There is an old Newfoundland expression that always comes to my mind when I think about the weather: "some day on clothes." It means not today, maybe someday but there's no rush. This phrase reflects a mindset shaped by the famously harsh weather that Newfoundland and Labrador are well known for, the uncertainty that comes with it, and the long-standing determination to make do.

I can still hear my Aunt Alice's voice in her Carbonear kitchen as she stood at the kitchen window looking at the rain, drizzle and fog, and her gaze shifting to the basket of wet clothes waiting at the top of the stairs. With a sigh, she would say "Some day on clothes, love" before opening the door and hanging them on the line anyway, trusting that eventually the weather would cooperate and the clothes would eventually dry.

This spin is my attempt to position the urgency of climate action for schools and educational leaders. Spinning off my Newfoundland roots and a favourite old expression, I recognize the tension between we’ll do it eventually and we need to act right now. When I think about climate change, I admit that my first response is often a surge of anxiety; it feels so big and so far beyond my control. While I have tried to do my small part, recycle, compost, try to make better consumer choices, and so on, I admit that I have been guilty of the eventually mindset.

While humans love to talk about the weather, complaining about it or wishing it were different, it too often becomes small talk: a safe space for observation and debate about what Mother Nature is delivering or what to wear to stay comfortable in her elements. In doing so, we shy away from the reality of increasing weather extremes and the very real, dynamic issue of climate change that is affecting us all right now. Meanwhile, global warming continues to reshape our climate, with growing impacts on human health, well‑being, learning, security, and the economy. David Suzuki has been warning Canadians about this since CBC’s The Nature of Things first aired in 1979. Sadly, it has taken many of us decades to feel the urgency of living in a changing climate and “to rethink humanity’s place in nature” (Zhu, 2026).

This is where educational leadership must urgently step up. While talking about climate change, and teaching it, are critical steps forward, committing to embedding it systematically across organizations is essential. Education is key to advancing climate solutions, requiring communities to take control of what they can before it controls us entirely.

For students and educators, climate change can feel overwhelming, and it is easy to place it in the space of someone else’s difficult problem or dismiss it as a one‑off unfortunate weather event. But it isn’t an individual weather event that demonstrates climate change; it is the ongoing changes over time to average weather conditions. More rain, more heat, more wind, or more snow, this accumulation and slow burn are putting our planet on a fast track toward escalating risk and disruption.

The urgency to acknowledge both the impacts and intersections of climate change rests with educational leaders. This requires intentionally positioning climate action as a key strategic priority for school districts. When leaders acknowledge the shared anxiety while also creating opportunities for concrete, age‑appropriate climate action, something shifts. Schools become spaces where young people learn that while they cannot control the weather, they can participate in shaping the future. Moving beyond some day on clothes starts with that shift.

Hanging it All Out: The Clothesline is Already There

According to Schifter and Klein (2025) our global society and ability to thrive depends on a stable climate. Their book, Students, Schools, and Our Climate Moment, is an important read for all educators. For me, the book was a call to action, to start thinking more strategically about how we secure our future for our children and the generations to come. They outline four critical reasons why schools should care about taking immediate action on climate change beyond awareness alone:

1. We have an urgent window for action.
2. Education is the key to all climate solutions.
3. Climate action in schools is a win for education.
4. Education leaders owe it to students to act (Schifter & Klein, 2025, p. 22).

How we step into this work is ultimately about strategy and a willingness to move beyond awareness to action. In many ways, schools are already engaged, doing environmental work and incorporating environmental curriculum, but often without the deep,, strategic intention needed to drive and sustain meaningful change. At this current tipping point in the climate crisis, maintaining the status quo is not enough to hold steady, let alone move forward.

The intersection of schools, education, and climate change is essential to understand, as the actions we take now will have lasting impacts on future generations. Climate change must become a more central and explicit conversation within public education. This call to action begins with naming our own personal climate moment and then committing to doing better for our children. Two urgent questions educational leaders should consider are: (1) When did you realize that the magnitude of climate change was affecting your life? (2) When did you feel a true sense of climate emergency, who do you want to protect, and what are you prepared to do in response?

