An extended conversation between two school districts began in the summer of 2009 at the SOL Institute in Garrison, New York, where several participants from two school districts met.  During the week-long institute, the group studied sustainability education, systems thinking, and spent many hours discussing how to support school change.  In the fall of 2009 the Sol Ed Partnership offered a grant possibility to foster collaboration among Sol Ed Sites.  Burlington and MRH were eager to continue the conversation, and so this partnership was born. This April 2010 conversation focuses on sustainability education and high quality student work.  Next fall, we will participate in a second conversation in Burlington that extends and elaborates on the themes developed here.

http://web.me.com/choelzer/Burlington_Site_Visit/Home.html

Sustainability, Leadership, and a High School Journey into Urban Agriculture

By Leah Mayor and Marie-Claire Munnelly

Early on this rainy Saturday, students from the South Bronx found themselves at an unlikely spot.  Turning the corner from the Morgan Street L Stop, 12 high school students folded themselves into an unassuming Bushwick pizza restaurant.  However, this morning we’re not here for the pizza. We’re here to take part of a 3-day sustainability leadership series hosted by the Cloud Institute and the Brooklyn Grange.

The Cloud Institute has been inspiring young people to be leaders in sustainability since 2002.  Our youth program targets high school students, future leaders, to instill hope for a sustainable future fully equipped with a healthy environment, a strong economy, and a just society.  Our leadership program is a mix of skill building, leadership development, and service learning.  This year’s program students joined forces with Brooklyn Grange visionaries Ben Flanner, Brandon Hoy, and Gwen Schantz who gave the students an introduction to the program, a tour of Roberta’s, and an introduction to the Brooklyn Grange.  Blending traditional agrarian heritage, a hipster present, and a sustainable future, the Brooklyn Grange is an aspiring rooftop farm seeking to augment Brooklyn’s Industrial landscape and mitigate rural dependency.

What better way to empower students to dream big than to see evidence of other people doing this (and succeeding) in their communities?  Roberta’s (and now the Brooklyn Grange) started as a vision but has developed into a lucrative business that contributes to local food production and sustainability in action all while building strong ties with their communities. The tour included beekeeping boxes, a rooftop greenhouse, and even a giant brick oven enclosed in a steel shipping crate.   Roberta’s currently grows 20% of its food in a hoop house that sits on top of a shipping container that houses a radio station.  Underneath these hoops Roberta’s is growing all kinds of herbs, many flowers and vegetables. The tour highlighted the ways in which the BG farmers dove right into each endeavor, taking many small risks for the sake of diversifying their output and furthering their goal of producing all of their food.

Every great project, along with every good youth program, should start with a day in the rain.

Students coming in from the Bronx were waylaid by their lengthy commutes and weekend train schedules but they were not completely deterred.  And once we got started, students got over their Saturday morning weariness and began to really delve into the issues that this millennial generation is really confronting: sustainability, justice, economic viability, and their role as emerging leaders.

We introduced them to some of the ideas we wanted to cover throughout the day:

Thinking “outside the box” and on top of the roof tops

• Upstream problem identification and seeking to solve problems at their root
• And creating a shared vision for a positive, sustainable future

We considered what exactly it is that makes Brooklyn stand out as a sustainable business case, from their economic success, transparency and accountability to the neighborhood, inciting a story of hope and change, all while working within the parameters of ecological design and the limitations and bounty of natural systems.

Once rooted in the concepts that link sustainability and leadership, students had the perfect opportunity to turn their talk to more applied learning and service.   We worked with the Grange leaders to build flower boxes for the sidewalk stressing the importance of engaging the community and becoming a positive model for others to follow, we built a rain gutter out of reclaimed PVC piping to tap into the natural hydrological cycle of the area, saving water and saving themselves money. Then we took our activities at the Grange and applied them to contributions that we could make in our own communities; inspiring leadership among youth across the city, more serviceable biking lanes, and a second tier garbage truck that picks up the litter that the current sanitation system leaves behind, were just some of the ideas that these young sustainability champions had for their neighborhoods.  Many seeds were planted this week as we filled our window boxes and began starters for the Brooklyn Grange. But the most important were the seeds that connected generations across boroughs sharing in the same hope for healthy communities and a sustainable future.

