I was asked the other day by someone from a Community Interest Company:
What do you think are the most important, urgent and practical things that can and should be done in schools and in the community to advance ESD?
help school leaders understand the learning and other (often very tangible) benefits that can accrue from taking sustainability seriously
help teachers make connections between what they and other teachers teach, and with the management of the school, and what's going on in the community
help learners make some collected sense of the disparate sustainability-focused experiences they have in and out of school – and
help them develop the skills of citizenly activity so that they are able to work with others to foster positive socio-environmental change.
And then I said:
The trouble, though, is that these are rather abstract ideas because they are not [yet] grounded in the real context of a school – a community, in its community. Thus, the most useful & urgent things that might be done will differ from school to school – as will, just to complicate matters, views on what is useful & urgent. So, if you're looking to work with local schools, there's no short-cut to finding out what they do and would like to do.
So, what would you have said?
Respond