connected with their community, that was helpful for policy that needed to be passed.
Speaker 3:We really, really, really should not underestimate the power of kids' voices to make change in their community. And these are the things kids remember. They don't remember that worksheet where they colored in that Colorado bobcat. They're not going to remember that worksheet but they are going to remember talking to their legislators about you know why we need to create these animal bridges over the highway that students and teachers can do together in their community. That will fuel teachers' energies, that will keep students engaged. Yeah, I feel like it's a win-win-win-win-win.
Speaker 3:You know, retired teachers get their jam about continuing to be in the classroom, classroom teachers get help, students get help and agency and local communities get people that are working on climate change. It's just such, a such a huge topic that we really, truly need to use Jane Goodall's words of think globally and act locally, because when we think about our local building codes or we think about animal protections based on invasive species that are fueling wildfires in our area, there's just there's so many things that we can get kids involved in, and we've done this K-12, you know, we had kindergartners who were doing a unit on plants and we did trees, our superheroes, and we taught them all about photosynthesis and the kids dressed up as trees and they pulled carbon little things out of the atmosphere and they turned around and gave their friends oxygen and we talked to them about carbon sequestration and they were five years old and everything. It's just easy. It's easy for retired teachers to think about age-appropriate ways to reach kids in a way that is impactful. And elementary teachers are uniquely poised in their understanding of integrated curriculum because they really understand that things overlap.
Speaker 3:We've had a little bit of a harder time reaching middle school and high school teachers because they're a little siloed in their discipline.
Speaker 3:You know we've talked to a lot of the AP environmental science teachers in the high schools and they're like, oh, we have to get them ready for the test. We don't have time for a climate action project. And it's like what do you think your students are gonna remember? A hands-on climate action project where they're talking to their city council or memorizing stuff for their test? So I mean, I get it. The teachers feel pressure. But also this is just a really energizing thing for classroom teachers to tap into people in your community that want to help. Maybe just find one person and start small and do one unit and just you never know where it's going to grow. We have probably over 30 volunteers at this point. We've done units at every grade level. We're still a very small group but we're kind of developing this little storytelling arm where we're really wanting other communities to tap into their retired teachers and their community members that want to help. So I guess the biggest thing to share that we want people to know is you can do this in your own town.
Speaker 1:I love that and I love again the idea of that support, especially from folks who know classrooms inside and out. It definitely does make for a much easier fit to sort of just come right in and get started on things. It's a little bit different than working with an intern or working with someone in industry or even folks who are highly civically engaged, like you kind of spoke to. If you don't know pedagogy, if you don't know classroom management, if you don't really understand the standards that have to be taught, that, it can be really challenging to plug into those classrooms. But for sure you've got me thinking about all the different ways that I might be able to work in my own community to get retired teachers back to working in schools to support learning in really broad and important kinds of ways. So I appreciate that, tiff. So one more question for you, and I feel like you have certainly touched on this, but maybe there's something else you want to say. Given the challenges of today's educational climate, what message do you want teachers to hear?
Speaker 3:I think you tapped into it really well, lindsay, to let people know that the help is out there. I mean it is counterintuitive because when you're overwhelmed and when you're tired we do less in terms of connecting with others. I mean it's kind of a mental health issue too. Right, you go in when you're overwhelmed, but if you can just get that little tentacle out there to pull some retired teachers in the bandwidth that you're expanding for yourself, the capacity you're expanding for yourself, is amazing because you know there are a lot of people. There are parents who can stuff your Friday folders, there are people who can do things, but retired teachers can teach, they can come in and teach and they can help you shoulder some of this and there's zero shame in asking for help.
Speaker 3:In fact, smart people ask for help Right. No-transcript miss being with you in the schools. So I mean we all know there are some teachers that just like mic drop, walked away and never want to be back in the classroom again. But a lot of teachers really, you know it feeds them right to be back and like planning units and being with students and it is maybe a little bit of a unique group, but they're out there and you know, just find one and then it ours is just like grown organically. So I guess the big thing to say is ask for help.