Learning is sometimes best accomplished by teaching, as dozens of Tahoma High School seniors experienced recently in visits to each of the district’s elementary schools to talk about environmental sustainability.

Bus loads of seniors from American Politics and Global Issues classes visited all four Tahoma elementary schools May 6 to spend a couple of hours talking to fourth-grade students, engaging them in educational games and answering questions.

The visits are the culmination of more than a year of planning and research by Tahoma High School APGI teachers, led by Darcie Muller and Lindsey Hatch, and the district’s Teaching and Learning Department to develop a new learning unit called Humans and the Environment. Seniors studied environmental issues and then developed their own lessons that could be presented to fourth-grade students. Fourth graders also are studying Humans and the Environment, along with students in seventh, ninth, 11^th and 12^th grades.

“This unit challenges students, as complex thinkers, to consider how environmental issues will affect their generation and the ones that follow it,” Muller said. Because the curriculum covers several grade levels, having seniors circle back and present information to students who are just beginning their studies seemed appropriate.

“We wanted our call to action to be a culminating project that would support student learning at the fourth-grade level,” she said.

But what really made the plan work is the enthusiasm of the high school students.

“The best part of this entire project was seeing the fourth graders be entertained and want to get involved with our projects,” senior Ben Rogan said. “It was a great feeling to see that all of our work paid off.”

The seniors were required to research topics and then present them in creative ways that would appeal to fourth-graders. Many used laptop computers for PowerPoint presentations, quizzes and games designed to help the younger students understand. But students also relied on more traditional teaching methods that used colored paper, posters, flash cards and even a puppet show.

Each class was divided into four groups, with seniors presenting different topics simultaneously and then rotating to another group after 15 minutes. By the time seniors were boarding buses for the return trip to Tahoma High School, fourth graders had been introduced to topics that included global warming, deforestation, recycling, energy efficiency, preserving water resources, and dangers associated with plastic waste at sea.

Seniors came away impressed by their younger counterparts.

“When we went down to teach the fourth graders I realized that they have such a mind for learning and they could sometimes come up with better ways to help than we could,” senior Christina Kayler said. “They also shared that they knew much more than we gave them credit for and it was cool to see them apply their knowledge to ask and learn more.”

Muller said the program will continue, building on what was learned this year.

The seniors were very excited about their projects,” she said. “I also received a plethora of positive feedback from the elementary school teachers and principals; everyone is excited to make this an annual event. We still have some items to tweak, but overall, this was an amazing experience for everyone involved.”

We are pleased to invite you to our fourth annual Society for Organizational Learning (SoL) Education Partnership Community Gathering in conjunction with our Youth Leadership Course to be held in Chicago on July 19^th -July 23^rd, 2010.

PLEASE SAVE THE DATE:

Arrival for this program is Sunday, July 18^th (early registration will take place between 4-6 p.m.) The program will begin on Monday, July 19^th, at 9:00 a.m. ending on Friday July 23^rd at 4:00p.m. The Core Course will be held in Chicago.  More details regarding the program location will be provided in March, 2010.

4^th annual community gathering & youth leadership core course

The vision of the SoL Education Partnership is to create systemic change for a sustainable future by forming strong collaborative relationships within, between, and among schools and communities.  In this special event, students and adults will engage, learn, and apply their learning together in our National Learning Community.

Who Should Attend?

This learning experience is designed to enhance team learning, so sites are urged to bring stakeholders, including superintendents, school administrators, teachers, staff, students, youth leaders, college and university partners, business partners, NGOs, local government partners, and community leaders. The core course is for stakeholder teams from member sites as well as sites interested in joining the SoL Education Partnership. This program is open to non-members by special invitation only.

Anticipated Learning

After having attended the course, participants will have an understanding of the core competencies required for building schools that learn within communities that learn for a sustainable future. Participants will also have an enhanced ability to think systemically, communicate effectively, and lead effectively.  They will also have on-going access to a supportive learning community with others who are engaged in creating learning communities for sustainability.

