Teachers at the frontlines of climate change

Climate change is reshaping the realities of teaching and learning. Across eastern and southern Africa, educators are not only teaching students about rising temperatures, drought, and flooding—they are responding to these challenges in their classrooms every day. Teachers are supporting students whose families have lost crops to drought, adapting lessons during extreme heat, and continuing instruction after floods and other climate-related disasters disrupt schools. Yet they are doing so with limited support. Many teachers report a lack of textbooks, internet access, and basic education technologies, as well as insufficient training on climate education and heavy workloads that leave little time to develop new materials. In some communities, schools are converted into disaster relief centers following climate emergencies, while teachers themselves face health risks from prolonged exposure to extreme weather.

On August 6, the Center for Universal Education at Brookings hosted a discussion on how teachers are delivering climate education in resource-constrained and climate-affected contexts. The webinar convened researchers and education practitioners from Kenya, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe to explore what is actually working in classrooms today, what teachers still need, and what a regional community of practice among educators could look like.