Wynn
Calder, environmental sustainability consultant to NAIS, has been
blogging throughout this academic year on sustainability topics of
interest to the independent school community. He is the executive
director of Sustainable Schools, LLC and can be reached at [email protected]. Wynn's guest bloggers this month are The Town School's (NY) Ken Higgins, dean of the upper school, sustainability coordinator, and music department chair and Rashidah Bowen, upper school counselor and upper school ethics curriculum coordinator and instructor.
Beyond Green: Moving School Communities toward a Holistic Approach to Educating for Sustainability
We have all heard the chatter about the need for students to develop and hone “21st century skills and competencies” to compete in the global community. Given the fervor for global education, it seems as though it should be relatively easy to achieve a broad consensus in school communities that educating our children for a sustainable future (EFS) is paramount. Yet, those of us who are educators know that our best intentions are not always realized. Many of our school mission statements and educational pedagogy align neatly with EFS. Unfortunately, this is not always recognized.
Schools are complicated institutions influenced by multiple constituencies. We function best when we build consensus in broad partnership. However, no matter how hard we work to achieve such collaboration, the result is always an imperfect concord. Too often stakeholders champion their own particular educational interest, typically privileging those with the loudest voices, or the most “cutting edge” initiatives to receive the most airtime. In many cases, EFS is missing in these conversations. Instead, the primary focal point of EFS is most often relegated to Facilities or one or two science units.
When we meet administrators and school leaders at conferences and inquire about sustainability initiatives at their schools, we are often given information on how well the school’s recycling program is going, or how excited the first grade is with the new worm bin. Simply put, the terms “green” or “environment” are often used interchangeably with sustainability. When that is done, two thirds of the picture is missing. The framing of EFS in our schools requires a more holistic approach. We need to cultivate an approach to EFS that fully integrates environmentalism, social justice, equity and inclusion, and we need to find ways to articulate this to our school communities.
At the Town School, we have been working hard over the last few years to embrace a holistic definition of sustainability that recognizes the interconnection between environmental stewardship, social justice, and economic equity. Establishing a school-wide understanding of this principle has enabled us to push the conversation past being green, affording us unique opportunities for cross-disciplinary curricular connections, greater community involvement, commitment and action.
The Town School is a Nursery through 8th grade school located in New York City. Like most independent schools, we have developed a robust mission statement in an effort to capture our educational philosophy and principles. And, like most independent schools, distilling our ideals succinctly in writing is challenging. It is a wonderful statement and we work hard to fulfill it. Day-to-day, however, we have a much more accessible school motto that captures our school’s mission in a student-centered manner.
Our guiding value system and motto at Town is S.O.S: Self, Others, and Surroundings. This motto is known and used by every student in the school and provides a schema from which to foster intellectual, social-emotional and moral growth and development. We teach children the importance of developing a strong personal identity and sense of self, an ability to understand self in relation to others and be a model member of their immediate community and world in which they live. The SOS motto has served as a guiding framework for teaching about diversity, cultural identity, discrimination, oppression, and environmental justice. Integrating SOS in the curriculum has also helped students acquire and practice successful interpersonal skills and develop an ability to understand and address multiple perspectives. For many years, teachers, students and parents have embraced the tenets of SOS and found it an incredibly useful motto for learning and development. Our students, on most days, treat each other with honor, empathy, and respect. They understand the importance of taking care of their school and local community, and collaborate and problem solve with peers effectively. They know the importance of recycling, conserving energy and giving back to those less fortunate. Teachers work with students to help them apply their understanding of “SOS” to the school’s various initiatives and learning goals (e.g., diversity and inclusion, service learning, environmentalism, socio-emotional learning). Given the parameters of calendar, scheduling, and individual passions, each segment is often approached in a separate, distinct manner.
It took a “light bulb” moment to realize how we could help students (and adults) unify seemingly disparate concepts into an integrated ‘whole’ guided by the principle of SOS and a more holistic view of EFS. This moment of discovery took place several years ago when we were each teaching different sections of our Upper School Life Skills program. This is a program for our 5th through 8th graders, encompassing issues of diversity, sustainability, social emotional growth and physical health. Rashidah was showing the film SuperSize Me to her 7th grade class and discussing the concept of environmental racism, access to high quality food in marginalized communities, and the psychological and physiological impact of poor nutritional health. At the same time, Ken was showing clips from Food Inc. to his 7th grade class, discussing industrial food systems and food deserts. In a casual conversation following our classes, something clicked into place! In many ways, both of us saw our own interests and curricula as separate rather than a part of a holistic curricula that could expose the dynamic systems that are unsustainable for our future well-being. We were moved to make a change and we spent the rest of the year talking whenever we could about all the ways in which our curricula and learning goals overlapped. We also learned how our own personal and professional interests could be captured by educating for a sustainable future in a more nuanced and all-encompassing manner. These moments challenged us to reframe and re-articulate the concept of Educating for a Sustainable Future. Recently, we have used the new United Nation’s (UN) model of sustainable development goals to guide our integrative model of EFS. Similar to the UN model, we are attempting to integrate curricula and school initiatives around peace; justice and equity; reduced inequality; good health and well-being; reduced inequities by race, class and gender; responsible production, consumption; and climate action.
Our preliminary work has been with faculty and administration to show how much is already being done in these content areas. This has resulted in several ah-ha moments across disciplines and divisions. We are examining our diversity curriculum, service learning programs and sustainability programs to adopt common language, curricular alignment and look for opportunities to showcase this work to the various stakeholders in our institution in order to keep the momentum going.
Educating for a Sustainable Future (EFS) requires that students understand larger interconnected systems. We believe it is limiting to view Diversity, Community Service, Ethics, and Environmentalism as separate initiatives. By viewing these critical components of education holistically, we feel we are better able to articulate the interconnections our school wide curriculum and community initiatives. As a result, we believe our school’s mission and educational philosophy can be more clearly articulated and powerful. More importantly, our children will receive an education that prepares them for the global economy and equips them with the ability and purpose-driven motivation to be agents of change in creating a sustainable future.