NEXT STEPS

We will be sending out more information about our Chicago location, area hotels, program costs, and a sample agenda in March, 2010.

We are grateful to the Nathan Cummings Foundation and to our partnership members for their continued support of the SoL Education Partnership

Susan Lanigan

Crossroads School in St. Louis

By Barbara S. Rothschild • Courier-Post Staff • November 22, 2009

CHERRY HILL — Cherry Hill High School East is going green by participating in a program that can earn $5,000 to fund an ambitious environmental project.

East biology teachers Joanne Long and Erica DeMichele applied for a grant from RecycleBank’s Green Schools program and were awarded the maximum amount toward refurbishing the school’s greenhouse and science wing courtyard, both in disrepair.

The project, which will cost about $6,000 in all, includes the creation of an organic garden in the courtyard where students will grow food to donate to a local food bank. The renovated greenhouse will be the site of experimental design projects that will use different methods of growing to promote sustainability.

Long and DeMichele said they were inspired after participating in a two-day Princeton conference sponsored by the New York-based Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education, which works with teachers to prepare youth for an environment-embracing mind shift.

The Cherry Hill East teachers were energized by The Cloud Institute’s mission — to develop in young people and their teachers new knowledge and new ways of thinking to achieve economic prosperity and regenerate ecosystem health.

They applied for the grant from RecycleBank, a national pro-environment recycling organization whose year-old Green Schools program piggy-backs on its main activity — awarding its recycling members points per pound of materials they recycle.

Cherry Hill nonprofit groups are eligible for the grants because the township participates in RecycleBank. The school district also became a participant earlier this year.

Grants could range from $500 to $5,000. But groups don’t receive the money in a lump sum. They earn it by getting community members to donate recycling points to them.

Cherry Hill East has until Jan. 10 to raise awareness and get folks to donate their points through an online site. Every 100 points donated earns $10 for the school, so it needs 50,000 points.

Cherry Hill East environmental studies teacher Gina Oh will work with her students to develop environmentally friendly, paper-free, electronic ways of promoting the project and getting residents to donate points. They plan to create a Facebook page, advertise on the local cable channel dedicated to district news, and perhaps also use Twitter and e-mail to get the message out.

The project will also play a key role in a hoped-for change in the high school biology curriculum, Long said.

“We are looking at introducing a new ninth-grade curriculum in environmental science and could bring in an Advanced Placement course in environmental science, too,” she said.

Marsha Pecker, Cherry Hill East’s assistant principal for biology, said those two courses for ninth-graders and upperclassmen would replace the current environmental studies course for upperclassmen only.

Like the environmental studies course, the proposed courses will include a community service requirement in keeping with the watchdog aspect of environmentalism.

Students already collect potato peels, egg shells, coffee grinds and grass clipping for composting and also practice conservation by collecting water in rain barrels.

District schools that received Green Schools grants last year were Cherry Hill High School West to grow vegetation on baseball dugout roofs and Bret Harte Elementary School for an outdoor classroom and sustainable garden.

In addition, Carusi Middle School also has a composting project.

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.”

An Interview with Tim Wood from the College School

Tim Wood has worked with middle school youth at the College School in St. Louis, Missouri since 1984.  As the head of their Horticulture Program and a member of the Society for Organizational Learning (SOL) Education Partnership, he has been a leader in linking his school to the broader community in an effort to create community-based change toward sustainability.  He spoke to us about a project he calls The Woodland Restoration Project: an effort to promote the growth of native plants, and increase bird and wildlife species in the community, bringing his school into closer connection with their community. The goal of The Woodland Restoration Project is two-fold.  It seeks to build biodiversity while engaging students with the rich and diverse community that surrounds their school.  The Woodland Restoration Project begins with a park.

Non-native plant species can cause detrimental effects to native species within a given area.  Nested within a larger system, this can also negatively affect insect and animal biodiversity within an ecosystem.  Tim wanted to remove these invasive plant species in hopes to promote native plant growth.  He began by bringing together a dizzying collective of thirty-five people not just within the school, but from the community at-large.  As he explains, “the park next to our school was overrun with an invasive species called bush honeysuckle and so we got students together with park people, and talked to them about removing the bush honeysuckle, and doing it as a school-community project.”  Tim had everyone from kids, to parents, to local business owners, “chain-sawing and running the bush honeysuckle through a chipper.  It’s loud, it’s sweaty, it really is a tough job.”  Through the project, kids are learning and experiencing more than how to cut down the weeds and clear away bushes.

