Rachel Arbor

As CEO and Founder of Gaia Scholastic and the New York State Lead for Subject to Climate, I work with schools all across the country to help teachers and students connect with climate education no matter what classroom they're in. We work with everyone from kindergarten music teachers to 12th grade social studies teachers, and every one of them is having students connect with nature. By the end of our work together, students take some kind of civic action - they've hosted community cleanup events, created art installations about local endangered species using collected trash and recycling, organized clothing drives to promote sustainable consumerism, and conducted waste audits in their schools to create composting programs for their districts. I lead the Empire State Climate Education Coalition, which is composed of a number of different organizations across New York including the American Museum of Natural History and New York City Public Schools. Our goal is to support districts in implementing New York State's new requirement that all K-12 classrooms teach about climate change. I recently delivered my first keynote presentation at the Hudson Valley Youth Climate Summit. My work involves lots of traveling, and I'm trying to balance minimizing my carbon footprint with the concept of a carbon shadow - the more people you teach, the more likely they are to take climate action. I've published several peer-reviewed journal articles, written numerous articles, and recorded many podcasts about climate education.