What do children understand about a changing climate, and how does that understanding take root when it is tied to the place they call home?

In this community conversation, Ayça Fackler will share how fourth-grade students in New Orleans made sense of climate change-related water issues through a place-based unit centered on Lake Pontchartrain. Rather than treating climate science as something abstract or far away, students explored it as something tied directly to their own neighborhoods and daily lives.

Their responses revealed how science learning connected with their lived experiences, emotions, sense of care and feelings of responsibility toward their community. Their work offers a window into how young people process and make meaning of a changing world close to home.