Not Instant Orange Juice—Educating for Sustainability (from Leverage Points Issue 78)

Jaimie P. Cloud is the founder and president of the Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education in New York City. The Institute offers curriculum development, organizational development, and professional development for educators focused on helping young people and their teachers adopt new knowledge and new ways of thinking in support of a sustainable future. In a recent conversation with Leverage Points editor Vicky Schubert, Jaimie touched on the strong systems thinking perspective at the center of their work.

LP: I assume it’s hard to bring new thinking to school systems whose politics, finances, or history make them resistant to change. How do you manage to stay enthusiastic and keep this work moving?

LC: Our children are in those schools. One thing that is critically important to remember about working with schools is the amount of time they have with the children. We know the kids are there for 13 years. That amount of time can be a huge leverage point in changing the consciousness of a nation. This kind of stuff—systems thinking and sustainability education—it’s not instant orange juice. It’s a way of thinking, a series of habits of mind; it’s being able to transfer what you know and apply it in other areas; it’s about asking better questions than the ones that have been asked of you—these are things that take time. And kids are great paradigm shifters. They have everything to gain by moving toward a sustainable future and everything to lose if we don’t. That’s why we keep pushing.

One of schools’ biggest challenges is that they are required to cover certain things and they only have so many hours in a day in which to do so. We have to understand how schools work and demonstrate that what we’re offering actually meets their needs and adds value. When the material helps kids become better people or learn how to think more critically, I’ve never seen a teacher turn away. Systems thinking is perfectly suited to supporting kids in meeting state and national learning standards.

But we have learned that what you call this work matters. Several years ago, I offered a program called “Sustainability Education for Educators.” Three people showed up. I realized that we had a marketing problem, so I renamed the program “Connecting Standards and the Real World in Your Classroom.” And 30 people showed up. We have maintained a contract with the Department of Education because they are always interested in making content relevant and rigorous for students.

LP: It seems that “sustainability” as a word and as a concept is finally gaining recognition in the public consciousness. Is that also true for schools?

JC: I absolutely see evidence of a tipping point, both in communities and in schools. In the last two years, for the first time, we’re actually being invited to do sustainability education. I find it very hopeful. At a time when the data suggests that up to 80 percent of our kids feel hopeless and disconnected, there’s a wonderful opening for sustainability education, which is both optimistic and all about relationships and connections. Kids are all too familiar with the bad news, but many young people have never really heard that there is hope and that there are systemic approaches to making the necessary shifts that could actually take us in the direction of a sustainable—even regenerative—future. Teachers haven’t seen that as a possibility either. So, when they hear that we intend to move toward a sustainable future, they want to go there too. I definitely see movement in this direction. And it is supported by what’s going on in communities. Service learning, for example, has been very helpful to us.

LP: Describe what you mean by service learning.

JC: Many schools require that kids do some sort of community service through school before they graduate. “Service learning” is the more elegant and sophisticated way to make sure that that community service is chosen carefully, reflected upon, and connected to the curriculum. The students are given a chance to really think about what they want to work on and why it’s important.

Our curriculum and instruction fits beautifully with service learning and community service opportunities. For example, we were asked to write the new Participation in Government course for the New York City public schools, which illuminates the link between participatory democracy and sustainable communities. For students, the process of selecting their service learning projects involves thinking about it, writing about it, identifying problems, and understanding systems and interdependence. By contrast, when service learning is not connected to their lives, their passions, and their ideas, some students refer to it as “doing time”.

LP: What kinds of projects have kids done in conjunction with the participatory democracy curriculum?

JC: Some students have built community gardens; a group of young people in a high school in Bushwick took down a crack house; some kids have started fundraising projects for causes that they’re concerned about. One student created a buddy system for communicating emergency information to one another in school which has grown from students to faculty to parents and community members, and has spun off all types of relationships (tutoring, mentoring, etc.) as a result. Her reflections are humbling.

LP: So, what you teach is as much about systems thinking as it is about the environment?

