Building Sustainability into the German Program: “Climate Stories” in Gen-Ed German and the Advanced Curriculum

Abstract

This article reports on an initiative to enrich the German curriculum at all levels via “Climate Stories,” a student-centered learning project that capitalizes on the encouraging strides being made in German-speaking countries to combat global climate change. Students identify a real-life “climate story” in the news in German that features a solution or important insight into an environmental issue. After digesting three articles, students create original artwork (visual art, collage, podcast, play) which they present to their peers. The project makes valuable cross-disciplinary connections to popular sustainability courses and is articulated vertically in the German curriculum, starting in general education and moving upward to each level within the German major. It also connects with an initiative in climate-focused pedagogy in the sustainability community that is active on campus and nationally. German students share their art and the “stories” behind the art, contributing insights and expertise from the German-speaking world to undergraduates who cannot access these stories themselves in German. In the general education curriculum, the project provides evidence of global learning. In the upper-level curriculum, projects are more complex, with oral and written components increasing in difficulty as students' proficiency grows.