Sage initiative Inspiration
Intersections was shaped by two key sources: the University of California’s Bending the Curve program and a Spring 2024 survey of 235 California high school students, which helped us understand their knowledge of and interest in the climate crisis.
What We Learned from Our Survey of California’s Youth
To better understand how students think and feel about climate change, we surveyed 235 students in grades 8–11 across 9 high schools. While most of our respondents came from private, progressive schools, the findings still highlight important trends in student perceptions and actions.
Key Insights:
Students believe they know a lot about the climate crisis, but this knowledge doesn’t always translate into action.
Many students feel the weight of climate change, yet don’t see it as their personal responsibility to act.
Three Types of Students Emerged:
- Indifferent (20%) – Don’t care about taking action.
- Open (65%) – Care about taking action, but lack the resources or energy to follow through.
- Active (15%) – Deeply care and are already taking meaningful steps.
→ Our goal is to reach the open and indifferent students to help them see their role in the movement, regardless of where their passions/interests lie, and help them understand why it requires everyone’s buy-in.
→ To fill the gap that emerged from our survey, we started the Sage Initiative. The course will be solution-based with the goal of veering away from doomsday talk and focusing on what individuals and communities can do to combat this global issue in an interdisciplinary approach.
Bending the Curve
Bending the Curve is a transdisciplinary curriculum and multimedia content library created by researchers, educators, and designers at the University of California. The program focuses on climate change solutions that bend the warming curve while accelerating resilience and advancing climate justice for the planet’s most vulnerable communities.
Currently taught as a course at five UC campuses, Bending the Curve equips undergraduates with a holistic understanding of the climate crisis and the practical skills needed to address it.
Our videos were created by stitching together smaller snippets from Bending the Curve lectures in order to create a course that is shorter and more accessible and engaging for high school students.