Educational leaders who understand strategy must embed climate action into district plans and community partnerships. Climate action plans are the result of understanding community based climate models and should not be treated as an additional initiative for school districts; instead, they must be integrated into existing strategic plans and goals.

If educational leaders are going to commit to hanging it all out and facing the hard truths of global warming, effective climate action plans must be grounded in four key posts.

Clothesline Post #1: Adaptation and Resilience

• How are we preparing our schools for, and responding to, the impacts of climate change?
• Are we considering physical risks and impacts alongside human vulnerability and risk?
• Have we applied an equity lens to determine who may be disproportionately impacted by climate change?

Clothesline Post #2: Biodiversity and Nature

• What efforts are being made, or could be made, to protect nature and wildlife within our school environments and their surrounding areas?
• How can we design, and redesign, our school environments to ensure green space and native ecology are prioritized?
• How can we design learning so that students have built‑in, daily educational experiences outdoors and in nature?

Clothesline Post #3: Climate Education and Green Skills

• How are students supported to understand climate change and sustainability, and to develop relevant real‑life skills in real time?
• What opportunities do students have to build hands‑on, real‑world green skills across curricular areas (e.g., energy literacy, gardening, climate problem‑solving, career exploration)?
• What actions are being taken to empower students to take action, share their learning, and participate in climate‑related decision‑making?

Clothesline Post #4: Decarbonization and Net Zero

• What actions to measure and reduce greenhouse gas emissions (e.g., energy use, food systems, waste) are underway in school districts, and how is this data being transparently shared?
• What concrete steps are being taken to reduce emissions across buildings, purchasing, and operations, and what impacts have been observed so far?
• Is there a clear net‑zero or emissions‑reduction goal in the district’s strategic plan, with accountability measures, set timelines, and meaningful student or community involvement?

The questions posed in each section can be unpacked in leadership planning sessions, staff meetings, or with students to support a comprehensive examination of where to begin, and, in some cases, where there is already progress worth celebrating for those committed to climate action planning in their context.

Clothespins: Small Actions that Hold

Stepping into a space of climate action asks educational leaders to consider what holds when the wind picks up. In Newfoundland and Labrador successfully hanging your clothes out to dry is all about the right clothespin. To prevent loss of your clothes in the gusts of winds, you need clothespins that are simple, affordable and effective. Just as clothespins work best in multiples, positioning climate education is all about strategically lining up all the small actions that will hold.

The act of pinning climate action into place requires examining the practical leverage points that schools can control. If climate change is to become a more central and explicit conversation in public education, we must curate strategic small actions to build collective momentum. The following subsections outline four clothespins that educators can hang to dry climate action initiatives in schools.

Clothespin #1: Curriculum

• Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is an educational framework that avoids and disrupts “one‑size‑fits‑all” teaching. It is an evidence‑based, inclusive pedagogical structure grounded in the science of learning and what we know about the human brain. UDL encourages educators to offer students multiple means of engagement, alongside representation and expression, and blends seamlessly with climate education by connecting learning to local communities, helping students understand how these issues have immediate relevance in their own lives.
• Consumerism and critical thinking are two teachable constructs that can be embedded across all subject areas. Cross‑curricular learning about climate change can help students of all ages understand that they own the decisions they make as consumers, and that making environmentally supportive choices is within their immediate control. Thinking critically about what we use, buy, and do all has an impact on climate change. Building awareness alongside critical‑thinking tools supports informed decision‑making and empowers students to reduce their climate impact through everyday choices.

Clothespin #2: Student Voice

• Advocacy and agency should be goals in the creation of all student learning experiences. One of the most impactful outcomes of student learning is voice, having students who are able to self‑advocate and collectively advocate for change. Cultivating student voice and growing individual agency is how we build a climate‑aware mindset. Students need to understand the essential climate principles that explain how we depend on our climate to survive. Safir (2023) pushes educators to consider how to centre student voice and thinking in all instructional designs. Supporting students to become actively involved as leaders in advocating for climate action through sustainability projects and initiatives further strengthens this work.
• Future planning is about helping students make sense of the world around them. This includes preparing them for future jobs and supporting them to become engaged, successful global citizens. Doing so requires educators to embrace new ideas and innovate, because the world we grew up in is not the one our students are living in. If we want them to thrive in their future lives, we must equip them with the knowledge and aptitudes needed to unlock solutions for energy reduction and to reduce global warming.

