Portland teacher Gus Goodwin has more than two decades of classroom experience, but recently students caught him by surprise. He was swept up in what he calls a “very powerful experience, one of the best things I’ve ever done.”

Goodwin was helping lead a learning expedition on climate and energy at King Middle School, something he’s done annually for about 10 years. The school is a recognized leader in Expeditionary Learning, an interdisciplinary model that grew out of Outward Bound. Over the course of 8- to 12-week expeditions, students tackle – with minimum instruction – ambitious projects that link curriculum and community. By thinking critically and working collaboratively, they learn to succeed at tasks that might have seemed impossible.

In this fall’s expedition, the teachers had high expectations for what the eighth-graders would accomplish: They’d build functioning, yard-high wind turbines; learn about global climate change; debate the merits and risks of different energy sources; and research, write and produce energy-related public service announcement videos.

Not every student embarked on this expedition with enthusiasm. “I wasn’t that excited,” eighth-grader Tahj Hebert admitted: as in “global warming is boring: I’m done with it.” She already knew it was a “bad thing” so what was the point of spending time talking about it?

The expedition taught her why climate change was bad, what the effects were. That, Hebert said, “made me a lot more conscious of everything I do that affects the environment.” Now she makes different choices at “almost a subconscious level. It just kind of happens.”

As students worked on their wind turbines, Goodwin learned of a weekend climate march planned in Portland to coincide with the Paris climate talks. He asked students whether they’d like to participate and they emphatically did. A committee of students began meeting with him at lunch to start planning.

Then the march was canceled. Goodwin returned to the committee and asked what students would like to do. The answer came back: “Let’s have our own march!”

Many students were feeling discouraged by all they were learning about climate impacts. “It just sort of feels like a sci-fi novel that hasn’t quite started yet,” student Siri Pierce told an MPBN reporter, “but we’re in the prologue, and it’s not looking so great that the rest of the book will have a happy ending.”

Teachers and administrators supported the students’ desire to organize a school day march – as long as the event linked to their studies. The student committee presented its justification to each “house” within the school, including such points as:

“The adults of this world have made a mess and our generation will have to clean it up. Therefore we have a right to be heard.”

“We are marching for our friends in Paris.”

“We want leaders and decision-makers here in Maine to support and invest in solar energy, offshore wind development and more energy-efficient housing standards.”

On a clear morning in early December, roughly 400 King students marched to City Hall to meet with the mayor and the superintendent of schools, and to motivate the larger community. Student Halim Moldaver, who helped plan the event, recalls the march as “super special,” saying unequivocally, “I am not going to forget that day.” Students “felt pretty big,” he says, walking en masse through city streets, led and trailed by police cruisers, “taking the curriculum into the world.”

Students rarely feel empowered, echoed Tahj Hebert, despite being assured by adults that their actions matter. Through the march, “We got to make a difference. We actually got to do something.”

It was a day, added eighth- grader Emma Conrad, in which students “took charge, and teachers were just a part of it. They were helping us with what we wanted to do.”

The students spoke on the steps of City Hall, urging Portland to become 100 percent renewable (as other towns – like Georgetown, Texas – have done). “We’re the first generation (of youth) to feel the effects of climate change, and the last one to be able to do anything about it,” student Satchel Butterfield declared.

The rally ended with a song written by a King Middle School student who had arrived from Burundi just a few months earlier.

That day marked the zenith of a learning experience that shifted the world view of students. Throughout the expedition, Halim Moldaver would bring home new ideas and push for household changes – like using LED lightbulbs. You go to your parents, he said, and ask “Did you know? We need to make a plan about this!”

Every time Gus Goodwin has co-led this expedition, at least one student has asked point-blank, “You guys have known about this (climate crisis), and you’re not doing anything about it?” “It’s time to do something,” Goodwin says. Once you’re aware, “you can’t stick your head (back) in the sand.”

Students at the school grasp the need for action, and the complexities of energy production. Their debates were helpful, Emma Conrad said, in understanding the “upsides” and “downsides” of each energy source and why change can’t happen overnight.

Hastening the transition to renewable energy will take leadership in local communities the world over. King Middle School students are poised to be part of that change.

By holding a climate march, each of them learned – in Tahj Hebert’s words – that “I can be part of something that makes a difference, and I can be part of more things.”

Marina Schauffler, Ph.D., is a writer who runs Natural Choices (naturalchoices.com).