In the course “Real World Sustainability,” students learn not just about how to bring the subject of sustainability into K-12 classroom settings but also how to look at the larger systems they are operating within. “It’s ecology,” says the course’s designer and instructor, Paul Bocko. “It’s a lot of different elements working together, and they’re much more than the sum of their parts.”
One of the most exciting components of the course is its interdisciplinary nature and commitment to understanding systems of power. From day one, students are tasked with creating a “systems map” to consider how different organizations, communities, and academic settings all come together to create one “ecosystem,” as Bocko says. “Systems thinking is fundamental to sustainability, education, and understanding climate change. It is the understanding of… how human social systems and natural systems reflect each other.”
Another assignment that gets to the core of this comes when Bocko asks students to create a sustainability initiative for a potential community partner. Rather than reading about hypothetical possibilities of creating partnerships with organizations, students instead are tasked with approaching school administrators and community organizations in order to promote sustainability education. Past initiatives have included letter-writing campaigns to superintendents and school districts advocating for formal partnerships with organizations beyond the school, setting up agreements with land trusts and environmental organizations so that they integrate and supplement classroom instruction, and getting involved with community garden partnerships.
“Students really zero in on what a partnership is,” says Bocko. These students, who are often themselves already K-12 teachers, have to decide, he says, whether to “enhance or start from fresh so that they can strengthen the system to meet our sustainability or climate change education goals.”
As part of the assignment, Bocko also asks students to identify and describe the change they are hoping to tackle with a partnership, as well as why such implementations are beneficial. “I’m asking for specific changes and why those changes are merited,” he explains. “So students may be saying to their principal, ‘I think we should partner with this land conservancy,’ and explain why.”
Bocko has been teaching “Real World Sustainability” for over a decade, and he says it’s as relevant today as it was the first time he taught it, if not more so. “This is a course to help teachers, and hopefully create more teachers with climate change and sustainability education,” he says, “so they can better understand systems are fundamental to be able to even approach these gnarly, wicked problems—specifically, climate change.”
“Real World Sustainability” is a requirement for students concentrating in both the Climate Change and Sustainability Education concentration and the Place-Based Education concentrations within Antioch’s MEd for Experienced Educators. It also offers practical opportunities to gain experience in a reflective environment. Bocko describes how the hands-on learning component is consistent with Antioch’s commitment to applied learning. “We’re different here at Antioch because of the degrees we offer and the focus on real-world application,” says Bocko. “The course is designed to be practice-based because we are practice-based.”
Because the course is taught virtually, students from across the country share their experiences with sustainability initiatives, often reflecting vastly different school settings, age groups, geographic locations, and communities.
Centering Youth Voices
Despite teachers coming from different backgrounds and locations, giving voices and autonomy to children remains consistently important. Bocko sees his course as existing in the rich historical context of many prior initiatives around the world. “In the early ’80s, there was a set of rights for children created by the United Nations. I have students who go into classrooms and refer back to it,” he explains. While K-12 education is conventionally thought of as a lock-step model, in which students are simply prepared for the next step in their education, Bocko encourages his students to see children as people “who can participate at almost any age.”
One of the main textbooks in “Real World Sustainability” is Placemaking with Children and Youth: Participatory Practices for Planning Sustainable Communities by Victoria Derr, Louise Chawla and Mara Mintzer. This text offers Bocko’s students various strategies and ideas to implement youth opinions and suggestions, especially around their own education and environment. “It talks a lot about ‘placemaking,’” explains Bocko, “and how best to engage children and youth in getting their perspective and their input in placemaking and in community. It can range from a skatepark to educational displays.”
Without opportunities for children to voice their opinions and offer input, explains Bocko, they are not being prepared for adulthood. “They are ready to and should be participating now in life,” he says. “There’s sort of a method, if you will, in public schools, where it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, you’re in fourth grade, you gotta do all this.’ All so that you’re ready for fifth grade…and for sixth grade, it’s preparing, preparing, preparing.”
But Bocko doesn’t see students as vessels needing to be filled with a rote set of information. Students need to learn to participate as full citizens in their communities. “These are people,” he says. “They should participate.”
Building on Decades of Community Initiative
Bocko himself comes into his own classroom with decades of interdisciplinary experience in the fields of education and sustainability. He has been thinking critically about climate change since the 1990s, and he has developed his thinking through study in Antioch’s MS in Environmental Education as well as its MEd in Organization and Management.
He started his first Antioch degree in 1983, and he says that, even then, “we were talking about climate change.” He explains that they were talking about climate change at a time when very few other academic institutions were emphasizing it. “We clearly didn’t know as much as we do now, but we were talking about it,” he says. True to Antioch’s teaching philosophy, Bocko’s experiences as a student reflect the institution’s greater commitment to thinking critically about some of the world’s toughest challenges.
Sometimes, the fact that little has seemingly changed in climate change discourse since those early conversations can leave Bocko feeling disheartened. “You’re supposedly studying to go do something about it,” he says. “And then you get out in the field, and it’s like, no one else is. Fast forward 30 years, and, well, we’re talking about it.”
Bocko also serves as the Project Manager for the Horatio Colony Nature Preserve in Keene, NH. The 645 acres of land have been managed by faculty at Antioch since the 1980s, which Bocko calls a “prime example” of community partnerships. With his students in “Real World Sustainability,” Bocko can point to the Horatio Colony Nature Preserve as an example of just the sorts of projects they are themselves proposing. He explains, “We have schools working with the nature preserve to actually expand the classroom.”
This is precisely the kind of practical and hands-on experience Bocko hopes students in “Real World Sustainability” will gain. “My hope for students is to change their perspectives for the better,” he says. “If you look at the systems, you can get a partnership going or strengthen one that already exists. And we can do more with kids in the community.”
