The climate of change for school leadership

THE CLIMATE OF CHANGE FOR SCHOOL LEADERSHIP: STUDENT AGENCY = STRONG HEART. CLEAR MIND.

DENISE LOFTS

Denise Lofts is the Principal of Ulladulla High School. Ulladulla is a small coastal town in New South Wales, and this community was one of the most affected areas by the devastating bushfires in January 2020.

In 2019, I received an email from my School Captain:

Hi Miss, thank you so much for your support. Jade, Lachlan and I really appreciate it.

This ended an email chain where the School Captain, Takesa, an incredible young Aboriginal woman, told me that I could attend her speech that she would give to local government about their urgent plea for climate change letters advocating for policy change on the environment to be sent from the local government to the National Parliament in Canberra. In doing so, she was representing the Youth of the Shoalhaven, along with two other students from Ulladulla High School (UHS).

This speech was on the back of a ‘Change the conversation on Climate Change Rally”, held at Ulladulla High School on 15 March during lunchtime. While other students were missing school to attend climate rallies, our students clearly articulated their stances, not by missing school, but by ensuring the focus remained on the issues at school.

This clear, succinct, mindful and deliberate protest by Takesa, and 300 of her fellow students, could not be ignored. The event was attended by our local newspaper reporters, a local environmental action group, ‘Treading Lightly in the Mud,’ and local community representatives. This is only touching the surface of what the student environment council have done. They have undertaken a variety of environmentally conscious activities, ranging from removing plastic bottles to introducing composting across the school and establishing a community twilight market in the school grounds that sells local produce with a focus on sustainable processes. They have also advocated for bins to dispose of fishing lines to be located at our local harbour by the local government to protect our sea life, which are now present at our harbour.

This type of agency is mirrored across many young people and schools. Student agency, I believe, will continue to influence the way in which we do business in our schools and beyond. How we are seeing student agency in response to climate change is unprecedented. Kids today are different from students only three or four short years ago. They are progressive, more informed, and passionate about issues globally and are taking action locally. This may sound somewhat clichéd, but mark my words, activism in our schools is alive and strong. UHS, along with many other schools around Australia, is proof of this.

Catapult us to today, the summer of 2020, where our rural community has been one of the hardest hit school communities as a result of the catastrophic bushfires.

Many students and their families have experienced a range of hardships, from losing their homes to spending the summer fighting fires and experiencing consecutive evacuations, to now undertaking the extensive clean up. However, the student response has not been one of helplessness. Instead, they have begun to leverage this as a platform to advocate the focus to be about wildlife, the human made climate change and the renewal of our bush and landscape. ‘Treading lightly’, (1) ‘Take Three for the Sea’, (2) and ‘Fight for the Bight’, (3) are all protests that our students have in many cases led in our community and across our school.

If a student experiences and observes firsthand what it is like to serve others, this is the world and this is learning. They have observed the services thinking strategically, the fire officers planning their operations, the meteorologists carefully watching the weather, the hotel managers who operated to house evacuated families, the nurses, the psychologists, the caterers, the traffic control managers, the truck drivers, police, paramedics, the journalists and the list went on.

At UHS we want our students to see learning as connected to the world they live in, and how what they do today serves them well for tomorrow. As we know they will be the psychologists, the meteorologists, the managers and the firefighters of tomorrow. This is an opportunity to enliven the real connection of education. This is what UHS has shown is possible.

1. See: https://www.facebook.com/ TreadingLightlyInc/

2. See: https://www.facebook.com/Take-3-forShoalhaven-1800403430173115/

3. See: https://www.fightforthebight.org.au/home-1