Creating the Next Generation of Leaders - The Green School

Be of service to your community.

I would ask my fellow educators “How can we educate for the real world when that world is so fast-changing and thus almost impossible to define?”

I believe education is a change mechanism tool for a sustainable future. At Green School, we use the power of community to teach connection – to ourselves, to each other and to the earth. Connecting schools to their surrounding communities and communities to their schools not only enriches the school experience through real-world learning opportunities, but positions schools as culture-setting hubs where the values of the school also become the values of the communities of which they are a part, expanding their positive impact beyond the confines of their campus.

Learning the importance of integrating skills and values-based learning opportunities. Equally prioritizing the trifecta of knowledge, skills and values is not only very necessary in a future model of education, but also easy to do (for educators) and super impactful (for students). Green School's living, evolving curriculum equips students with skills like flexibility, resiliency and agency to meet the challenges and opportunities of their changing world without feeling overwhelmed. Our Green School values bind us together as a community and shape mindsets. Our learning programs provide opportunities for us to live our values. While sustainability is at the core of everything we do, we understand that we cannot achieve true sustainability without integrity, responsibility, equality, peace, empathy, community and trust. We work to joyfully engage students in high quality, solution-based learning experiences to tackle real-world problems while always keeping these values at the center. This allows our students to see for themselves the positive impact they can have on their world, no matter their age or experience level, and empowers them with the confidence to continue taking positive action in their future.​

Life-long learning that can have a positive impact on the now and the future, a global sustainability mindset, and being an active part of a community.

Next year we are looking forward to leveraging the now global Green School community (with new locations in New Zealand and South Africa) to elevate our Green School curriculum as not just a viable, but necessary alternative to traditional schooling.

By providing the space and time for collaboration - between student and student, student and teacher, or student and community - we encourage an approach to problem-solving that includes an openness to alternative ways of thinking. We also make sure to add ‘Failure’ as a Success Criteria for student projects, allowing students to feel safe and even positive about taking risks and re-iterating with new creative approaches as needed.

I’m a white man of a privileged upbringing, and all my life I have understood that with that privilege comes an essential responsibility to stand up for what I believe is right - especially in terms of race, gender, religion, sexuality. In my years before Green School I did a lot of traveling and worked a lot of different jobs -  I wrote books, drove trucks, worked in bars and restaurants, ran warehouses, worked in labs, built houses. You name it, I probably did it. That exposure to different cultures and different ways of being in this world granted me an awareness and openness of both our differences and similarities as humans around the world. I believe that experience aids me now in my aim to always lead with empathy, compassion and an emphasis on community.

Our Green Schools do not exist in an isolated ‘bubble’. We are all connected, in so many ways, to our local communities. The New Zealand and South Africa Green Schools are situated in entirely different cultural, environmental even geopolitical contexts that inform the unique, real-world learning opportunities of their students.  Yet we all build our Green School curricula and communities around shared values and a focus on skills development, thematic learning, project-based learning, building a sustainability mindset, community connections and celebrations.

With so much pressure on leaders, it can be easy to get “stuck” on processes and approaches that worked just fine 10, 5 or even 1 year ago. But our world is changing so rapidly, and the future so uncertain, that the challenge we must overcome as leaders is developing a mindset that allows us to be flexible, creative and unafraid of risks in order to plan and deliver products - in my case, learning experiences - that are actually relevant to our world today and in the future.

From the romantics through to beat literature - some of those books changed my life. Also, real-world adventure/exploration (sailing, mountaineering, trekking) - these books opened my eyes to our almost limitless potential as humans to overcome challenges.

Lose the attachment to always needing to be right - a lesson I strive to pass on to our students!

I am excited about taking the Green School ‘Educating for Sustainability’ model to other education systems. Other schools might be threatened to see their model replicated elsewhere, I welcome it!

India is my favourite travel destination - there is this beautiful juxtaposition of peace and mayhem in the culture, all wrapped in a whole lot of love. It was such a magical place for me to live and learn. I am yet to get to South America - that’s on my bucket list.

As I get older, I am more aware of my opportunity to be of service. For me, life isn’t about just being a ‘good person’ - but doing something with that ‘goodness’ that really has a positive impact on individuals and communities beyond myself.

The Buddha

Build and encourage positive relationships and collaboration. Humans are social creatures, and everything in our lives either grows from the positive relationships we build, or diminishes from creating or staying in negative relationship.