Timely new classroom series to help tackle anxiety about the climate crisis

Eco-anxiety has grown exponentially in recent years, with research showing it is common among children here and around the world.

With the latest State of the Climate Report from CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) revealing Australia’s weather and climate have continued to change, with more extreme heat events, longer fire seasons, more intense heavy rainfall, and rising sea levels, young people’s fears are well founded.

While educators continue to provide outdoor education and field trips to foster nature connection, which seems, at least in the short term, to improve students’ wellbeing, research on eco-anxiety also shows that young people who feel closer to nature often experience more intense negative emotions when thinking about its continuing degradation.

In response, an innovative new educational social media series, called Stay Tuned to Our Planet (STTOP), has been produced with the aim of teaching Generation Z how to positively impact climate change and reduce their eco-anxiety.

SAE University College senior lecturer Anne Chesher and two SAE Master graduates have developed the program, which incorporates a YouTube and TikTok series, designed to help students learn both in the classroom and from home.

The expert was head-hunted to create the learning and teaching resources for the series. 

“It was really important to me to engage young teachers to work on the project because I knew that they would have a really good understanding of teenagers,” Chesher, who is also president of the Australian Screen Production, Education & Research Association (ASPERA), explains.

Kristina Chapman and Kelsey Hall, fit the bill perfectly.

“Kelsey and Christina are media studies teachers, and I knew they’d be able to understand what platforms students are going to, what the dynamics are in each of those platforms and students’ attention span,” Chesher tells EducationHQ.

Lizzy Nash is creator and EP of the project. As the mum of a teenager, she began contemplating her son’s future, the world around him and the devastating effects of climate change for the next generation, and realised that she had to be part of the solution and take action by using the skills that she had as a filmmaker.

“And so she started doing the research over three-and-a-half years, and it confirmed that teenage Australians are overwhelmed by the doom and gloom that’s impacted them through the media,” Chesher says.

“… once she’d done all her research and filmed the series, she added an impact producer to the team and, what's really interesting and what attracted me to work on the project, she had a teen advisory on board from the start who were consulted on content as they were initially developing and filming, which really steered it with a young person’s perspective.” 

Dr Anne Chesher, a senior lecturer at SAE University College and president of the Australian Screen Production, Education & Research Association (ASPERA) was recruited to create the learning and teaching resources for the series aimed at getting the online medium into the classroom.

The result is a fabulous example of how creative producers can work with the education sector to create resources that are appealing and engaging for young people, Chesher says.

“And that’s not always the case with education resources, because they are often written to the teacher, so to speak, whereas this one speaks to the student and it’s backed up by the resources that we created.

“It’s also curriculum relevant. Our Curriculum Specialist, Sam Ozergun did the ACARA mapping, so it ticks all the boxes for staying on point with the curriculum, and at the same time it’s almost like a fun activity that kids can do and learn as they go.””

STTOP includes 28 five-minute episodes packed with information and resources on everything from switching off devices when not in use to save energy, to worm farms, bee hotels, composting, and more.

Hosted by YouTube personality Mathew McKenna and created by Australian production company The Feds, as part of the Documentary Australia Environmental Accelerator program, episodes include experts as rich and varied as presenter and comedian Dan Ilic, Wiradjuri astrophysicist Dr Kirsten Banks, artist Bean Bowden, biologist Dr Jodi Rowley and recycling expert and founder of eco-friendly marketplace Banish, Lottie Dalziel.

“Hannah Maloney from Gardening Australia is a personality people will recognise,” Chesher says.

“She’s a permaculture educator, author and designer, but she’s got a style that young people can relate to, as do all of the other presenters as well.”

While the project is made for classroom interaction, its main channel is YouTube, with shorter content available on TikTok, allowing young people to engage with the series on their own terms.

“Without a doubt, the research is showing that students become apathetic when they become overwhelmed,” Chesher explains.

“The essential ingredient of STTOP is that it’s bite-size, it’s accessible, it’s quickly relatable, it’s positive, and it’s inclusive in the way that a student can do it by themselves, which is part of what we did.

“We created activities that a student could do themselves at home on the weekend, on a Saturday afternoon, or they could do it in the classroom individually or as a group led by the teacher.

“And there’s no barrier. We didn’t put up a barrier with platform, and we didn’t put up any barrier with it being kind of a haughty educational project. It’s almost like a place that they can apply their curiosity and play.”

Critically, for teachers weighed under with workload pressures, admin and more, the program is easy for them to roll out in their classrooms.

“I’ve been on the board at ScreenRights, and we learned through research that was done there that 70 per cent of Australian teachers, because of that time-poor situation, are defaulting directly to YouTube.

“So there’s a concern around that because YouTube is largely populated with American and European UK content.

“What Lizzy and the team at STTOP realised was that if they went to the place where teachers and students were already going, then they’d be able to provide an accessible Australian voice, with no paywall in front of it.”

Endorsed by Orygen, Headspace, University of Melbourne, Planet Ark, Environmental Education NSW, Parents for Climate, Conservation Volunteers Australia and Surfers for Climate, STTOP is being piloted in classrooms in the first semester of this year, with the education program launching on June 5. To register your interest, click here for updates.

For more information on STTOP: Stay Tuned to Our Planet, click here or watch the series on YouTube here and TikTok here.