Clothespin #3: Facilities and Operations

• Materials and resources are key to climate action initiatives in schools. What we use, and how we resource our educational plans, has a tremendous impact not only on our fiscal landscape but also on student learning. Choosing materials made by B Corp designers and considering the environmental impact of all purchases are ways to protect our future. That old expression, “children learn what they live,” holds true in climate‑aware educational environments. When adults share their why as they commit to materials and resources that align with climate action plans, students begin to think differently about where they spend their money, both now and in the future. Students learn responsibility when they see adults engaging thoughtfully rather than avoiding complexity. Sometimes less is more, and learning to do with less is part of the climate action movement. We know that what students experience, notice, and are invited to participate in matters. Making explicit and transparent choices about how we spend our money and time in ways that support environmental sustainability also matters. One initiative in our school district that is having a powerful impact is the use of indoor growing towers. This investment of Feeding Futures funding in all of our schools represents a visible, centrally located commitment to teaching food literacy and environmental literacy.
• Recycling and composting are two protective factors against the production of pervasive waste in schools. A frightening fact is over 50% of landfill bound waste in schools is recyclable or compostable (Ecoschools Canada, 2022). While this stat is slightly dated, more current North American data continues to reveal that schools produce an estimated 530,000 tons of food waste annually (Steidinger, 2023). Beyond providing recycling and composting bins adults need to support students to ensure they actually understand why they need to use them, and sometimes how to sort properly. The fact that over 1 billion tons of food available to humans still ends up in landfills (United Nations) is not okay. When I spoke with a number of students about composting, very few were able to explain why it matters. Many did not know that food waste in landfills contributes approximately 8–10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, primarily methane, further accelerating climate change. This is an impact we can reduce. When schools and communities have active composting and pickup programs in place, there is a shared responsibility to ensure understanding translates into action.

Clothespin #4: Professional Learning

• Climate literacy and pedagogical confidence can pin professional growth into place as core aspects of professional learning to secure climate action initiatives. Understanding the science, social dimensions, and local implications of climate change is critical for modern educators. Moving forward, I am committing to ensuring that climate action is intentionally woven into my professional learning offerings. By building collective understanding of the issues at hand, alongside a growing pedagogical repertoire, educators can engage in age‑appropriate, accurate, and sustained climate conversations across learning contexts.
• Collective sense making and shared language are key to pinning the process of meaningful professional learning into place. How we collectively understand the problems at hand related to climate change in our communities will impact our ability to establish shared responsibility and take action. Connecting new knowledge to lived experiences, local contexts, and instructional realities supports confidence and reduces isolation, which is critical when engaging with topics that can feel politically charged, scientifically heavy, or emotionally complex. Ensuring that adult learning experiences use common frames or terminology helps support not only individual growth, but also an expanded collective capacity to engage in ongoing, inclusive climate‑focused professional conversations.

Wind, Weight and Weather: Preparing for Stronger Gusts

The volatility of global warming requires schools to become resilient, prepared and adaptable. Creating space for wellbeing, mentally and physically, involves social-emotional learning in our schools and establishing strong adult-student relationships to foster safe, caring and inclusive learning environments.

Knowing that climate change will exacerbate existing inequities makes schools play an even more important role in creating space for future readiness, resiliency and care. It is our responsibility to help our youth make sense of a changing world while guiding them to become compassionate and thoughtful global citizens. How we prepare students to live in a changing climate is on us, and ignoring this in our educational designs is akin to malpractice. Thinking about the small actions that hold will balance the weight of the work to be done as we design for the impact of climate hazards, vulnerabilities and risks alongside of adaptation and resilience for students and schools.