The whole project is an opportunity for students to learn how to care for an ecosystem filled with life.  It establishes:

“The importance of native plants and their connection to these plants and wildlife – what we’ve been trying to do on our campus is to plant native [species], specifically in order to attract wildlife.  Sometimes it’s really specific, right now we’re planting Swamp Milkweed for our monarch butterflies, we actually have a monarch weigh station at our school.  We also plant for humming birds, and for specific butterflies and moths as well.  Our theory is that if you invite insects into your campus, birds will follow; what you’re doing is opening up your campus to a wider variety of wildlife.  What we’re trying to do is make it a natural connection, which will hopefully lead wildlife up to our campus.”

This project has also been a critical opportunity to link students and their community, as they engage together to promote biodiversity, connect to each other, and learn from one another.

A few community members were not originally excited about the restoration project.  As Tim describes, “an older man came right out with it, and said, ‘well you know I’m not sure if I want to pull out all of these bushes, I have chipmunks, rabbits, and squirrels, and I really like to see wildlife’ and I said, ‘well, I respect that, and this is the back of your yard. If you don’t want me to cut it down I won’t.’  So, I came back and told him the reason we were doing it was to increase the diversity of wildlife, to try to bring more wildlife into the area by planting native plants.  He went home and read some of the information that I had handed out, and the next time I was in the area, he was outside cutting down honeysuckle with his chainsaw.”

“For our school, the community is part of the classroom”, says Tim. “It’s been a really enjoyable thing to watch people come out and work together to get something done.”  According to Tim, this entire process has really changed the kids.  “Our kids are out interviewing people, they’re taking local mass transit to get around to places; we have our own school buses, and every day there’s someone using the bus.  Our kids are out in nature, out in the city, they’re just out doing a lot of stuff all the time.”  This project has created within students a sense of place and belonging as a result of promoting the connection between their classroom and their community.

A Collective Vision for a healthy and sustainable future

“There’s this really perfect image that I saw at the SOL Education Partnership workshop last summer.  It is an image of a rubber band.  And on one end of the rubber band, you have what you expect to happen.  And on the other end of the rubber band, you have what really happened. The rubber band [stretched between your vision and your current reality] creates a tension between what you want and what you have, and the question is- do you raise what you have up to become what you want, or do you lower what you want down to what you have?  I have to be honest.  This project was a little bit of a compromise between the two!

When I was at the workshop this summer, they would ask us to take some aspects of the world and envision them the way we wanted them to be.  The thing I envisioned was this project.  I don’t know if I’ve ever spent so much time trying to imagine something the way that I wanted it, and this time it turned out just the way I wanted it!

Expecting and planning for what you want certainly enables you to make what you want happen, and that’s been a powerful learning experience for me.  At the College School, we have come up with a framework for visioning around natural processes, things like community, interaction, adaptation, change, all natural processes.  That’s the focal point, that’s the framework around which we’re going to build our school.”

As Tim describes, the connection between the classroom and the community is vitally important.  Teaching students to look at the world from a different perspective, “taking it from a personal level…to a bigger level of what’s good for the world, what’s good for everything else, that’s the key process of thought for making a positive impact.”

An Interview with Uchenna Ogu

December 2008

I am a kindergarten teacher at The College School, an independent, experiential school in the Midwest. I’ve been teaching here for about 8 years. I take children hiking and help to foster a love for the natural world.  I teach sustainability principles and teach children to read. I empower children to understand that they can influence the world, no matter their age.  I found out about The College School when we were asked to observe here for an education class at my university. I fell in love with the approach and I always knew I’d work here someday.

I appreciate the child-centered approach and the life-long love of learning that has developed in both students and teachers at my school. Our school’s priority to keep up with best practices keeps me intellectually stimulated- I am always working to improve my teaching and as teachers we get plenty of support for that.  I am passionate about the outdoors and nature and appreciate an environment that encourages us to stay connected with the natural world.

