Our world faces complex, intertwined, and transdisciplinary challenges–such as sea level rise and loss of biodiversity, and schools have been the designated place where young generations should acquire specific competences to face them. In this paper, I frame these issues as Wicked Problems (WPs) and offer an empirical exploration of how middle-schoolers (11–13 years) encounter them. During three workshops in two Swedish middle schools, pupils encountered environmental WPs via process drama, and to navigate these activities, they enacted competences which have been long advocated for. These were made visible by students’ performance as they revealed and used their knowledge and their ability to problematise and empathise. These instances were then acknowledged by peers and teachers, and these moments of recognition impacted how students utilised said competence and performance. Process drama thus opens spaces where students can practice encountering environmental WPs, as well as make use of and acknowledge their competence and performance; these three dimensions are thus in a relation of mutual affect when in a situated educational setting.