Read the full article: https://coloradonewsline.com/2025/09/10/colorado-students-diploma-climate/

Featured in: Colorado Newsline | Published September 10, 2025 | By Mary Seawell

Sometimes the most powerful media coverage is the kind you write yourself. This Colorado Newsline op-ed, published as Colorado's new school year was just beginning, gave Lyra CEO Mary Seawell the opportunity to speak directly to the policymakers, school leaders, and advocates and to make the case for why the Seal of Climate Literacy deserves to grow.

The numbers she could point to were strong for a first year: more than 425 students from 14 school districts and charter networks had earned the Seal in its inaugural year. But the numbers only told part of the story. Behind them were individual students doing extraordinary things — a student in Hayden studying drought-resistant crops to preserve his family's ranching legacy; a Denver student who created a podcast exploring the mental health impacts of climate change; a Boulder graduate who lost her home in the Marshall Fire and chose to focus her senior project on building climate resilience in the wake of disaster.

"What's emerging here is more than a promising initiative. It's a movement that reflects what education can and should be: relevant, student-driven and connected to the real world."— Mary Seawell, CEO of Lyra, writing in Colorado Newsline

Mary addresses one of the most persistent misconceptions about climate education — that it's politically divisive. Seawell argued the opposite: that students completing Seal projects are proving that climate doesn't have to be polarizing. Their work is driven by personal stakes and local community connections, not national politics. That framing matters enormously for the policymakers Newsline reaches.