Melissa Lau, an NCSE Teacher Ambassador from Oklahoma, was featured — wearing her NCSE Teacher Ambassador t-shirt — in a story on climate change education on NPR's StateImpact Oklahoma (July 11, 2019).
"Lau says she has been educating her students about the connection between fossil fuel combustion and climate change for three years, though she isn't required to," the story explained. "Oklahoma’s K-12 science standards are based in part on the Next Generation Science Standards, national guidelines developed in 2013 that recommend teaching the concept in sixth grade, but Oklahoma left it out."
At the time the standards were adopted, there were attempts in both chambers of the legislature to block their adoption, primarily on account of their inclusion of climate change, as NCSE previously reported. Although measures to do so separately passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, no measure passed both chambers, and Governor Mary Fallin approved the adoption of the standards in June 2014.
Oklahoma is about to begin to revise its standards again. Lau is among the educators who will be helping to revise and improve the standards. She asked, "[D]o we write our standards for somebody who is not scientifically literate or do we write them for science teachers?"
