Spring Meeting: Hopeful and Inspiring!

Students from Peoples Academy Middle Level, Cornwall Elementary, Crossett Brook Middle School, and Essex Middle School Edge Team share their flags 

On Friday, May 12 four groups of students got together at Peoples Academy Middle Level and High School to celebrate and share their work related to sustainability. The day was inspiring and left me feeling incredibly hopeful about our future. We designed the meeting to reconvene the students and teachers who attended the Cultivating Pathways to Sustainability Conference at Shelburne Farms last September so they could share their projects with one another. We will post another piece about what each school project was but what I wanted to share with everyone as soon as possible was the lists the students made in cross-school groups about their experience. The teachers asked them to identify what worked well and what they would like to see added to next year's Cultivating Pathways work. They sat and talked in groups for about 10 minutes; they chatted easily together and produced some helpful and exciting lists. Here they are:

Things we have enjoyed/things that went well:
-working well with people
-going to Shelburne Farms
-helping around the school
-cleaning out compost bins
-hearing other people
-creating a better world
-sharing what we have done
-excited and enthusiastic about projects which made it go well
-communication with the different schools
-feedback
-communication and how everyone worked well together
-different ideas from different schools coming together and the ability to build off of each other
-schools being helpful and building off the other to create better ideas
-good--stayed focused
-student passion and freedom
-self determined (not driven by teachers)
-Presenting
-Everything was connected and went together
-we were all engaged and comfortable
-presenters got good feedback
-projects seemed successful
-everyone was a respectful audience
-we learned it is not hard to make a change
-we learned many more things need to be fixed than we realized
-we learned that sustainability can mean a lot
-we learned if you see a problem, act on it


What we want to do next year:
-chickens
-more sustainable milk consumption (recyclable cartons)
-expanding more into community
-solar panels
-create a better world and help people
-greenhouse (actually use it)
-involve more goals
-try to expand and involve more schools
-during presentations to groups try to add even more hands on like the Kahoot
-have a bigger group discussion and have the different schools try to suggest more things for the other schools to do or improve on
-sustainability class?
-set aside time (whole school would participate, more work would get done)
-meet in January? Google Hangouts?
-more funding
-more icebreakers (games)
-organized schedule
-invite more students
-show projects not just in a powerpoint
-meeting space that's closer to everyone
-better space
-more hands-on activities
Our hopes for future of this work:
-more schools will come
-more schools will be sustainable
-the projects we talked about will be accomplished
-bigger goals, better ideas or what can be done/accomplished

Students made flags out of cheese cloth from Shelburne Farms that represented something they wanted to make happen in the world

The casual sentence under what went well on white newsprint that said, "creating a better world" was our dream when we began to think about creating partnerships between schools around the sustainable development goals. We are so excited to plan for next fall and consider how to grow the work. With the focus on personalization and proficiency this is a perfect model for students to demonstrate their learning. In each presentation there were so many skills being demonstrated and in each case the skill was being put to use in an authentic way that was useful to the community and engaging for the student. I can't wait to see what happens next year...

Students from Cornwall Elementary School Share the process of creating their Loose Parts Playground