New Jersey requires climate change education. A year in, here's how it's going
Evelyn Lansing, a senior at Hopewell Valley Central High School in Pennington, N.J., brushed purple glaze onto her clay tile as the school year came to an end in June.
Lansing and her classmates had spent weeks researching the impacts of human-caused climate change on their communities and their own lives. Their bas-relief tiles and the three-dimensional images sculpted onto them represented something each of them learned.
Lansing's tile featured a blueberry branch – a nod to the rich agricultural heritage of New Jersey, which has earned it the nickname "the garden state."
"A lot of those things that we are used to seeing aren't going to be able to be grown here with the continuing climate change," said Lansing, who comes from a family that grows their own food.
New Jersey – a state with roughly 130-miles of coastline – is already confronting multiple climate realities, from more frequent flooding and extreme heat to air pollution from wildfire smoke in Canada.
In New Jersey classrooms, students are facing these realities head on. In 2020, the state became the first in the in K-12 public schools.
