Thoughts+from+the+Education+Field

Within the field of education there are many avenues of sustainability. We would appreciate hearing your thoughts on sustainability and where you believe it applies to education. || ** Kim Markwart - Grade 6/7 Teacher ** I think sustainability means different things to different individuals. As an educator, I believe that sustainability begins with building confidence within our students, as well as, within ourselves. When this can be accomplished the gains in all other areas are huge. In addition to this, we need to have an understanding of what level our students are functioning at in order to build upon their current academic, physical and spiritual levels. I believe that the Multiple Intelligences is one way that we can begin to understand our students and who they are as individuals. It is also essential that students gain an understanding of who they are, how they learn and what they have to offer to their learning environment and community of learners. In gaining this understanding, their confidence will flourish. || **Matt Brown - Grade 7/8 Teacher**       In order to understand sustainability and education, we must first look at the relationship between education and industry. Why do we educate? Currently, our primary reason for educating students is to support industrial needs. Likewise, industry relies upon certain educational outcomes in order to continue operating the way it does. In changing the way we educate, the argument could be brought forward that we are not preparing our youth for the demands of industry. We must ask, are we, as educators, providing a service to industry or, is the industry a product of what we provide? If the latter is true, then we play an important role in moving toward sustainability. Producing different types of thinkers will logically result in different types of industry – perhaps industry that supports sustainable values. So, how can we move forward? 1. Provide students with an opportunity to step away from “everyday life” to reflect upon and prioritize values. 2. Seek experiences in the out of doors that will help students understand the complexity and importance of the natural world. 3. Educate students about ecological impact and challenge them to seek sustainable alternatives to our current way of operating. 4. Build confidence in our students so that they are able generate and promote new ways of thinking, even when confronted by challenges/ critics. 5. Employ teaching strategies that support critical and creative thinking (Ex. differentiation, inquiry and experiential learning). 6. Model sustainable values by showing leadership through our words and actions. 7. Suggest to schools, divisions and government entities that sustainable education is critical to our future and urge them to act accordingly.
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Sustainability is a concept or idea that impacts all of us in different and dynamic ways. I see sustainablity as something we all need to be aware of and conscious of in our everyday lives. As educators, we hold great potential to impact and nurture the concept of sustainability in our students. We can teach them that each and everyone of them has a responsibility to work towards a sustainable future. As an administrator, potential exists to instill in a staff, and then in turn in a student body, the need to be aware of what sustainability is and work towards a sustainable future for all of us. An example of that is to include an awareness and an action plan related to sustainability in school goals. For example, considering the amount of photocopying a school is doing. By decreasing the number of photocopies in a school, not only do you create an action that considers sustainability, you also create an action that is cost effective and can look at best teaching practices as well. I believe that hand in hand with sustainability, economics, values and culture need to be considered. I see all of these concepts being tied closely together. I also feel that when sustainability is considered, its global impact must also be looked at. This may mean that a student looks at sustainability as it pertains to their school, not only their classroom. Then from the school, the student must look at the community, the system, the city and so on, to fully appreciate the value of the concept of sustainability.
 * Bryce Buchanan - Vice Principa**l

I preface my contribution to this wiki by explaining that I have not been part of the 12 weeks of reading, discussion and interaction on this topic with the grad class. My perspective is informed by my current view of sustainability of education. When I think of sustainability in education I can’t help but wonder, what practices are worth sustaining? Whom do they benefit? Whom do they disenfranchise?
 * Marnie McMillan - Educator**

[|Community authors of Wikipedia state], “In a social context, sustainability is expressed as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” How well are educators and education systems meeting the needs of today’s learners and are we building for the future or compromising the future with our current practices?

Author, futurist, and educational consultant [|David Thornburg] asks the question, “Are we preparing our students for their future – or our past?” [|David Warlick], author, educator and consultant states, “Our job, as educators, is to prepare our students for their futures. This job today is especially challenging, because for the first time in history, we cannot clearly describe the future for which we are preparing our children. Our world and the information that describes it are changing too quickly” (2004). Author, consultant and educational designer [|Mark Prensky]states, “Students come to school equipped to learn on many levels, using multiple pathways and drawing on multiple intelligences, but today’s curricula do not meet their needs, and too often school is the least engaging part of a student’s day. Schools do their students a disservice when they fail to teach literacy in the expressive new language that their students have already begun to use before they even arrive” (2005). [|Sir Kenneth Robinson] (whose video clips are posted within this wiki) states that we are involved in a global revolution, in which things that we have taken for granted turn out to be untrue. Robinson challenges the current structures and approaches to education. If children beginning school today will be retiring, if they retire, around 2070, a world we cannot even begin to imagine, how are we as educators preparing our students to live lives with meaning and purpose if much of what we do is designed around historical concepts of education and schooling?

With the average age of teachers within our province in the mid-40’s, many educators have lived and taught in a steady state which has not required them to continue learning or to re-learn how they educate students. The increasing pace of change influenced by a world of digital technologies is influencing every aspect of life – the positive or negative perspectives of that change dependent on the individual empowerment or disempowerment within their life.

If educators believe they need to prepare their learners for their futures and not their own pasts, then within this rapidly changing world, connected through digital technologies, our learning spaces have to provide learners with ongoing opportunities to communicate and collaborate through build global communities. In a digital world in which physical space has taken on different meanings, educators have every opportunity to work towards helping students understand multiple perspectives which will influence their abilities to work towards and sustain world peace. In order to do this, educators must have the skills to be able to help learners access multiple forms of information, critique and validate that information, transform the information rather than just reproduce information and create, produce and share their ideas and information with a global audience. These opportunities will help build the critical and creative thinking skills that have long be part of our curriculum, but often not achieved. These opportunities will help our learners face the increasing pace of change that will influence how they live their lives.

Kumashiro (2004), states, “People are often invested in the status quo ... Change requires a willingness to step outside of this comfort zone. And for those who are favored by or benefit from the status quo, change may be even more difficult since it requires interrupting one’s own privilege.”

I believe Kumarshiro’s statement has many different interpretations with respect to sustainability. For many educators, pressure to make changes in their practice causes disruption and discomfort – not the kind of feelings, or state of being, most educators are comfortable with. If we want to create an educational system that is worth sustaining for future generations, we need to look around at the world in which our students live and make changes that will **benefit their learning //for their future//**. For many educators, this will require "interrupting one's own privilege" - stepping out of the power and control positions educators often assume and working along side our students as learners, explorers and experimenters, in a changing world that we cannot predict. David Thornburg suggests what we are experiencing is right in front of us on our keyboards on two keys: "**Control - Shift**".