Five Approaches to Teaching Sustainability that aren’t a Recycling Week
Sustainability is a bit of a buzz word currently — a shorthand to show how morally upstanding and forward-thinking one is. Yet as soon as you start digging into the whole topic a lot of murk starts to arise.
For a business, the discussion might be around whether production processes are sustainable, or is it more about influencing the behaviour of the customer with your product? The debate in schools is not a million miles away either; do you teach children about the value, the need for sustainability or do you enable them to actually be sustainable? Is there scope for both?
I guess that all depends on the approach. Too often, the choice really being made is around being visibly interested in saving the planet, without actually disrupting the day-to-day. For most, this boils down to an awareness week of some sort. This forms two parts — sharing knowledge around food waste, or litter-picking, or reducing water consumption — information that we’re already well aware of. This is then coupled with a bit of healthy competition — who can collect the most crisp packets? I scoff, but that’s because too often this kind of behaviour has a dwindling impact because it places the emphasis on the individual to make the change.
Is there a better way of approaching sustainability then?
TENsquared, Twinkl’s education research network held its first working group last week, inviting two primary school eco-leads to discuss their efforts to make sustainability more sustainable. From that, we have picked out 5 key approaches that schools can start working towards.
- A whole-school accountability
There are plenty of opportunities to bring sustainability to the centre of a school’s practice; a clear focus within the Improvement plan, a sustainability policy published on the website, reporting to governors. The challenge there is that schools have so many other priorities to deal with, why add an additional burden that is being pushed by Ofsted? Yet as Einstein pointed out, ‘Within difficulty, lies opportunity’. Without adding the challenge of sustainability, there is little drive to seek the opportunities it could bring.
2. Practice what you preach
Recycling can be a challenge. What makes it even more difficult is when you teach children about plastic recycling, the woes of single-use and how to separate out accordingly — only to find that any efforts are redundant, because the waste management contract the school has doesn’t allow for ‘that type’ or recycling. So make sure your teaching and your practice align — and if you’re embarrassed to teach about the recycling you currently have on offer it’d be worth exploring how that can be changed.
3. Teaching starts with staff
Setting a good example and modelling behaviour is always the best way to change the habits of others around you. Especially impressionable young urchins. So this has to be the approach adopted by staff around sustainability. No quick trips for a prepared salad from the supermarket, or a Grande Latte in a disposable cup. Turn the lights and computer off yourself, rather than asking kids to do it. Importantly, get everyone involved; there’s no point taking the time to instigate a new waste process if no one has included the cleaning team. Be the change you want to see (It’s better than live, love, laugh for the staff noticeboard).
4. Sustainability at the heart of the curriculum
There are so many opportunities to talk about sustainability within the national curriculum — from explicit mentions in geography, to the more subtle with the phrasing of maths problems. A sustainable curriculum can also take in the way learning is delivered — especially in resource-heavy subjects like art. I mean, most teachers are already feeling the impact of why a sustainable approach is needed, with limits placed on printing — they just need to be given a chance to own that, rather than feel the victims of change. Simply put, there are so many ways to include sustainability into your teaching, and you can lead the way.
5. Change begins at home
Of course, the damage to the rainforests and our oceans needs to be stopped — the images we see of destruction being wrought, in such contrast to the beauty of those locations is enough to make anybody want to change their ways. As they finish the tube of Pringles and chuck it in the recycling bin, even though the mix of plastic, metal and card used to construct the tube needs specialist recycling to stop it ending up in landfill. There are so many ways to make a difference in the local environment that will have the knock-on required to help the bigger picture. But rather than wondering if everything is doing the same as you, lead it. Persuasive writing tasks are that much more effective if there’s some actual persuasion going on.
Over the coming weeks, TENsquared will be digging deeper into each of these approaches, sharing best practice and providing clear actions for you to get involved with. How many of these approaches do you think your school is using? Are there other ways that you’re making a positive impact? Join our Guild community to tell us more about them.
We’d also be interested to know just how many of these apply to business? We’re pretty certain that there’s home for all of these within most companies…
