The FOCUS! Teacher’s Climate Change Collaborative is an immersive, learning experience involving British Columbia secondary school teachers and resource guests who will develop an enhanced understanding of climate change topics for the classroom.  The 5-day Focus! Teacher’s Climate Change Collaborative aims to achieve the following goals:

• create innovative pedagogical strategies that foster a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) approach in the classroom;
• empower teachers to share their enthusiasm, knowledge and inspiration for new school-wide initiatives; and,
• develop a community of like-minded colleagues to seek reflective feedback on student learning activities, awareness and action.

If you are a British Columbia secondary school teacher (Grade 8-12) who is:

• passionate about teaching and learning;
• experimental with your pedagogical approaches;
• excited by multidisciplinary learning modules;
• creative in delivering climate change content;
• curious about what others are doing;
• wanting to deepen your own knowledge about climate change;
• inspired by the innovations and actions of others;
• reflective about the opportunities for, and challenges presented by, teaching climate change content;
• driven to empower student learning; and,
• willing to immerse in a week-long collaborative design process,

we would love you to apply to participate in the pilot FOCUS! Teacher’s Climate Change Collaborative.

Teachers in both BC public and independent school systems are eligible to apply.

Due to the COVID 19 pandemic, the 2021 FOCUS! Teacher’s Climate Change Collaborative will be offered by Zoom.

To maximize learning and combat Zoom fatigue, we will be using a variety of learning and engagement formats during the immersive. These are:

• Advance Sessions (1,2,3): Designed to build a collaboration community. Highly interactive and activity-based ZOOM meetings.
• Resource Guide(s) & Shared Learning:  Highly interactive, expanded learning on a climate change topic with resource guests who serve as learning journey guides. Discussion will focus upon several big topic questions curated by resource guests.
• Design Group Breakouts: Participants will be moved to small 3-4 person collaboration groups to design teaching units on each topic area.
• Full Group Workshop of Design Groups Ideas: Each small design group will present their ideas (5 minutes each) and the group as a whole will workshop the ideas presented.
• BC Innovation Spotlights: Presentations by some of BC’s Leading Climate Change Innovators
• CC Module Design Showcase:  Design Groups will showcase their modules in expanded format at the end of the week.
• Topic Immersion: time alone to read pre-identified materials from resource guest(s) for following day topic discussion.

Resource Guests are distinguished climate change scholars, innovators, or action leaders, and are fundamental to the success of our initiative. Resource Guests are the individuals who define and shape participants’ knowledge acquisition, spark topic curiosity, and stimulate highly interactive discussions to deepen climate change understanding: they are learning journey guides. For each topic we identify a Lead Resource Guest or Lead Resource Guest Team who identify 1-3 advance reading materials for participants, make a presentation or participate as part of a panel discussion, guide interactive topic discussion with participants, and provide feedback on participants’ newly imagined curriculum modules to ensure that core knowledge is learned by future students.

We have an amazing line-up of Resource Guests participating in this endeavour and express our sincere gratitude to all for sharing their knowledge and leading our collective learning journeys.

• The immersive collaborative takes place July 5 – July 9, 2021 (by Zoom)
• Three advance  1.5 to 2.0 hour Zoom sessions will occur as follows:
  • Early May 2021
  • End of May 2021
  • Mid June 2021

The Application Portal for the 2021 Collaborative is now closed.

If you have any other questions, please direct them to Ms. Sue Roppel, President, Kimberley Foundation, at info@kimberley-foundation.org.   We thank you for your interest in the FOCUS! Teacher’s Climate Change Collaborative.