Dakota Frost teaches chemistry at a Denver public high school, though for the past three years, they've also been teaching something they never trained for: how to live on a warming planet. We meet in their classroom on a September afternoon when the air quality index has hit 157—"unhealthy," which means no outdoor activities and windows sealed shut. Through the glass, the Front Range is invisible behind a gray-brown haze from fires burning in the mountains west of Boulder.

"This used to be a once-a-summer thing," Dakota says, gesturing toward the window. "Now it's basically August through October. The kids don't even comment on it anymore."

On the whiteboard behind them, someone has drawn a surprisingly detailed periodic table with small flames doodled around the carbon element. Dakota notices me looking and laughs. "That's from my honors class. They have a sense of humor about all this."

How did a chemistry teacher end up teaching climate science?

The principal asked if I could "just handle it." Colorado adopted new science standards in 2020 that required climate change education across all grade levels¹, and our school needed someone to develop curriculum for the sophomore unit. The earth science teacher was already drowning, and I'd done some undergraduate geology, so.

I remember thinking, sure, how hard can it be? Laughs. Turns out teaching teenagers about planetary-scale crisis while their own futures are the thing at stake is... it's a specific kind of hard. I spent that first summer reading IPCC reports and having small panic attacks in my apartment.

What makes it specifically hard?

Okay, so in chemistry, I can teach molecular bonds and stoichiometry, and it's intellectually challenging but emotionally neutral, right? The electrons don't care.

But climate science is teaching kids about systems that are actively degrading while they're sitting in my classroom. And they know this. They're not stupid.

I had a student last year—bright kid, really engaged—who asked me point-blank: "Mr. Frost, should I bother applying to CU Boulder or will it be on fire by the time I graduate?"

And I had to... I mean, what do you say to that? I can't tell them their fears are unfounded because they're not. But I also can't confirm that their entire future is fucked. So I said something about how Boulder's investing in fire mitigation and they should definitely apply if they want to, and then I went home and drank half a bottle of wine.

The research says 95% of teachers think climate education is important but less than 40% feel confident teaching it², and I absolutely understand why. You're supposed to convey scientific consensus without inducing paralysis. You're supposed to acknowledge the severity without destroying hope. You're supposed to prepare them for a world that doesn't exist yet while not scaring them so badly they just check out.

It's like being asked to teach driver's ed while the brakes are failing.

How do you actually structure that curriculum?

So the state standards say we need to cover greenhouse gas effects, climate systems, human impacts, and adaptation strategies³. Which sounds straightforward until you're actually doing it.

I started with the basic physics—CO2 traps heat, here's how we know, here's the data. Very empirical, very chemistry-teacher-safe-zone.

But the kids immediately wanted to talk about what it means. Like, "Okay, but what does this mean for Denver?" "What does this mean for my family's ranch in eastern Colorado?" "What does this mean for college?"

And I realized I couldn't just teach the science in a vacuum. They needed frameworks for thinking about their actual lives.

So now the unit is structured around questions they're actually asking. Week one is the science—atmospheric chemistry, carbon cycle, feedback loops. Week two is regional impacts—drought, fire, heat, what's already changed in Colorado. Week three is adaptation and decision-making frameworks. Not "here's what you should do" but "here are the questions you need to ask yourself."

What are the questions?

Leans back, counts on fingers.

Where you live and why. What infrastructure you depend on and whether it's resilient. What your career plans are and how climate might affect those industries. How you think about risk and uncertainty. Whether you want kids and what world they'd inherit.

I have them interview their parents or grandparents about what Colorado weather used to be like. The disconnect is wild. Their grandparents talk about reliable snow from November through March, and the kids are like, "That's not a thing." We had five inches of snow total last winter. Five inches.

Then I have them look at climate projections for 2040—when they'll be in their early thirties—and write about one decision they might face. Some write about water restrictions and whether to stay in Denver. Some write about career choices in a changing economy.

One kid wrote about whether to have children, which was... trails off ...that was a heavy paper to grade.

How do you handle the emotional weight of that?

Not well, if I'm honest.

I've had students cry in class. I've had students get angry—like, really angry—about the injustice of inheriting this. I've had students shut down completely because it's too much.

The research talks about climate anxiety as a barrier to teaching⁴, and yeah, I feel that. But what I've learned is that the anxiety often comes from feeling powerless. So I try to build in agency wherever possible. We do a unit on local adaptation—visiting the city's water conservation projects, talking to people working on urban forestry, examining the new building codes for heat resilience.

I also let them see that I don't have all the answers. Like, I moved to Denver in 2019 thinking it would be more climate-stable than the coasts, and now I'm watching fire season extend and wondering if I made a mistake. I tell them that. Not to freak them out, but because I think they need to see that adults are also navigating uncertainty.

