Margherita Long is an associate professor in the Department of East Asian Studies in the School of Humanities at UC Irvine. Most recently, Margherita wrote a grant to the Japan Foundation, which is part of the Japanese government to get support for a line in Japanese environmental humanities and start a program that merges environmentalism and Asian studies in the same department. Margherita is currently building this program along with Assistant Professor Jon Pitt and Jessica Pratt, who teaches courses in the campus-wide minor in Global Sustainability. She is also doing research for her book on the debate on nuclear energy in Japan, particularly after the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Rather than finding a specific “right or wrong” answer, her book focuses on how artists and activists overcome the challenges of communicating with the opposite side in order to deal with the mental burden of struggling with climate disasters. Margherita hopes PK-12 teachers incorporate more of their passions and interests into the curriculum that can transfer the passion to students. She recommends bringing more relevant books to the discussion and suggests they check out authors such as Elizabeth Colbert, Bill Mckibben, Annie Proulx, and Louise Erdrich and books such as Braiding Sweetgrass. She wants everyone to know that coming together in our common fear and worry can bring about many creative solutions. For example, a late performance artist’s project on monitoring air pollution in Los Angeles that Margherita read about in Donna Haraway’s book, Staying with the Trouble, gave a group of kids in a poor school district the opportunity to learn how to work with pigeons, monitor the air quality, map out the city. Lastly, Margherita wants to thank PK-12 teachers for their hard work and admire them for their resilience. She also wants to remind PK-12 students to not focus on the competitive nature of school and instead to stay crazy, be yourself, be creative, keep your energy, and stay curious.