Student-Driven
There is no one ‘correct’ way to run START at your school, but we really encourage you to get students engaged in the process! This not only leads to deep learning about sustainability, but it empowers students through real-world problem-solving, data collection and solutions-based thinking START — and it makes the process more manageable!
What follows are steps for just one possible strategy for engaging students in START, elaborated on in sections below.
Request permission: Ask the relevant school decision maker(s) to give students permission to collect START data as part of a project.
Collect data: Have students collect sustainability data across START’s metrics, for example as a project in an elective class, or in an Enviro-Club. (Even better if you are able to check and validate the data yourself.)
Present findings: Have students present the findings to school administrators.
Compile a document: Based on this data, compile a document that highlights current successes and areas for improvement according to START’s metrics.
Facilitate voting for stakeholders: Present this document to school stakeholders and have them vote on which category they think is most important to pursue improving.
Report voting outcome: Inform all stakeholders of the results of the vote.
The task is both manageable and educational with students taking the lead in data-collection and presentation, and this approach can also prevent the friction caused by ‘stepping on someone else’s turf’ if you try to do it all yourself. And if you can transform the school’s understanding of sustainability and align it with the school’s vision and values, you are far more likely to have more allies in your mission moving forward.
START Phase 1: Cultivate Curiosity
Your main goal should be to lay the foundations of a robust and durable sustainability program at your school.
You can do this by cultivating curiosity and a positive attitude towards sustainability in your school administrators. You want to pull them towards sustainability by showing them how it aligns with the school’s mission and how it benefits all in the school community, rather than trying to push it onto them through criticism of existing practices.
This may be a lengthy process (it may even take up to a year to work through), but it will lay a solid foundation from which to develop a more positive attitude towards and enduring focus on sustainability in your school.
Phase I moves through three stages:
Request permission: Ask the relevant school decision maker(s) to give students permission to collect START data as part of a project.
Collect data: Have students collect sustainability data across START’s metrics, for example as a project in an elective class, or in an Enviro-Club. (Even better if you are able to check and validate the data yourself.)
Present findings: Have students present the findings to school administrators.
*Each stage is expanded on in the next sections.
How to request permission for student-driven data-collection
To avoid stepping on toes and to continue building positive relationships with school decision-makers, you should request permission from school administrators to run any START data-collection projects with students.
They will likely say yes, because no matter how good or bad the data is in the end, the skills the students will learn are undeniably valuable. If you are concerned school administrators will be resistant, then highlight the educational benefits for your students (e.g. collaborative skills while pursuing a hands-on project in a team; communication skills while liaising with facilities managers or kitchen staff; critical thinking and organizational skills while collecting and collating data points).
Importantly, make it clear to school administrators that whatever the findings are, the school won’t be forced to take action to address the issues. Remember: you want to cultivate curiosity, not come across as critical.
2. How to collect sustainability data for START
It can often feel like an uphill battle for school sustainability leaders.
If you’re a sustainability program manager without a teaching load, you might have the time to get things done, but it’s likely you’ll encounter push-back from the faculty members who are ‘in the trenches’, trying to stay on top of their teaching responsibilities. This means that as a Sustainability Coordinator, your emails aren’t always going to be read, and you might be resented for adding more responsibilities to an already-heavy workload.
On the other hand, if you’re a Sustainability Coordinator who is a faculty member with a teaching load, you may have more credibility amongst the other teachers – but it can be extremely challenging to find the time to fit in this additional role. How do you manage your time when you don’t have any?
The answer is to start by getting the students involved. Let them do the data collection and presentation to administrators. Not only does this develop worthwhile skills in your students, but it provides a positive forum to present data to the administration about the school’s current sustainability levels.
2.1 Who?
Elective classes or the school Green Club are an optimal space for this – particularly in the upper grade-levels and where students get to do projects. While it may be possible to squeeze this data collection/presentation into the mainstream curriculum or to do it through student groups, time scarcity and other priorities are challenges to consider.