And honestly? Some of them are better at this than I am.

They've grown up with climate change as background reality. They're not shocked by it the way my generation was. They're just... pragmatic. One of my students is planning to study grid engineering because she figures that's where the jobs will be. Another wants to work in water policy. They're not paralyzed. They're adapting.

What about the political pressure? The research mentions teachers feeling pressure from parents and school boards.

Grimaces.

Yeah, that's real. I've had exactly two parent complaints in three years, both accusing me of "indoctrinating" their kids with "climate alarmism." Which is... I'm teaching basic atmospheric chemistry and showing them NOAA data⁵. This isn't ideology, it's just physics.

But I get it—climate has become this culture war thing, and some parents hear "climate change" and immediately think their kid is being turned into an activist. So I'm really careful about framing. I don't tell students what to believe about policy. I don't tell them what to do about it. I teach them the science and give them tools to make their own decisions.

The irony is that most parents are actually grateful. I've had way more parents thank me for teaching this than complain. Because they're dealing with the same questions—should we install solar, should we stay in Colorado long-term, how do we talk to our kids about this—and they appreciate that someone's giving their kids frameworks for thinking it through.

The school board has been surprisingly supportive, probably because Denver is seeing climate migration firsthand. We've had significant population influx from California and Arizona⁶, people explicitly moving here because they think Colorado is more livable. That makes climate change feel concrete, not abstract.

Do you have resources for this? The research mentions teachers lacking materials.

Laughs bitterly.

Oh, resources. So there are databases—SubjectToClimate has like 2,700 free lesson plans⁷—but they're wildly uneven in quality. Some are great. Some are clearly written by people who've never been in a classroom. And almost none are Colorado-specific, so I'm constantly adapting.

I've basically built my own curriculum by cobbling together NOAA climate data, Colorado water reports, local news about fire and drought, and whatever I can find about adaptation strategies. I spent probably 200 unpaid hours developing this unit the first year. Now I share it with other teachers in the district, because nobody should have to reinvent this wheel.

The Teachers College summer institute in New York is training teachers on climate education⁸, which is great, but I'm in Denver and I can't afford to fly to New York for a week. So mostly I'm learning by doing, which means my students are getting version 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 of this curriculum as I figure it out.

The state gave us new standards but no funding for implementation. No training, no materials, no extra planning time. Just "teach climate change" and good luck.

It's very on-brand for education.

What's changed in how you think about this work over three years?

I've stopped trying to have all the answers.

First year, I felt like I needed to be the expert who could address every question with certainty. But climate science is full of legitimate uncertainty—we know the planet is warming, we know roughly how much, but the specific timeline and impacts have ranges and probabilities, not certainties⁹.

Now I'm more comfortable saying "we don't know yet" or "scientists disagree about this part" or "here's what we know and here's what we're still learning." The kids actually respond better to that. They can smell bullshit from a mile away, and false certainty is bullshit.

So yeah, I still have panic attacks sometimes about teaching planetary crisis to teenagers. But I also feel like this matters in a way that balancing equations doesn't. Which is weird to say as someone who loves chemistry. But it's true.

One more question. What do you tell your students about the future?

Long silence.

I tell them the truth, which is that the future will be harder than the past. Hotter, drier, more volatile. That's just physics.

But I also tell them that humans are really good at adaptation when we choose to be. That clean energy jobs are growing faster than almost any other sector¹⁰. That there are meaningful careers in building resilience. That their generation is going to have to solve problems my generation created, which is unfair as hell, but also means their work will matter enormously.

And I tell them... voice catches slightly ...I tell them that I see them showing up to this class even when the air quality is terrible and the news is grim, and that their willingness to engage with hard truths is the opposite of hopelessness.

That's what I tell them.

Then we go back to chemistry, because they still need to pass the AP exam and get into college. Even if we're not sure what college will look like in 2035.

Footnotes

1. https://www.climate.gov/teaching/toolbox ↩

2. https://teachforall.org/climate-education-and-leadership ↩

3. https://www.climate.gov/teaching/toolbox ↩

4. https://www.tc.columbia.edu/articles/2025/april/new-findings-on-climate-education-affirm-need-for-educator-support/ ↩

5. https://eos.org/features/integrating-k-12-teachers-into-climate-education ↩

6. https://www.edutopia.org/article/climate-change-lesson-plans/ ↩

7. https://www.edutopia.org/article/climate-change-lesson-plans/ ↩

8. https://www.tc.columbia.edu/articles/2025/august/building-community-to-support-climate-change-education/ ↩

9. https://www.tc.columbia.edu/articles/2025/april/new-findings-on-climate-education-affirm-need-for-educator-support/ ↩

10. https://nzero.com/blog/clean-energy-jobs-in-2025-where-growth-is-happening-and-why-it-matters/ ↩