Green & Sustainable

Green and Sustainable >> Education for Sustainable Development at the International School of Tianjin By Crys Lewis, Education for Sustainable Development Coordinator, IST Grade 4 details contributed by Islen Craig, ESD Committee member and G4 Homeroom teacher tions that we can support in the progress towards equal access to our basic rights. Class representatives then spoke to the other classes in Grades 3-5 about the relationship between having access to rights and our responsibility to help others. They also set up their project videos with QR codes to share the information from their learning without wasting resources for printing, and also to explore the use of technology in new and innovative ways.

Students working on G4 projects. Photo Credit: Islen Craig

The UN set forth 17 Sustainable Development Goals as a successor to the Millennium Development Goals, which ended in 2015. The International School of Tianjin has taken these to heart and is matching curriculum with the goals.

Last year a full audit of the PYP and MYP curriculums was completed, aligning goals with different units of inquiry across the elementary and middle schools. The actual curriculum has not been changed – in fact, the audit simply highlighted the sustainable education inherent in the curriculum already. This year, a resource library was created that pulls together lesson plans from the UN’s “World’s Largest Lesson” website as well as various other resources and organizes them by grade level and Sustainable Development Goal. This is to make it even easier for teachers to be explicit about the UNSDGs.

An example is of a recent lesson in Grade 4: During the Grade 4 “Who We Are” Unit of inquiry the students explored many of these goals, focusing particularly on Goal 1: No Poverty; Goal 2: No Hunger; Goal 3: Good Health and Wellbeing; Goal 4: Quality Education; and Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation. The students studied the UN’s Declaration of the Rights of a Child and learned that children’s access to those rights varies worldwide. The students then studied the various organizations that support those that need help gaining access to their rights.

In secondary, Grade 6 assisted with the construction of a wind turbine in Design Technology last year in conjunction with a renewable energy unit. During our new Middle Years University IDU program, students in Grades 9 and 10 will learn about energy resources, such as types of non-renewable and renewable resources; they will learn about IST energy consumption by conducting an energy audit; and will build their own power generator. As well as potentially building a solar panel and a water-powered generator, they will also be building a human-powered one by re-fitting an elliptical bicycle with an alternator that will generate electricity.

In the MYP, the action group Green Team is entirely focused on sustainability. They’ve raised money to purchase paper-recycling bins for all classrooms and common areas in the school and found a paper recycling company that would take the paper. In addition, they also run other projects related to reducing waste – last year at the annual school community fair they collected items like used (but re-usable) clothing and toys and sold them for 1RMB a piece. Thus they successfully diverted those items from the landfills and contributed to sustainability.

The students are also directly involved in IST’s advancement plans. The school’s advancement plans are all committed to student learning and engagement in special project planning and management. One of the current fundraising projects tied to sustainability is the solar paneling of the school facilities; the Green Team will be engaged in the planning, promotion and community education of that particular initiative.

In addition, IST is looking at being more sustainable as a whole. All of the lights on the campus have been replaced with LED bulbs – for both longevity and power usage. Doors and windows have also been replaced to improve insulation from both inclement weather and keep air-conditioned air inside, where it belongs!

Despite living in a country where it can be somewhat difficult to be truly sustainable, the International School of Tianjin is taking great strides forward in educating our students about sustainability in meaningful and practical ways.

Build firm foundations for your students’ futures

Cambridge Global Perspectives is a unique, transformational programme that helps students at every stage of school education develop outstanding transferable skills, including critical thinking, research and collaboration. This year we are extending our Cambridge Global Perspectives programme to make it available for 5 to 14 year olds. Find out more at: www.cambridgeinternational.org/globalperspectives