Explore ideas to build sustainability in your school

Overview

How can schools be more sustainable? How do schools teach sustainability?

Sustainability education in Australian schools is a vital component of the curriculum, aiming to equip students with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to address environmental, social, and economic challenges for a more sustainable future. The Australian education system incorporates sustainability principles across various subjects and levels, reflecting the nation's commitment to environmental stewardship and responsible citizenship. Key aspects include:

1. Resource Efficiency and Environmental Practices: Many schools in Australia have adopted sustainable practices, such as reducing energy and water consumption, waste reduction and recycling, and creating eco-friendly campuses.

2. Outdoor and Environmental Education: Outdoor education programs and excursions play a significant role in fostering a connection with nature and promoting sustainable behaviours.

3. Global Perspective: Sustainability education in Australia often emphasizes global perspectives, encouraging students to consider the impact of their actions on both local and global scales.

4. Partnerships and Collaboration: Schools often collaborate with local community groups, environmental organizations, and government agencies to enhance sustainability education efforts.

5. Curriculum Integration: Sustainability concepts are woven into different subjects such as science, geography, mathematics, and technology. This interdisciplinary approach helps students understand the interconnectedness of environmental, economic, and social systems.

6. Inclusive Approach: Sustainability education in Australia aims to be inclusive and respectful of Indigenous knowledge and perspectives, recognizing the deep connection between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the land.

Target Audience

Those in leadership and specialist roles and classroom teachers.

Tickets

Tickets include tea/coffee on arrival, morning tea and lunch, along with a Certificate of Attendance (Mapped to APST).

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9:00 - 9:45am

Speaker: Katie Pahlow, Director – Regions and Community Action, Sustainability Victoria

Sustainability and student wellbeing

Students’ views about environmental sustainability can lead to better learning engagement and a sense of connection and belonging to their school.

In this session, we’ll explore this further, by taking a closer look at ResourceSmart Schools - an award-winning sustainable schools program managed by Sustainability Victoria since 2008. This Victorian Government program has helped schools save over $45 million in resource costs and avoid over 110,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. The program assists schools with embedding sustainability into all they do by providing a framework of activities, free access to a local facilitator and a dedicated school portal for tracking and measuring the impact of school activities and participation in the Star certification program.

9:50 - 10:30am

Speaker: Cameron Paterson, Director of Learning, Wesley College

Reschooling for a Green Revolution

Your boss asks you to make sustainability a strategic priority in learning and teaching. Where do you start?

Join us for an engaging workshop where we delve into the critical challenges facing our education system and explore innovative solutions. In an era marked by disruption and rapid change, traditional educational models can fall short in preparing students for the future. This session is designed to inspire a shift towards fostering adaptability, flexibility, and innovation within schools, ensuring that young minds are better equipped to navigate uncertain times.

We will explore how education can play a pivotal role in empowering students to confront environmental challenges and cultivate a profound shift in our relationship with the planet. Emphasising the importance of exposure to nature for wellbeing, the workshop advocates for actively involving young people in addressing community issues.

10:30 - 10:50am

Morning Tea

10:50 - 11:30am

Speaker: Brigitte McDonald, Deputy Principal, St. Columba’s College Essendon

Harmony with Creation: Exploring Laudato si at St. Columba's College

This session takes a closer look at how St. Columba's College is addressing the Laudato si goals and accreditation as an Earthcare school. We’ll cover the following aspects:

·         Resource efficiency and environmental practices.

·         Partnerships and collaboration.

·         Curriculum integration.

·         Inclusive approaches.

11:35am - 12:20pm

Speakers: Peter Murphy, Program Manager, Banyule Nillumbik Tech School on behalf of DATTA VIC, and Marika Wong, Education and Curriculum Support Officer, Environment Education Victoria

Digital Design for Sustainability

This workshop unpacks the learning from a 2023 Google-funded partnership project between DATTA Vic and EEV, to upskill educators so they can better engage young people in developing authentic digital design solutions for the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. We’ll explore how teachers were equipped with skills, confidence and knowledge of how to deliver and assess the STEaM curriculum, utilise design thinking and create digital solutions to real world problems. Join us to see how your school can develop and deliver its own Digital Design for Sustainability program.

12:25 - 1:00pm

Speakers: Jo Connor, Executive Officer, Environment Education Victoria, and Maud Cassaignau, Architect & Urban Designer

Too Cool for School: Exploring Climate Adaptation Strategies For School Grounds

Climate change has significant implications for schools - from impacts on student cognition, to safe practices around heat, eroded surfaces and extreme weather. Climate change will require schools to change how they design and use their facilities, and manage scheduling.

Hear about the partnership between EEV, RMIT, local schools and the Council to investigate landscape approaches to climate adaptation on school grounds. Learn how students and staff in the Landscape Architecture Design Studios developed and refined ideas at the two school sites in Melbourne's suburbs, and the themes and key learnings that can be applied to schools generally.

