Educational Programs

Metric #1: Events

This START metric is about organizing and hosting sustainability-related events, with students as the intended audience. Examples include assemblies, guest speakers, fairs, summits, symposiums, webinars, movie screenings, or even a live-streamed concert.

Metric #2: Outdoor Programs

This START metric is about encouraging students to connect with their natural surroundings through activities like camping, hiking, stream cleanups and outdoor summer camps. Schools will provide information about or access to outdoor programs, and will later require student participation, to promote student well-being and encourage sustainable, nature-conscious mindsets in schools and students alike.

Metric #3: Student Groups

This START metric is about building student engagement in environmental and/or sustainability activities, such as an Enviro-Club, a Student Sustainability Council, or student-driven collection drives, carbon-offsetting initiatives or basic waste audits. These groups should be student-driven, active and engaged through recurring meetings.

Metric #4: Student Orientation

This START metric is about educating students about campus sustainability during orientation, using school facilities as teaching tools while introducing them to concepts and practices like energy efficiency/conservation, waste reduction, water quality, awareness, transportation practices, air quality.

Metric #5: Course Development Training

This START metric is about educating and incentivizing teachers to integrate sustainability into their curriculum. With an understanding of the broad meaning of sustainability, which encompasses economic, social and environmental factors, this training will help teachers integrate sustainability-related content into their existing courses.

Metric #6: Course Content

This START metric is about integrating sustainability-related content into academic subjects in every grade. Rather than offering Sustainability as a subject on its own, it is incorporated into existing courses. This metric goes hand-in-hand with Course Development Training (metric 7), in which teachers learn how to do this integration.

Metric #7: Outdoor Learning Environments

This START metric is about providing access to outdoor areas that are readily accessible to classes (low cost/ low time expense), and can serve as a learning space for various existing subjects. For example, an on-campus garden or a neighborhood stream are environments that are easily integrated into the Science or Biology curricula for many age groups.

Metric #8: Sustainability Learning Outcomes

This START metric is about formally or informally assessing students according to whether or not they've achieved predetermined, sustainability-related learning outcomes within at least 2 school subjects each year.