If you do not teach a relevant elective class or run the school Environmental Club, work with a teacher who does to set up the project. TIP: Tread carefully: staff don’t like being told what to do, and they will likely not appreciate having extra work added to their workload. Show them how this project adds value to what matters to them. Even better is if you can offer to provide support to students working on the project.
2.2 When?
Below are some strategies to successfully set up students to complete a sustainability data-collection project. (The following strategy was used in an Environmental Studies elective class in which students collected data for START).
2.3 How?
1. Avoid beginning with an information overload
To begin, explain the project in as simple and clear terms as possible. You may want to provide students with a document explaining how to go about the task. Whatever you do, avoid overloading your students with sheets of information and explanations at the outset, as this will likely bore or overwhelm them. If you do it this way, students will likely skim over the language and later get the concepts wrong anyway. Instead, put the responsibility on the students to investigate and ask questions. Through the process of struggling, making mistakes and learning, there will likely be far more student engagement and a better outcome in the end.
Ideas for student-investigation:
Students pick 1 or 2 START topics out of a hat, research what they mean, and provide a reason why they think those topics matter both at the school level and at a societal level. If you’ve chosen to add these students as START Users (e.g. as Supporting or View Only users), they can then log into START, find their START metrics, and compare their own definitions with the ones listed in START.
Students can explore the START platform, choose the 3 metrics that they think are most important, and provide a rationale for their answer.
Place students in groups, assign 3 different START metrics each, and have them debate which ones are most important.
2. Split up the task strategically
Split the class into groups and give each group a different set of START metrics to focus on. This way, not every student has to cover everything, but when their work is combined the class will have covered all aspects of Whole School Sustainability.
However, you need to be strategic about who gets what. Allow the more proficient students to extend themselves by giving them more challenging focus areas, and ensure that one particular group doesn’t end up with all the easy or difficult metrics.
3. Student-led inquiry
Students tend to be more curious and interested in the data when they're discovering it for themselves, rather than having a teacher telling them what to do or think about it. You could for example, give the students a spreadsheet split up into the different metrics and tell them to run with it. This way, they have to investigate for themselves, ask questions and collect the data from the relevant individuals at the school.
Once every two weeks, look over their work and ask them questions about it – Did you think about X? What about Y? – and they will have to return to the relevant person to correct or expand their data. This method can sometimes be frustrating for students who are used to getting quick answers (some might need to revisit the same person five times during the semester to expand their data), but this way the students will learn to be thoughtful and thorough, and will develop real-world skills in organizing themselves and liaising with professionals.
4. Fill in the gaps
Students will be requesting and receiving data, but they often won’t know exactly what they’re talking about. You could have the occasional class where you unpack some of the terminology and metrics, by which point they’d have a familiar, real-world example to attach to the concepts.
5. Sharing and Compiling
At the end of the semester, students produce a document on their data collection and share their findings with the class. This could potentially be their final summative assessment or exam mark.
Then as a class, the students need to decide what they should present to the administration. At this point, there would be multiple documents about what they could present, so they should take the best from each document and compile those into a final, optimal version.
6. Presenting to School Decision-Makers
Ideally try to arrange a time for the students to present their findings and recommendations to school decision-makers. Challenge students to create professional supporting media and documents, such as PowerPoint presentations, videos or electronic pamphlets/ PDFs.
What’s important during the presentation is that students clarify the broad understanding of sustainability – a concept that includes social, economic and environmental wellbeing. Students should also connect sustainability to the school’s values and missions, so that they’re ‘talking the same language’ as the administrators and showing how sustainability is important to the school.
7.Grading (optional)
Grading can be challenging, though a lot of it can be effort- and persistence-based, which does tend to be more reflective of the real-world. A rubric is always helpful, and it could include categories such as compliance with the template, timely collection of data, consistent effort over the term, presentation to the class etc.