One of the projects I have worked on spanned two years and the final product is a nature’s alphabet book made by the students for other children.  As the lead teacher of the investigation, I listened carefully to children’s ideas and provided a scaffold for the project to unfold.  I worked to provide children time and opportunity to collect letters of the alphabet in nature.  I found ways to connect their ideas to the curriculum and the standards and worked to create deep and meaningful learning opportunities.  The second year, I noticed that the children were making letters out of sticks.  It seemed only natural to continue the project from the previous year. I invited the older children back to work as mentors or experts to support the younger group of learners.

The project began when I noted the excitement and enthusiasm that evolved from reading a book to the class that one student brought about letters of the alphabet in nature.  When she had the idea that the children collect their own letters, I checked in with the class to see if there was interest there.  The children were very excited about the idea.  Later, after doing some work behind the scenes- for example, planning out the first steps of the project, connecting to standards, working to connect their ideas to our language arts curriculum I met with the students again in small groups and we revisited the book.  I took some notes on their initial ideas about how we could collect the letters.  Then with clipboards, paper, pens and camera in hand we went outside to discover and document. I led them to slow down when we were outside, to appreciate beauty, the intricate patterns and designs in nature, the different fragrances and smells and sounds.

I believe that key relationships developed over the course of the project when the first graders came to support the kindergarteners with the project.  It was gratifying to see them take ownership of their work from the previous year, work collaboratively with the kindergarten students and pass along information, ideas and emotions centering around their love for collecting alphabet letters in nature.

I felt tremendous support from my teammates, Rosie and Suzie.  Rosie was my teammate the first year and Suzie the second.  They were both encouraging, and allowed me to bounce ideas off of them and they worked with me to find opportunities for small group work in our classroom schedule.  I also appreciate the support of the first grade teachers who allowed me to work with some of their students in the afternoons.

This way of working with children is a type of “negotiated learning,” which as George Forman describes, “is child originated and teacher framed.” I rarely know at the beginning, where a project is going to take us.  Sometimes we hit a dead end, back up and try a new route.  Other times we begin with one idea and end up with a completely new idea driven by interests of the adults and children.  For me, it’s all about the journey- that’s where the real learning takes place for both teachers and students. Those lessons are always valuable for me as an educator.

I believe that this type of project reflects many best practices in education from place-based education to sustainability to fundamentals of the Reggio Approach to experiential education to inquiry to the project approach to meeting standards and to supporting a strong kindergarten curriculum.

This project has impacted many people: Teachers at our school, children in the first grade and kindergarten and their families, and other educators who have seen the work. The children who were a part of the project reflected on their learning.  They said:

“ We learned a lot this year.  We learned how to take care of nature and that respecting the earth is better for everyone.  I learned to love trees.  I love fresh air.  Letters could be in your name or outside or anywhere.  You can think about them when you are sleeping or make them out of sticks and flowers. We worked very hard on making this book.  We hope you like it. ”

Projects like this one raise the standards for what and how we can expect children to learn. They illustrate that there are a variety of meaningful ways to learn important academic skills and concepts. They demonstrate the importance of helping children learn to love and respect the natural world in which we live. Concepts of sustainability can be taught effectively, even to the very young. Children are capable citizens of our community.  Now.  Not in ten years or twenty.  But, right now.

I am investigating ways to publish the work so that these ideas that we have explored about the image of children as capable and collaborative citizens of today and their ideas about respecting the earth can be shared with a wider audience.

I have a sense of hope that many more schools will begin to educate students in ways that work best for children and that sustainability principles and concepts will be woven into our fabric of life, into our school’s curricula and become as natural as breathing.  I like to think of Margaret Mead’s words, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”  You, me, the children involved in the project, all of us make up that small group of  ‘thoughtful, committed citizens’.  I believe that Margaret Mead is right, that we can change the world.

