Last month, I introduced my daughter Stephanie Weiner and discussed how we are writing a series of articles on teaching about environmental and climate change issues. Stephanie, as you recall, is a California credentialed science teacher and grew up in the foodservice industry. Combine that with her undergraduate degree in environmental studies and work with Al Gore on the Climate Reality Project, and she is the perfect person to give practical, workable, and no-cost tips on including these important subjects in your classes.

I asked Stephanie several questions and you can read her answers below.

How can high school and community college teachers include climate change and environmental issues in the classroom?
Teachers might not want to, or be allowed to, change the curriculum. What they could do is look for ways to include environmental issues in their existing lesson plans. For example, when teaching food safety stress that keeping the refrigerator doors shut not only keeps food out of the danger zone but also reduces power consumption. Or, after washing your hands make sure the faucet is turned off to save water.

Is it really that easy?
Yes, chefs and home cooks have long led the way in being environmental stewards. For example, for hundreds of years chefs would take the bones from a chicken and make stock instead of throwing them away. Meat or pig trimmings were made into sausages instead of being wasted. Home cooks for years watched food waste (and minimized costs) by reusing leftovers instead of throwing them away.

Minimize energy usage by turning off burners when not in use, closing doors when the air conditioning is running, and turning off lights when not in use. Minimize water usage by shutting off faucets when not in use. Most teachers already know about seafood sustainability, but they need to make sure they discuss it with their students. Reuse and repurpose edible food and compost things that are not. Make sure recycling happens in the class.

It really is easy and free to start. Things as simple as this will go a long way to teaching your students the right way to think about a kitchen’s environmental impacts. Start small, for example do you have compost bins? Do you look at them to see if people are wasting food and not prepping correctly? Look in your trash cans. Are there recyclable materials in them that should be in the recycling containers?

If teachers are already doing these things, what more can they do?
Teachers can help motivate students to make a difference. Encourage students to take their recycling and composting skills on school grounds (outside your classroom) and into their homes. For instance, you can emphasize minimizing food waste by teaching them to make tasty and nutritious vegetarian or vegan dishes and then have them make these dishes at home.

Why is it important that teachers – as trusted role models – teach global climate change and environmental issues?
A teacher’s role is to get students to think! They might not agree with what you are teaching, but they need to be able to learn enough to think for themselves. They cannot just blindly follow something they see on TikTok or Instagram. They shouldn’t just agree with everything their friends say. It is our job as teachers to give them information they can use to develop their thoughts and conclusions.

But, and this is big, along the way you have become a safe role model for them and trusted adult. They rely on you, respect and admire you: even if they don’t always act that way. Teachers should be available to listen to students’ concerns and talk about subjects objectively. Also, teachers need to make subjects fun and interesting. In a future article, I will show readers how to make environmental subjects interesting by using tacos and it will fit within the curriculum.

How do teachers convince their students these issues are important?
Students should know they are the ones who will be dealing with and living with these challenges. Many of the issues are already past the point of no return. For example, several fish species are no longer commercially viable because of overfishing. Other issues will get to that point in the next few years. Global climate change will reach a critical point in less than five years, which will be before most of your students have graduated from college, or married, or reached other key life milestones.

You talk about students as if they can change the world. But how do culinary teachers convince their students they can do this?
It’s already being done. Young people in their communities, states, in this country and around the world are doing this day in and day out. Greta Thunberg and Boyan Slat of the Ocean Clean Group come to mind.

Greta became famous by ditching school, which may get your students’ interest. In 2018 she was 15 and started holding up signs outside the Swedish Capitol on Fridays. She formed the Friday’s for Future movement. Her protests and those she inspired are legendary. I have even chaperoned a few of them in California. At the age of 19, she is a major name and player in the environmental and climate change movements.

Boyan Slat is one of my favorite stories I tell my students. For a science fair project when he was just 16, he designed a machine to clean plastics from the world’s oceans. It received so much attention, his science project was developed into a prototype and is now being used on multiple projects around the world. At the ripe old age of 28, the Ocean Cleanup Group is a major player working on systems to clean rivers so the trash doesn’t even reach the ocean.

Students can realize that people just like them can, and have, changed the world. It is an important lesson to think outside the box and not just look at everything like everyone else. They can have a strong impact on themselves, their communities, the United States, and the world with imagination, effort and tenacity.

What about students who doubt themselves, or are shy, or just don’t want to take on the world yet? What about them?
Those students are important and should not be marginalized. Making real change will require more than just young leaders but people of all backgrounds and socio-economic levels. Everyone needs to be included for real change to happen.

How do you do that?
Start small. The teacher as a role model of environmental stewardship will set students on the right path. As I recently learned, even the American Culinary Federation has environmental and sustainability standards it applies when certifying culinary schools. Your students will learn and apply these skills and they will become role models for others who start in the culinary world after them. But, as mentioned before, students need to start now.

Any concluding thoughts?
As I said in last month’s article, teachers of all levels can easily include climate change and environmental issues in every single lesson if they remember five points when preparing a lesson:

• What is the environmental issue being discussed or involved in the lesson?
• What are the environmental effects?
• How will your students have the ability and power to positively affect the issue?
• How best to teach each particular issue?
• Why should your students care?

Authors’ Note: As Stephanie and I worked on this article, Northern California experienced a heat wave that shattered records for heat and duration. Meanwhile across the country, areas witnessed historic flooding. There are many indications climate change was behind this. As we said last month, it doesn’t matter what your students believe. What matters is they understand the concepts and reach their conclusions based on what they learn in your class.

Adam Weiner, JD, CFSE, has been a culinary instructor in the San Francisco Bay Area for more than 17 years.