Teacher: Ahmad El Baghdadi
Meet the teacherLinks
Ahmad El Baghdadi
Ahmad is a passionate mathematics educator, with an engineering background and a love for sustainability. With this background he was compelled to include climate education topics in the classrooms as it was missing from his country’s curriculum. What started as a small project in grade nine to 12 classrooms turned into a bigger program called Planet B which focuses on not only providing learners with knowledge on the topic of climate change but also preparing educators and providing them with the tools needed for them to be able to teach climate topics. In general, it is to make educators climate-ready and prepare today’s learners to become tomorrow’s leaders.
Usefull links related to the Solution
Circle Meeting
Overview
Ahmad and fellow teachers working on the Planet B project have successfully produced user-friendly climate education teaching resources for use by teachers in Lebanon. The project focuses on adding contextualised climate education learning to existing curricula and ensures that teachers are supported through training, learning materials and the development of projects. The name of the project came about as a reaction to the often quoted ‘there is no Planet B’, the team decided that climate education would be their planet B.
Theory of Change
Lebanon is currently experiencing an economic crisis which has led to the population experiencing power shortages, waste management issues and wildfires. Planet B aims to tackle these issues by ensuring that all children in Lebanon receive locally relevant quality climate education. It was identified that teachers struggle to teach climate change education due to a lack of resources and a climate education knowledge gap. Planet B aims to simplify the process by providing user-friendly resources that also comply with local curriculum requirements and providing teacher training to complement this. The children who receive this quality climate education will then go on to become leaders and climate change actors who are able to change the future of Lebanon.
Approach and Actions
Planet B works with the existing Lebanese curriculum adding climate change learning objectives to all subject area curricula. Crucially the additional curriculum material is context specific allowing students to understand their situation and therefore preparing them to have an impact in their country as well as globally. Climate change objectives that are relevant to the learners and the curricula are an essential starting point. A three pillar approach targeting teacher training, school books and projects has been used and all subject areas are targeted. Some examples of resources that have been produced are workbooks, teacher guides for different subjects and teacher training curricula.
Impact
Planet B grew from extracurricular activities that were being carried out in one school by one teacher to a programme that now has 10 climate education leaders. The programme is currently developing curricula and resources across all subjects, with some already in use in schools; and is on the way to training 75 teachers in climate change education.