An Interview with Matt Diller from The College School

I love technology.  I push buttons and get things to work. My biggest contribution to our learning community is to say, “uncertainty is perfect, uncertainty is exactly what we want.” I’m a 3^rd grade teacher at the College School. There’s so much I can do with 3^rd graders at the College School because we’re a thematically integrated and experiential school. For example, going on a campout is an opportunity not just to go camping but to learn about how to budget for things you need to buy, the foods you need to serve, you’re creating a menu, even collecting and organizing data about your classmates preferences, preferences about what they might want to eat, or what time they want to go to bed. There are all sorts of opportunities for children to survey their classmates, organize that data, and present that data with some sort of analysis or conclusion. Imagine a bar graph that says almost everybody wants to go to bed at 10 o’clock, and nobody wants to go to bed at 8 o’clock. It’s pretty compelling to see this bar graph and say, “well as you can see most of us want to go to bed at 10, but perhaps we can accommodate the people who want to go to bed at 8, by being quiet after 9, they can take a book to their tents with a flashlight and enjoy some peaceful time.” We coach them to analyze that data and present it in a way that it meets the needs of the people in their immediate community.

Being a part of the College School is being part of a learning community.  We’ve often called the school “everyone’s garden,” we all “plant” something, and nurture something, and take care of it.  We also have to take ownership.  Along the lines of my place in the community as a teacher, and someone who believes that the school is my garden. I’ve always felt that ownership of the building and grounds of a place where every brick and every piece of mortar should scream out, “this is who we are!”

Wind Turbines were on the back-burner when we had two speakers, one from the Cloud Institute and also Josh Hahn, as presenters.  They enthusiastically shared information about wonderful school projects that had composting toilets and solar energy and green buildings.  During a presentation, a parent of a former student got up out of her chair and said, “Can we talk?” You know the school has asked me to consider some sort of beautiful sculpture to put in the front of the building.  She was an artist.  The school wanted something that people could see when they drove by.  She was wondering if a wind-turbine could be beautiful.

She was very enthusiastic about making this happen.  Before she left the school we looked at where a wind turbine might be, I showed her some pictures of some vertical axis turbines that are both beautiful but also have opportunities for research. In case you’re not familiar with the difference, a horizontal axis is like a pinwheel and a vertical axis is more like barbershop pole or an eggbeater.  We were discussing this and she was on her way out, I could tell she was feeling a little bit in pain, as she was climbing into her car, and said, “Matt, I want you to keep going with this. But, I’m going through cancer treatment. I’m going to beat this thing.  This will happen, go for it!” I never heard from her again; she got really sick.  Then she passed away.

People ask me, “What is it about you that makes stuff happen?” I was trying to find the word.   At first I thought it was hope, but then I thought you can hope all you want and nothing will happen. It’s something deeper than that, and I came to blind-faith. It’s this dumb naivety that I’m not smart enough to know that I can’t, so I just keep doing it. I always felt like there was someone behind me who had my back, and I just kept going. I also learned a few other tricks along the way. For instance I know that you have to be sort of a bulldog to make your dream come true, but you also have to be like the golden retriever, because if you’re an unlikable bulldog people will shut you down. You have to be a puppy bulldog in the sense that he’s persistent, but we like that about him.  I have learned to say, “What if we did this?” “Could this be a good idea?” Those are consensus building questions. I’ve discovered that when I am at my best, I can allow someone else to take the dream and let the dream be theirs. That’s when things really start coming true.

I moved forward from the wind turbine concept after my meeting knowing that I needed to go to students and get their help to have the vision become realized. Students have their own charisma, and when a child can speak eloquently and passionately and be well prepared to answer question, tough questions, about a vision, there is nothing more compelling to an adult than that.

I said, “what if we had a wind-turbine?” “Would it work for our school?” “Or is it a bad idea?” I said, I don’t know, and you might have an idea of what you think you might predict, but would you be willing to look into the question even if the answer is no, no we looked into it, and no its not for us. And out of the 25 kids, there were 6 or 7 who said, “yeah, okay”. As we moved forward there were 5 who showed up, and they had to put in all of their efforts after school, or whenever they could squeeze in some time. They weren’t excused from class, or any of their school responsibilities. They had to be engaged in pursuing this question. I really thought it was important to set these kids up…. for failure.  That may sound funny, but to be a risk taker you have to know that there is the hope that it might turn out a way that you desire but that you have to approach it with not such a deep attachment that you’ll be very disappointed if it doesn’t work, or if other people will shut you down because they feel that you’re not being realistic or considering the negative possibilities.

