OAKLAND — From the mouth of babes, as the saying goes, come words of wisdom that elders might do well to heed.

Roosevelt Middle School science teacher Ashlyn Brulato’s sixth-grade students are not exactly babes any more, but they are sharing their thoughts with California’s newly elected senator, Kamala Harris, and the country’s new president on what is sometimes called the biggest challenge facing the planet: climate change.

Brulato is a first-year science teacher, a product of Teach for America, a nonprofit organization that recruits recent college graduates to accept a two-year commitment to teaching.

She has three sixth-grade science, technology, engineering and math classes that meet five times a week for 80 minutes a session. Studying climate change was the culminating project of a unit on weather and climate, she said.

In the course of discussing current political trends as related to climate change, her students drafted letters to Harris, who in November was elected to replace retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer in the U.S. Senate, and discussed the implications of Donald Trump being elected president.

The results revealed “pretty advanced thinking for sixth-graders, beyond their normal purview as 11-year-olds,” Brulato said.

“Not everyone is equally affected by climate change. Imagine yourself in poor people’s shoes. Research shows that poor people will be suffering the most,” one of her students, Kaylah Xaysana, wrote to Harris.

She went on to quote Sailesh Rao, CEO of the nonprofit organization Climate Healers, as saying “Ecosystems are finding it difficult to adapt and are dying off, causing a mass of species to be extinct.”

“The racial gap in climate change is immense,” wrote another student, Rochelle Berdan.

“More non-whites believe that climate change should be top priority for presidents and Congress than whites. One impact is through the reduction in crop yields,” Berdan wrote.

Both students cited rising sea levels, a byproduct of climate change, as a key concern for California. “The rate in the last decade is nearly double that of the last century,” Xaysana wrote, citing NASA research.

The two students both advocate increasing use of solar power, an industry that provides almost two times as much employment as the fossil fuel industry responsible for much of the carbon pollution blamed for climate change, according to a recent U.S. Department of Energy report.

That January report said solar technologies employ almost 374,000 workers, or 43 percent of the electric power workforce. Fossil fuel generation employment accounts for 187,117 jobs, only a bit more than half as many, or 22 percent of that workforce.

In a research homework assignment, students were asked, “What does Donald Trump believe about climate change? What does he want to do (if anything) to stop climate change?”

One student wrote that “Trump thinks that burning more fossil fuels isn’t a problem,” and that the new president intends to stop all former President Barack Obama’s programs addressing global warming.

“My opinion is that climate change and global warming is happening and whatever Trump thinks is false. … If he doesn’t do anything now, we are doomed!!!” the writer, student Emily La, concluded.

Another, Mohammed Giovanni, responded that “Trump believes that climate change is a hoax, made by the Chinese. We are causing climate change. I think we should protest on national news, so Donald Trump can see.”

“What Donald Trump wants to do about climate change is nothing,” wrote Eveleyn Deodanes.

“I think he follows people. If someone says something smart, he will switch his opinion. So if you come up with a smart idea and want Donald Trump to hear it, just tweet it. Not kidding,” she concluded.

Contact Mark Hedin at 510-293-2452, 408-759-2132 or mhedin@bayareanewsgroup.com.