Speaker 3:You know the climate crisis it's real and students deserve to have a voice in their future and you, as a classroom teacher, can be a catalyst for that voice, for pre-service teachers and for teachers to say find help. And for community members and retired teachers to say don't wait for them to ask for help. Call up your friends who are in the classroom and say, hey, you know that plant unit that we did. Or you know, I've got a great idea. I just heard on city council that they're going to do this flood mitigation. Let's see if we can get the kids out there pulling weeds or whatever it is. So call up your teacher friends. Don't ask for permission, don't go through the principal, don't go through the school district. Just call your teacher friends and do it, because that's how things get done right, just grassroots.
Speaker 1:There is so much we can accomplish through these grassroots kinds of efforts. And there's one thing you said that I want to highlight out of all of the beautiful things that you said there Actually maybe two the idea that there's zero shame in asking for help, I think is so important because really you're right, I think there is something about the personality of so many teachers where we do just say no, I got this, Even though it's one more thing. You're overwhelmed at home, you're overwhelmed at work, trying to do all of the things. We still have this inclination to go no, I got this. So I think that just that reminder that asking for help can really change so many things for us and to really help lighten that load.
Speaker 1:And the other thing you said that I just wanted to highlight, Tiff, is that classroom teachers can be a catalyst for student voice and action and kind of full circle here where we started our conversation that it's so important for kids to feel like they are heard and they're seen and that the things that they care about, that we can support them in learning more about those things and also seeing how they can be empowered to take action or to make a change, to get the message to the right people, and I love the idea of retired teachers helping us with that. So I thank you so much for your message today. I love what you're doing. I thank you so much for spending your retirement in this way, in such an impactful and important way to support the next generation of teachers, as well as our students. So thanks so much, Tiff.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Thank you so much, Lindsay. Have a great rest of your day you too.
Speaker 2:Thank you Absolutely. Thank you so much, lindsay. Have a great rest of your day. You, too, thank you. Tiffany Boyd is known for her work in the area of climate action. Inspired by Greta Thunberg, in 2019, tiffany started Classrooms for Climate Action to connect teachers and students with local climate action. After growing up in Boulder, colorado, tiffany taught in the Boulder Valley School District for 27 years. She understands the unique challenges facing educators today. Throughout her teaching career, she's been passionate about getting students civically engaged and has focused that attention on climate. Some of Classrooms for Climate Action's units of study have focused on decarbonization, electric school buses, soil health, protecting pollinators, flood mitigation, fire mitigation, colorado animals and migration, tree planting, plastic reduction and raising money for an anti-racism and climate justice mural. Tiffany Boyd is the Executive Director of Classrooms for Climate Action, which is located in Boulder County, colorado. You can connect with Tiffany at classroomsforclimateactionorg. That's C-L-A-S-S-R-O-O-M-S-F-O-R-C-L-I-M-A-T-E-A-C-T-I-O-Norg.
Speaker 1:For the good of all students. Classroom Caffeine aims to energize education, research and practice. If this show gives you things to think about, help us spread the word. Talk to your colleagues and educator friends about what you hear. You can support the show by subscribing, liking and reviewing this podcast through your podcast provider. Visit classroomcaffeinecom, where you can subscribe to receive our short monthly newsletter, the Espresso Shot. On our website, you can also learn more about each guest, find transcripts for our episodes, explore topics using our drop-down menu of tags, request an episode topic or potential guest, support our research through our listener survey or learn more about the research we're doing on our publications page. Connect with us on social media through Instagram, facebook and Twitter. We would love to hear from you. Special thanks to the Classroom Caffeine team Leah Berger, abaya Valuru, stephanie Branson and Shaba Oshfath. As always, I raise my mug to you, teachers. Thanks for joining me.