5 children presented a power point presentation to our building & grounds committee.   Our business manager said “I’ve been to thousands of meeting, and I’ve heard thousands of power point presentations and that was the most compelling and moving power point presentation I’ve seen.” I think that it was the charisma of youth, that he just felt that these kids have a dream, they have been thoughtful, they’ve done their homework, they were prepared to take tough questions, they understand that it’s not a done deal, and that is more persuasive if they came super attached. So I was sort of sharing my experience with facilitation of a dream with them… to help them pick up some traits of leadership.

I really believe the curriculum at that point was leadership training. I was presenting the possibility of being agents of change in their community in future. We set up meetings with the school board.  Then, set up a meeting with the Mayor with Webster Grove, not to get a permit, but to develop rapport.  And the Mayor, Gerry Welsh, was moved as well. I could swear I saw a twinkle and Gerry’s eye that she saw the future leaders of our community in those students.  She invited the building commissioner there, the committee for sustainability in our community of Webster Grove.  They were all very supportive. There was this magic that was powerful beyond the mechanics of the wind-turbine and they helped to nurture it.  The tenor was, “Let’s keep going with this, it’s going in the right direction, and everyone seems enthusiastic about this idea”

So there was always a feedback loop for keeping the adults involved, yet the students really felt that this was their project, that it was happening because of them.  And it was. And yet you could say the exact same thing about me, it was happening because of me, it was happening because of the students, it was happening because of Sheila and Louise sitting quietly in the back room saying “we like what we see”. It was happening because of Gerry Welsh saying “you go girls!” It was happening because everybody was taking ownership of the dream; but it was still a small percentage of the whole school, probably a total of 30 people of a community of 300 people.

There were a thousand obstacles in this project.  I told the students, as leaders you don’t have to be experts, a lot of times you just have to be visionaries constantly saying “Why not?” “What if?” “What’s next?” Asking those questions to the right people keeps the project moving. You have to really be creative in how you get those questions together, as closely together as possible and answer them sequentially, and then be able to ask “oh do you have any other questions?” “Could we go ahead and set a deadline for getting further questions so we can answer as many as possible and then move forward.”

It was also helpful to bring in outside advisors.  The Cloud Institute was a catalyst. In hosting the Cloud Institute and having Josh Hahn as presenters we were able to bring two people into the room.  Josh and the Cloud Institute began to ask us some really important questions:  “What sense do you make of what you’ve heard and what we’ve shared in the last few days? What might be the low hanging fruit? What might you do in your life that will make the change towards sustainability in education that maybe was excited or stimulated or inspired by these last three days?” We went around the room and the entire faculty shared what they might do.

You really need to identify the objections quickly because otherwise people will sit in the back row and just as you’re about to move forward they’ll throw you out.  It’s a dynamic that’s sure to happen in any environment and you have to be aware that that will happen and not be defeated by that, and just smile and say “great question, in fact if you have any more I would love to answer them for you.”   If you can share that with people it really helps.

Now, the wind turbine is up.  Now, the learning target is understanding the beauty of uncertainty in science.  I was watching this show and he said, “When you’re on a journey of discovery, uncertainty is the name of the game. It’s essential.”  Thomas Edison said, “I learned a thousand ways not to make a light bulb.” Now we’re in this wonderful phase of bringing people into the uncertainty of trying something.  For example, we’re still not collecting data because we’re having troubles with the software. And we are working out the kinks so a year from now when it’s working perfectly, and we’re collecting data and sharing that data… we’re settlers.  Then, there will be a whole new role for us to play.

I can say one piece of advice; anticipate problems. Then, channel these problems into opportunities so that you can say this is what our role is as a learning community. We are uniquely qualified as teachers to embrace these uncertainties and turn them into questions, and problems to solve, and to help others find comfort in what we discover. That’s truly the beauty of it.  I can see in the future our role will evolve. Right now, it’s helping people embrace uncertainty.