Last semester, on a Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching Research Program, one of our Gallatin High school science teachers, Steven Riccio, visited Vietnam to research how their schools teach the topic of climate change. The opportunity was provided by the Fulbright teacher exchange, which  “...provides an opportunity for K–12 educators from the United States to conduct research and engage in other professional learning experiences abroad for three to six months,” according to their website. 

During my interview with him, he explained his experiences, starting with where in Vietnam he lived for his four month program. On his trip, Riccio explained, he was based at Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam and one of its largest cities. Once there, he visited four high schools for a week each—one in the capital, and three others outside of it—to take surveys of the students' options on climate change, observe how Vietnamese teachers taught it, and try his own hand at it. But what he discovered was unexpected. 

He found that, “Climate change is taught in many different subjects in Vietnam, it's not just talked about  only in science…they will talk about it in English, in literature, in multiple different classes…,” this difference, Riccio explained to me, helped students who weren’t scientifically oriented understand the topic. It also helped students get the bigger picture of climate change since the subject was taught in multiple different classes. 

As well, this strategy seems to bear fruit. In Riccio’s surveys he discovered that even students who had no interest in climate change still understood it was important and knew that they should know something about it. 

With this new insight about how to effectively teach this complex and poorly understood issue, Riccio has decided to change how he teaches his own students going forward. His plan is to dig deeper into the topic and really get into how to fight climate change, along with shifting the focus from lectures to a more local, student driven, and project based approach. 

In these projects, he wants to, “...really connect it with stakeholders…people who will be affected by changes in the climate, here in Bozeman, in the community.” In the end, he declared, “I want the students' final product to be some kind of action—climate related action outside of the walls of this classroom.”  

And if he succeeds at teaching this tricky topic better, Riccio wishes to have this project spread to other science classes to drive engagement and inspire a new generation with the hope of climate action.