Systems without strong pins lose progress. In uncertain times, leadership must provide steadiness, not certainty. While there is so much in the landscape of climate change that we cannot control, there are things we can activate right now. If “action is the antidote to despair” (Schifter, 2025, p. 5), then supporting and targeting learning experiences that focus on building resiliency and nurturing hope is essential. When there is wind, weight, and weather, leaders need to understand that human and nonhuman systems are coupled; the behaviour of each system influences the other through complex feedback loops. Climate change is quickly flipping ecological, financial, and social systems to less desirable states of affairs. Leaders need to position resilient fallback mechanisms to protect their organizations and communities.

There are two essential parts of resilience: continuity and recovery in the face of change (Zolli, 2012). Aggressively pursuing efforts that assist with bouncing back after difficult events occur requires the reorganization of both systems and mental thought patterns. Challenging the dangers of rumination will position educational leaders to hold the concept of resilience as a powerful lens through which we can view major issues, without getting lost in the ways of the past, possible mistakes made, or the total “uncontrollables.”

Emotions and resilience are interconnected. When things happen, events cause us to feel a certain way. Sometimes these feelings can’t be controlled, and sometimes they sneak up on us, taking over our minds. Rather than getting lost in a downward spiral of negative feelings, with practice we can train ourselves to become more aware of how we react and learn to give ourselves more grace, rather than draining our emotional coffers. This is how we grow resilience, mentally preparing for the gusts that will come, one small moment of awareness and self‑compassion at a time.

Hope is a critical part of preparing for stronger gusts and building on the structures and systems that already exist. I appreciate Graeme Mitchell's powerful reminder to keep hope and optimism at the core of our work in education. Taking action and controlling the narrative about climate action involves understanding that climate change doesn't exist in isolation. It is an underlying issue that is interconnected to subjects that educators care about: physical and mental health, the economy, equity, teaching, learning and more.

Waiting for Better Weather: Hanging Nothing Changes Nothing

This final section of my spin is all about the contrast of waiting with doing. We owe it our students, our families and ourselves to act now.

For leaders in public education, this work is grounded in using what we have and building on what already exists. While the funding required to physically retrofit and redesign schools to address global weather sensitivities is not yet embedded in most publicly funded operational structures, there is still much we can do to work around aging infrastructure. Educational leaders do have control over critical decisions related to finances and facilities, instructional resources, and technology, areas that can meaningfully influence climate readiness and resilience.

Equally important are the human investments. Educational leaders who invest in their own learning about climate change are better positioned to lead necessary and informed change. For example, understanding how district-level decisions about materials, landscaping, and infrastructure can contribute to urban heat island effects can shift how priorities are set. As leaders deepen their knowledge of global warming, they are more likely to make different, and better, investment decisions. Over time, those decisions have the potential to change the trajectory of the communities they serve.

I am going to take a risk and end this piece on an uplifting note. Coming back to nature has been one of the most important gifts I have given myself as an adult. Taking time every day for an outdoor walk, regardless of the weather, is something my father taught me. Even when I am travelling and don’t have easy access to nature, I have learned that when you look, really look, you can find nature everywhere and anywhere. It might be the crack in the sidewalk where a weed is pushing through, or the concrete planter outside a shop that someone has taken the time to care for. It could be feeling the warm sun on your shoulders or the cool breeze that makes you snuggle into your sweater. It could be the small cobweb hanging in a corner, or the fly buzzing about, reminding you that there is a much bigger world to consider beyond your immediate existence.

While a little some day on clothes helps at times, it is not the answer to the challenges of global warming. We have to take care of this planet in whatever ways we possibly can. May this spin be your call to action, or a validation of your ongoing commitments to climate action.

Author’s Note: This spin was inspired by a holiday marked by interesting weather in a very special place where the sun always shines. As I watched locals adapt, mitigate, and do their best to manage unexpected climate changes that kept surprising us all, this spin is dedicated to all who find ways to weather the storm with positivity, hope, and action. With a light touch of AI editing, I hope this spin encourages readers to think about their own clothespins, and what they can use to hang to dry, take action and hold steady in uncertain times.