Preparing students for uncertain futures can feel daunting for teachers. Yet helping children find hope is essential if they are to see themselves as capable of shaping positive change.
This Teachspace article shares eight teaching approaches for educators to help students build resilience in a world facing social and environmental challenges.
Why this matters
Australia continues to face more frequent and intense natural disasters, from floods and fires to toxic algal blooms along our coastlines. These events remind us how closely our societies and ecosystems are connected – what happens in one affects the other.
Children notice this too. Many are feeling anxious about climate change and the future. When classroom learning doesn’t reflect what they see around them, those worries can grow. Schools therefore play a key role in helping young people understand these challenges, manage their feelings, and see ways they can contribute to solutions.
Teaching for hope and resilience
Teachers can build students’ capacity to adapt, recover and thrive in the face of socio-ecological challenges. Such capabilities can promote wellbeing and social cohesion so that they are able to cope with adversity in their lives and communities.
Swedish researcher Maria Ojala and others highlight how hopeful practices—not just positive thinking, but concrete action and reflection—can transform climate anxiety into empowerment. Her research applies insights from psychology to education, looking at how young people think, feel, act, learn and communicate about environmental problems.
The notion of hopeful practices in schools invites teachers to think about how they teach, alongside what they teach. It also invites educators to not resort to saying ‘we teach about hope’, but rather put it into practice. This could be finding ways in which practices for a sustainable future could be embedded in regular activities within the school learning environment.
Below are eight classroom practices inspired by Ojala’s work that can support resilience and hope.
1. Encourage mindful thinking
Help students pause and reflect on what they value in their environment. This may look like an exercise in gratitude, hope, caring, and/or respect for the environment. It may include writing prompts that start with issues people care about and include setting an intention or making a pledge (one step that you will take towards your goal), as a process of practising and maintaining hope for the environment.
2. Creating time and space for discussion
Provide space and time for students to express their concerns and worries about the environment and for the teacher to address these at an appropriate time. Allowing students to voice their concerns demonstrates trust in others, such as teachers. This might be through a post box or sticky note wall.
Create safe spaces to explore climate crises; share thoughts and feelings; normalise climate conversations; and build connections with families and local communities to provide a wider support network. Having regular discussions and conversations about what is happening around us contributes to developing a shared understanding about the environment and viewing Earth’s planetary health as a collective issue for everyone to work on together.
3. Build environmental vocabulary
Develop a shared language for talking about sustainability. A ‘green words’ wall can help students express their thoughts and strengthen understanding of ecological ideas.
4. Model optimism
Use hopeful, action-oriented language in relation to the environment. Optimism can overtake negativity. For example, you may talk about ‘planetary health’ rather than ‘wicked problems’.
5. Go outside often
Get to know your local flora and fauna. This develops environmental stewardship whilst simultaneously strengthening overall wellbeing.
6. Share stories of action
Introduce students to real examples of people and communities caring for the planet. This fosters curiosity and demonstrates what is possible and what people can do for the environment.
7. Imagine future scenarios
Use creative problem-solving tasks that invite students to design solutions for environmental challenges – some immediate, others long-term. This creates opportunities for students to develop their critical and creative thinking, alongside their problem-solving skills, towards increasingly complex problems. Include some with long time frames so that students understand the on-going or long-term nature of these problems.
8. Take local action
Create opportunities for students to participate in local community environmental projects. This leads to developing a personal purpose by committing time and energy to get involved with environmental issues and activities, such as, action to protect the environment. It also demonstrates what is environmentally possible to achieve when working in teams or in collaboration with others.
Moving forward
Ojala’s research shows that addressing eco-anxiety through hopeful practices can transform both learning and wellbeing. Other researchers also echo this, noting that fostering adaptability, emotional awareness and collective action are key to building resilience and ‘futures thinking.’
By nurturing hope and agency in everyday classroom experiences, teachers can help children see themselves not as bystanders to uncertainty, but as active participants in shaping a sustainable and caring future.
References
Australia’s bushfire seasons
Australian Government, Bureau of Meteorology (2025)
Disaster resilience education
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Disaster Resilience Education for Young People: Quick Guides
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NSW is again cleaning up after major floods. Are we veering towards the collapse of insurability?
Booth, K., (2025)
Climate Change and Youth Mental Health: Multidisciplinary Perspectives (pp. 3–20). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Clayton, S., & Crandon, T. (2024). Climate Distress among Young People: An Overview. In E. Haase & K. Hudson (Eds.)
Navigating eco-anxiety and eco-detachment: educators’ strategies for raising environmental awareness given students’ disconnection from nature
Edwards, R. C., Larson, B. M. H., & Clayton, S. (2023). . Environmental Education Research, 30(6), 864–880
Government of South Australia, Depart of Primary Industries and Regions
(2025) Harmful algal bloom (HAB) situation update.
Propagating collective hope in the midst of environmental doom and gloom
Kelsey E (2016). Canadian Journal of Environmental Education 21, 23–40
A New Green Learning Agenda: Approaches to Quality Education for Climate Action
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Climate anxiety, wellbeing and pro-environmental action: correlates of negative emotional responses to climate change in 32 countries
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Eco-anxiety
Ojala, M. (2019). The RSA Journal (4), 10-15
Anxiety, Worry, and Grief in a Time of Environmental and Climate Crisis: A Narrative Review
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A Clear and Present Pedagogy: Teaching About Planetary Crisis (When You're in a Planetary Crisis)
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Teaching action-oriented knowledge on sustainability issues
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Examples of Maria Ojala’s work on the connections between education and hope in tackling the climate and sustainability challenges
Hope and climate change: The importance of hope for environmental engagement among young people
Ojala, M. (2012). Environmental Education Research, 18(5), 625-642
Emotional awareness: On the importance of including emotional aspects in education for sustainable development (ESD)
Ojala, M. (2013). Journal of Education for Sustainable Development, 7(2), 167-182
Hope in the face of climate change: Associations with environmental engagement and student perceptions of teachers’ emotion communication style and future orientation
Ojala, M. (2015). The Journal of Environmental Education, 46(3), 133-148
Facing anxiety in climate change education: From therapeutic practice to hopeful transgressive learning
Ojala, M. (2016). Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 21, 41-56
Hope and anticipation in education for a sustainable future
Ojala, M. (2017). Futures, 94, 76-84
Safe spaces or a pedagogy of discomfort? Senior high-school teachers’ meta-emotion philosophies and climate change education
Ojala, M. (2021). The Journal of Environmental Education, 52(1), 40-52
Prefiguring sustainable futures? Young people’s strategies to deal with conflicts about climate-friendly food choices and implications for transformative learning
Ojala, M. (2022). Environmental Education Research, 28(8), 1157-1174
Climate-change education and critical emotional awareness (CEA): Implications for teacher education
Ojala, M. (2023). Educational Philosophy and Theory, 55(10), 1109-1120
How do children, adolescents, and young adults relate to climate change? Implications for developmental psychology
Ojala, M. (2023). European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 20(6), 929-943