JC: Oh, absolutely, because sustainability is mostly about evolving our economic and social systems in support of, and in keeping with, our ecological systems. So, we like to think of it as education for sustainability; it’s not always about sustainability.

LP: In your organization’s last newsletter, you listed seven habits of mind that are fundamental systems thinking skills essential to any successful change initiative, not just environmental sustainability (see sidebar). Do you see a difference between teachers and students in adopting these new habits of mind? Which ones are the hardest for both groups?

JC: They all love them, I would say. But these habits come more naturally to kids; they understand these things pretty intuitively. The adults have a little more difficulty because it really means practicing what you preach. And some of these habits are harder than others.

For example, “Protecting and Enhancing the Commons” is something new to most people. (Commons can be defined as “that upon which we all depend and for which we are all responsible.”) The concept can be challenging for both students and teachers, because it’s not in the lexicon of daily speech. But once people understand that the commons can be sidewalks and language and clean water and fish stocks—the kinds of commons that economic and social activity depends on—then people realize that it’s one of the most important things we have to take care of as citizens.

The idea of the commons also brings into focus all the ways that we have for securing one another’s trust. Try doing business without a contract or without a legal system backing you up. These are both important examples of social capital which is, in fact, also a commons. Or try doing anything without breathing; air is a commons. If each of us is not taking care of it, then we’re all in trouble. Everyone knows that individual rights do not always trump our responsibility as citizens to tend to the group. We all know that you’re not supposed to yell “Fire” in a crowded theater if there’s no fire. We just need to expand our agreed upon list of places where individual rights don’t trump what’s right for the whole.

The habit of mind that might be the hardest for everybody to adopt is “Awareness of Driving Forces and Their Impact.” Driving forces are the things going on outside of our little systems that have an effect on us but that seem beyond our influence. For example, we do some scenario planning with students and teachers—which is a group process in which you collectively postulate divergent possible futures—but they often experience it as counterintuitive. They want to plan around what they can count on. But with scenario planning you try to plan around what you can least count on and design around the most uncertain uncertainties. They can find that really challenging. Actually, so do I.

LP: These are not easy concepts. But when I visit your website, I get the impression that your approach to education for sustainability comes with a large dose of fun. Tell us a little bit about the Fish Game.

JC: The Fish Game is an interactive role play simulation (you can find a version of one on our website) that challenges you to catch enough fish to support your family while other fisherpeople are trying to do the same. Our game is derived from Fish Banks, which is a more sophisticated role-playing simulation developed by Dennis Meadows, in which teams manage a fishing company and try to maximize their assets in an environment of renewable natural resources and economic competition. (We always recommend that users buy Fish Banks after they’ve played our game so they can experience a more complex system at work.) In the beginning, when I was first trying to sell the idea of sustainability education, I would sometimes only get an hour or so to work with teachers. So, I had to design a simpler version of the game that I could do with pencil and paper and without a lot of props, to very quickly demonstrate what we mean by interdependence and sustainability. It’s a great place to start because teachers can then turn around and use the same game with their students.

Players also learn something about systems thinking simply by being introduced to the concept of non-zero-sum games. Most of the games people are used to—like football, basketball, or backgammon—are zero-sum games, where you either win or lose. In non-zero-sum games like the Fish Game and Fish Banks, the players are interdependent on one another, on the fish stocks, on the replenishment rate, and on the carrying capacity. In these games, the only way to win is if everybody wins. That’s very surprising to people.

We find that games and simulations are the best way to provide a transformative learning experience in a short amount of time in a contained environment. The humor in games also creates an atmosphere in which we can laugh at ourselves, which is important because some of this stuff is pretty painful. Humor eases the pain and allows participants to stick with the process long enough to come to a new and better place.

Suggested further resources:

The Systems Thinking Playbook by Linda Booth Sweeney and Dennis Meadows

When a Butterfly Sneezes by Linda Booth Sweeney

Sustainability Learning Package (use priority code LP78 to save an additional 10%!)

Additional Sustainability Resources from Pegasus

The Creative Learning Exchange