In 2008, before ACE became Action for the Climate Emergency and back when we were Alliance for Climate Education, our primary objective was to educate as many high school students as possible about the climate crisis by going to schools and delivering assemblies. We visited schools all across the country: Sacramento, Las Vegas, Chicago, Dallas, New York, Cincinnati, New York City, Boston and more. In just a few short years, we had reached 2 million students with the ACE Assembly.

But there were many schools we couldn’t visit in person, so ACE developed a digital climate education program, Our Climate Our Future, that we could offer to teachers and schools anywhere in the country (and even the world). Over time as ACE’s work grew and evolved, we moved away from in-school presentations and into new areas of work, including online advocacy, storytelling, and civic engagement to meet the urgency of the climate crisis.

In 2019, with a growing team, we began to once again dream of returning to doing work in schools. We were on the cusp of doing just that when covid hit and everything and everyone went into lockdown. Once again, our plans were put on the shelf. 

Fast-forward two trying and turbulent years and we are thrilled to announce that this Earth Week 2022, ACE relaunched our foundational in-person climate assembly program, Our Climate Our Future Live. This spring, ACE will be visiting high schools in Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, and Wisconsin to educate, inspire, and support young people to lead the fight for their future. 

ACE Education Program Manager, Ashley Young, who spoke in schools around the Tampa, FL area this week, said, “It’s incredibly rewarding to see high schoolers eyes widen as the animations begin to sync with my voice. They’re fully engaged as we go from graphs to discussing real-life impacts. At the end, students take action by registering to vote and signing up to start an ACE Action Team at their school.”

And we’ve seen teachers respond enthusiastically to our program. One teacher in Tampa, FL, said, “Thanks for coming yesterday. You amazed me in the way you could present verbatim! Great job and personally, I felt like I was at EPCOT. I mean that as a compliment.”

Us on par with Disney? I’ll take it. 

Sign up to bring ACE to your high school today.