1:00 - 2:00pm

Lunch in the Education Show

2:00 - 2:20pm

Discussion

2:25 - 3:15pm

Speaker: John Blake, Director of Online Learning, Eastern College Australia

Fresh Air – Fresh Ed

This practical training session will provide teachers with dozens of easily contextualised learning activities, scaffold-able strategies and relevant resources that incorporate multiple learning outcomes, inclusive of Sustainable Development Goals 4, 13, and 15. This session uniquely explores memorable ways to take desk-based learning out to the oval, playground, or adjacent park, to correlate nature within the structure of the curriculum!

Much of the content for English, History, Science, The Arts, Languages, Religion, Technologies, and Mathematics, could be taught from a workbook. But students show greater interest in school learning when holding, touching and exploring nature, and breathing fresh air.

3:20pm

Wrap Up Day 1

9:00 - 9:45am

Speaker: Peter Brace, Sustainability and Psychological Safety Consultant, Human Capital Realisation

A common language: Connected to Nature via Semiosis in Primary Schools

Feeling connected to nature is a crucial aspect of driving sustainable behaviour. What’s more, when we build an understanding of the world of plants and animals through semiosis, we develop an appreciation of what we have in common with all of nature.

In this workshop, we’ll dive into this, by exploring the work at Yarra Primary School, including their measurement tools and program results.

9:50 - 10:30am

Speaker: Libby Fullard, Sustainability Teacher and Program Coordinator, Newham Primary School

Embedding Sustainability: ResourceSmart Schools Program in a Small School

Newham Primary School has been a ResourceSmart School for ten years and has achieved 5-star accreditation twice during this time. The school has saved a total of $44,924 across all resources since our baseline in 2014 and planted over 1000 trees on-campus and 300 off-campus. In this session, Newham Primary School will share how the ResourceSmart Schools program has provided a framework for the school to prioritise sustainability principles. We will take a look at how sustainability is explicitly taught as a specialist subject and also integrated into other curriculum areas with whole school planning. We will also explore the role local partnerships have played in providing students with mentoring, support and the opportunity to work on external biodiversity enhancing projects. Through an outdoor education hands-on approach, building knowledge and skill capacity of students through curriculum, and accessing various grants, a small school can achieve significant outcomes in environmental stewardship, resource efficiency and sustainable practices.

10:30 - 11:00am

Morning Tea

11:00 - 11:40am

Speaker: Amelia Berner, FEAST Program Manager, OzHarvest

OzHarvest FEAST High School Program

This presentation will explore the importance of educating kids about food waste and the successes and challenges involved in developing and implementing Food, Education and Sustainability Training (FEAST) as a classroom-based sustainable initiative and discuss the positive results from following  the program.

In our discussion, we’ll look at OzHarvest’s new curriculum-aligned high school education program FEAST, which incorporates creative classroom cooking with nutritional knowledge and food waste prevention to empower students to be change-makers in their community, for the sustainability of the planet.

11:45am - 12:25pm

Speaker: Heather MacDonald, Education Lead, The Crawford Fund

Real World Problems - Real World Solutions through Design and Technology.

In this hands-on workshop, educators will use free resources from the Crawford Fund to create a tailored program for students on food and fibre production, using the design thinking process. The Crawford Fund materials focus on engaging young Australians in international agriculture and agriculture for development. It also aligns to the Australian National Curriculum in Design and Technology with the cross-curriculum priorities of sustainability.

The focus of the workshop will be Food Loss and Waste and Climate Smart Technologies, and how design and technology play a pivotal role in food and nutrition security.

12:25 - 1:25pm

Lunch in the Education Show

1:25 - 2:05pm

Speaker: Robert Magner, School Sustainability Champion & Senior School Teacher, Loreto Kirribilli

Environmental Literacy: A blueprint for making the case at your school

Our schools have great intentions and wonderful initiatives linked to sustainability. But the question for many is: how to get everyone on board?

This session discusses how schools can work to make environmental literacy matter, even when there are other ‘literacies’ that must be taught. We’ll take a closer look at the process involved in making sustainability a top priority, and achieving progress as a school community. Hear Loreto’s Sustainability Framework and the journey that has enabled them to start and progress their initiatives.

2:10 - 3:00pm

Speaker: Venkata Kalva, Sustainability Coordinator, Brentwood Secondary College

Towards Zer0 Bremissions

Towards Zer0 Bremissions will take you through Brentwood Secondary College's ResourceSmart Schools journey for the past eight years in working towards achieving net zero emissions by 2030. The workshop will provide you the tools and strategies that you can take home to implement at your respective schools/organisations.

3:05pm

Wrap up Day 2 and Conference Close