This dissertation undertakes the question, "what are the implications of engaging climate crisis in social studies education?" Employing the theoretical notion of difficult knowledge (Britzman, 1998; Pitt & Britzman, 2003), the analysis of data attends to the multitude of challenges teachers face as they grapple with the content of climate crisis for themselves and as they plan for the pedagogical demands of engaging young adolescents in these issues. I use psychosocial qualitative inquiry methodologies (Hollway & Jefferson, 2012: Hoggett, 2019; Lertzman, 2012, 2015, 2019) to collect and analyze teacher interviews and written reflections to explore the emotional and affective experiences of teaching climate crisis, the pushes and pulls of wanting to know and to look away, of worry and hope, of struggling to find some path of appropriate action, and the associated complex pedagogical and curricular implications. I find that teachers often distance themselves and their students from the bleakest consequences and many of the most implicating causes of climate crisis. I theorize the ways ambivalence and aspiration are circulating through this sense-making process in order to argue that it is ambivalence, not apathy, which allows continued attachments to the status quo and that diminished imagination is partially to blame for increased toleration of the tragedies of climate crisis. I explore the ways these themes and their implications invite the field of social studies education and individual teachers to include this topic more robustly and attend carefully to climate crisis as difficult knowledge. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]