My students have (climate) opinions. 📝

Their published opeds. And a bit about my communications class at Bowdoin College.

Trapper Keepers and TI-83s and gel pens and awkwardly effortful outfits and maybe I’ll be cooler this year... ah, it’s all on the September breeze.

As I get in the back-to-school spirit, I’m thinking about updating the syllabus for my Climate Communications course at Bowdoin College. For the curious, here’s an article about the course in the school magazine. And if you opened this newsletter hoping for a limerick about greenwashing, well, that’s the link for you.

Last spring, because the timing seemed to necessitate it, we ended up focusing the whole first class on the language used in Trump’s early executive orders on climate — the declaring of an “energy emergency,” the push to “unleash” fossil fuels, the termination of environmental justice programs. 🥴 The word choices, the framing, the (mis)use of science, so much to unpack.

Who knows what the world will be like when I teach it again this spring, what moment I will try to meet. But one thing that won’t change is the core assignments of writing an oped about a climate topic. I teach the students about ledes and hooks and kickers, crafting a compelling argument tied to the news cycle, finding topics they can most credibly weigh in on, and coming up with catchy titles. Fundamentally, it’s a lesson about participating in the public discourse in nuanced and meaningful ways, and how their voices matter.

Then I explain how to pitch an oped to a newspaper, and offer the students extra credit if they go for it and get theirs published. For the two years I’ve taught the class, every student who has submitted an oped for publication has had theirs published 🌟 — a lesson in itself about how accessible this format can be. And then... we discuss the comments those students received and how to process feedback. 🥴

Before I go any further: Shoutout to The Oped Project (where I was a fellow back in 2018, and whose mission is “to change who writes history”) and shoutout to my oped coach there Chloe Angyal (🦒), for teaching me so much of what I’ve passed along to my own students. (We love a “to be sure” pre-emptive rebuttal.) There are great resources on their website for shaping your own oped, just sayin’...

In this time of intense socio-political polarization, one way to break through (maybe?) is to focus on practical solutions to local issues. Perhaps try publishing your perspective in your local paper. As my student Zoe Storonov found out with her oped in the Anchorage Daily News (her hometown paper) on Trump, NOAA, and fishing, opeds can spark valuable conversations across political divides. And goodness do we need more of those.

So, without further ado, here are the opeds published by students in my spring 2025 class. (Click the images to read.) Am I proud of them? Yes, big time.

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Okay, you scrolled down here, but did you also click through and read at least one of these?? You really should. They are VERY GOOD! And maybe share them:

In other news, we’re gearing up for a new season of the What If We Get It Right? podcast. 🎙️ First episode coming your way next week. Get stoked.

Happy September, good humans. Stay focused on solutions.