An Interview with Todd Menadier

Todd is among the twenty four participants, representing nine different communities, working with The Cloud Institute to lead New Jersey toward sustainability through education.   As a physical science teacher, Todd is in a strategic position to link youth to long-term sustainability through education.  His recent efforts with the school and faculty reflect many of the Cloud Institute’s goals for developing this training for educators in 2008 including inspiring educators and community members to educate for sustainability and create strategic partnerships between schools and communities to learn to live sustainably.

Prior to joining NJ Learns, Todd had a strong personal interest in sustainability and had already integrated this interest into his science education.  His Sustainable Energy course introduces students to harnessing and delivering solar, wind, geothermal, and other alternative technologies.  As other teachers began to take note of the work he was doing in this science course, there was a growing interest in making the school a Green School.  But, as he describes, “there were difficulties there.  We don’t have anything green here, we don’t even recycle.” Administrators and faculty discussed the ideas of putting up banners and “telling other people what to do to make the school green.”  The emerging discussion led Todd to see an opportunity to leverage the interest in sustainability and bring about real change in his school.

At a staff meeting, Todd was asked to give a talk about creating a committee on sustainability.  As he explains, “I got up and asked people to come to my classroom for fifteen minutes after school. I couldn’t believe it, we only have 42 faculty and 17 people showed up.  It is hard enough to get teachers to stay after school.  That is why I said fifteen minutes and they stayed for 2 hours. I talked about green jobs and that we should educate for green jobs.  Then, I asked them, ‘where do we think we are going without the children?’ So, I used a lot of the ideas and slides from the NJ Learns training and everything that I learned from Cloud.”  In doing so, Todd “created a shared understanding of Education for Sustainability and generated sufficient interest to create a small learning community of 7 leaders in his school.”

Creating a shared understanding of sustainability and how to educate for it, as well as galvanizing group support is important because EfS is going beyond just going green into creating communities that learn together to create a sustainable future.  New Jersey Learns has focused on the importance of creating a shared understanding of Sustainability as a basis to Educate for Sustainability.  We bring communities together to think critically about their futures, and act collaboratively to create a desired future.

Abraham Lincoln once said that the “best way to predict your future is to create it.”  And with the clear intent to create a sustainable future, NJ learns targets schools, teachers, and community leaders to educate youth to understand the concepts of sustainability and mobilize their communities for change.   Todd discussed the program in one of our conversations, “I think it really lit a fire… There is very little sense of community in our school.  So, people were excited to hear about something, people really grabbed onto this idea.  This green stuff is everywhere and people really want to know about it.  Now, people want to know that this is a green school and what that entails.  That is going to be the hard part.  They were so excited to be a part of something new.  There just aren’t a lot of schools doing this.  Plus, we’re in an urban environment and we can really make a difference.  Our next step is an awareness campaign. And this will be tricky. A lot of people want to tell other people what to do.  But, I think we need to educate people how to do it so that it makes sense, they have awareness, and they just do it.  Central to this idea of education is bringing people together to share in a desire to generate change within their schools that ripples out to their communities.  Good education creates good citizens and the power of Education for Sustainability allows people, as Todd explained, to ‘go beyond climate change and recycling and instead to generate shared understanding that leads to action.”

What is Todd Doing in His School?

The learning and action that Todd has seen in just a few short months has been profound.  He continues to teach his Sustainable Energy course while focusing on integrating sustainability into his chemistry course as a way to teach students that what they know and what they do has a powerful impact on their communities that goes beyond the state of New Jersey.  For example, “we just started a recycling campaign for cell phones.  But the students don’t just have to recycle the cell phones, they actually get points for understanding the chemistry behind landfills and why they have to recycle their cell phones instead of putting them into landfills.”  He has also integrated sustainability into his chemistry course through “the creation of soaps, lotions, and paints using sustainable and organic materials. I just purchased The Natural Paint Book which has recipes for non-toxic, long lasting, durable paints that I’m hoping to make and share with the Art Dept and use in projects around the school.  I’m really excited and hoping to get the materials and the process started soon. My class room could really use a fresh coat.”

Todd’s work is just one of the examples of how great, engaged education can spark schools and communities to learn together to create a sustainable community.  Aligning his commitment to sustainability to New Jersey Learns has helped him to spark his school to educate for it, as he describes, “I already knew about sustainability before, I had already started the sustainable energy program but [NJ Learns training] has given me the power to educate for it.”