Although the pandemic has set a serious tone, teachers in Staten Island are helping their students cope with at-home learning through laughter and unconventional methods. Two teachers recorded videos of themselves while wearing wigs and did their best Jersey accent to deliver grammar lessons. A biology teacher used Zoom to guide students through a dissection lesson on chicken legs. These teachers are proving that despite the challenges of teaching through a pandemic, there are also novel opportunities to seize.

In 2014, Tucson schools found that performance and graduation rates improved dramatically when students completed classes in Mexican-American studies - the achievement gap closed within a matter of a few years. Now, a teacher in New Mexico is trying to replicate Arizona's success with a Chicano Studies class that takes students' through history and the reality of racism in their own lives.

Kaleidoscope Connect is a curriculum program that helps middle school students build strong relationships with adults. The program helps students define what is important to them in relationships and helps them develop the skills to connect well with adults who support them. This curriculum is designed to help combat mental health problems before they arise, and give students a strong support system that they can seek help from if they need it.

In Afghanistan, where climate change is drying up previously productive farms, female education has taken on a new importance. A recent Brookings Institution study found that for "every additional year of school a girl receives, her country is better prepared for, and better able to recover from climate disasters."

The new California Rural Ed Network is working to connect isolated teachers in small towns and rural communities with resources and education about social-emotional learning and trauma-informed approaches. The initiative, still in its nascent years, aims to "join forces to attract new resources" and "share expertise."

Farmers in Bule, Ethiopia, are practicing agroforestry, a diverse cropping method that mimics natural ecosystems. A survey found a stunning average of 16 crop species, including 21 species of tree, on farms. The benefits of the practice are myriad: food security, improved soil health, carbon sequestration, diversified revenue streams, and new wildlife habitat, to name several. While the incentive to grow valuable monocultures can be high, many growers stick with agroforestry regardless.

Tallahassee is coordinating its youth development, violence prevention and climate adaptation efforts to help out-of-work and out-of-school youth earn their GED and secure jobs helping to shape the city's climate resilience plan. One of the ways the program works is by enrolling participants in apprenticeships within local public works departments and puts them on track to get the required licensing for employment. So far, 640 teens and young adults have participated in the program.

Without much support from local governments, unincorporated towns turn to personal connections to sustain themselves. In the towns of Kingston and Hillsboro, in southern New Mexico, residents cherish their social networks—community boards and face-to-face interactions. Residents push back against suggestions to increase cellphone and internet service, choosing, instead, to embrace their niche culture.

Community development programs in cities around the country show how using connectedness and equity as focal points in sparking community change can be successful and sustainable in the long-term. From a Brooklyn grassroots environmental justice organization sustainably rebuilding after Superstorm Sandy to a coalition of nonprofits in Richmond fueling public participation in renewable energy awareness, these entities rely on relationships, equity and bonding over shared communities to foster solutions.

As the Mountain West transitions away from mining and other industrial economic drivers, rural cities find their way into successful economies by relying on local entrepreneurial spirit and the surrounding landscape. Businesses like SmartLam in rural Montana rely on local resources - in SmartLam's case, timber - and sustainable, future-oriented strategy to make a ripple in the economy of the rural West.

Unprecedented challenges are frequently popping up with the onset of climate change, so governments too have to adjust their processes and strategies. Some new procurement tools used by several different cities include requests for ideas, competitions, and performance contracts. This article looks at two places using these new and publicly accessible procurement tools—Prince Georges County, MD, and Norfolk, VA—to see how it impacts their success.

The company 3M is working at full capacity to produce as many N85 masks as possible to send to healthcare workers across the nation. They wouldn't give specific numbers but say that production has increased at all of their factories, including the U.S., Asia, Europe, and Latin America. 3M is working with governments and public health officials to put out the masks, but they expect demand to outstrip supply for the near future.

The Grand Caillou/Dulac Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw has long had a culture of cyclicality which is now coming in handy during the Coronavirus pandemic. Because they assume that hardship will come after periods of abundance, tribal members prepare for times of scarcity by making do with less, strategizing new ways to produce food, and regularly checking in with elders to ensure their needs are met. The tribe also lives on the coast of Louisiana, so climate change and environmental degradation remain an issue that they include in their future-planning.