Building Capacity for Sustainable Action through Inquiry, Experiential Learning, and Collaboration: Student Action for a Sustainable Future

Questioning, Analysis and Interpretation Skills

The inquiry process provides a framework that is open-ended and adaptable to the participants' interests, contexts, and learning objectives. The SASF participants use inquiry to:

• explore concepts, ideas, and questions related to sustainability;
• contemplate why our communities, homes, and classrooms are the way they are, and how they could potentially be different; and
• find ways to participate in solutions, even when solutions are not obvious or straightforward.

Knowledge of Environmental Processes and Systems

To understand a changing world - including how humans impact the environment, how the environment impacts humans, and how humans impact each other - it is important for sustainability to be considered through an interdisciplinary lens that incorporates multiple world views. The SASF program attempts to respond to this by:

• Connecting teachers to a diversity of people and organizations who provide authentic and meaningful educational experiences;
• Providing support to teachers to integrate different knowledge, perspectives, practices, and cultures into their teaching;
• Encouraging teachers to invite elders, knowledge keepers, and community members to participate in their students' learning; and
• Linking the program to a variety of curriculum areas, including: English / Language Arts; Science; Fine Arts; Social Studies; Health; Mathematics; Phys. Ed; and Career Ed.

Skills for Understanding and Addressing Environmental Issues

To build participants' capacity to make the leap from knowing to doing, the SASF program provides:

• Spaces where peer support, interest, and encouragement emerge, which helps motivate people to initiate and maintain action;
• Opportunities to network, learn from, and collaborate with others;
• Hands-on learning opportunities;
• Planning time for teachers to think through what they'd like to do and how they'd like to do it;
• Access to a community of environmental professionals and educators;
• Free bus fare so each classroom can gain experiences in/with the community; and
• Access to a small amount of money that can be used towards achieving action projects.

Personal and Civic Responsibility

Municipal involvement in the SASF program provides teachers and students with the opportunity to positively engage with their local government, while also encouraging educators to build politics (whether formally or informally) into how and what they teach. Activities have ranged from meetings with city councilors, speaking with the media, writing letters to government and businesses, holding community events, writing for the school newsletter, and communicating with other students, teachers, and parents.