TCNJ

7 Prairie SPRING 2023 PETER MURPHY TCNJ faculty give a voice to what New Jersey's students will learn. The standard- bearers New Jersey repeatedly ranks as a top state for education. And now it seems to be setting the pace for new standards, too. It is the first state in the nation to create specific learning goals for climate change education in the earliest grades, information literacy, and Asian American Pacific Islander awareness. Behind the scenes, TCNJ faculty and a librarian brought their expertise and passion to help get these standards on the books. Here's how they are influencing New Jersey's K–12 school students. The content connector Lauren Madden, education professor "Here in New Jersey, the effects we see of climate change are pretty magnified compared to a lot of other places geographically," says Madden. "There are teachers that I've worked with in Asbury Park, for example, who teach classes that include multiple students who have lost homes in storms." So when New Jersey became the first state to adopt learning standards for climate change in all grade levels and subject areas in 2020, Madden was eager to help teachers across the state implement lessons that would satisfy the standards when they went into effect last fall. "It's somewhat easy to teach about climate change during science lessons," says Cari Gallagher MEd '03, a third-grade teacher at Lawrenceville Elementary School. "But the new standards call for an interdisciplinary approach. How can we bring it in through other subject areas?" Madden is no stranger to answering such questions about K–12 standards. Since 2013, when the state adopted the Next Generation Science Standards that included climate change concepts at the middle and high school levels, Madden has been a leader in demonstrating ways to incorporate them into lesson plans. That includes training TCNJ's pre-service teachers so they are ready from the start to address these issues in their future classrooms. For these newest standards, Madden reviewed the science content for the New Jersey Department of Education and is now making sure teachers have easy access to age-appropriate materials. "There was some concern that teaching cli- mate change to our youngest learners could be scary," she says, referring to images of storm-destroyed homes or polar bears on melting ice caps. But working with Subject to Climate, an organization that compiles teacher-vetted resources into the New Jersey Climate Change Education Hub, Madden is able to direct teachers to information that is accurate, but doesn't go to doom and gloom scenarios. "Lauren is always looking to connect people," says Gallagher. "She's not only strengthening the education of TCNJ students, but forming relationships in elementary schools so that we feel confident while teaching in our classrooms."

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