Scott Jamieson: Welcome to the empathy to impact. Podcast I am super excited about this episode.
Scott Jamieson: We are doing something a little bit different. Normally, we're talking to students on the podcast but today we're talking to someone who has been a big influence on my own work as someone who works in a space for global citizenship and sustainability. Someone who I admire a lot. Jamie Cloud is on the podcast with me from the Cloud Institute for sustainability, education
Scott Jamieson: and her job for many, many years now has been to prepare school systems and their communities to educate for a sustainable future, and to really think about how we systemically
Scott Jamieson: work this in to education.
Scott Jamieson: purposefully to our curriculum, and make curriculum connections that lead to a
Scott Jamieson: understanding, a deeper understanding of sustainability, and how we work towards our aspirational future.
Scott Jamieson: So, Jamie, it's such a pleasure to have you on the podcast.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: Thank you, Scott. I'm happy to be here.
Scott Jamieson: I wonder if we can start just
Scott Jamieson: talking about making sure we have a shared understanding of sustainability and sustainable versus unsustainable?
Scott Jamieson: Can you talk us through that a little bit.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: Yes, I would love to do that.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: So to me.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: sustainability.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: it's simpler than I think. People think. It is sustainability, the ability to build the capability to thrive over time. That's 1 way of thinking about it. It's a short, pithy one-liner, you know, understanding that the context is diversity. The context is interdependence and an ever-changing world
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: in a nutshell. What does it take to thrive over time on this planet? So I always mention that point 0 1% of the species that have ever lived on earth are still here so clearly, it's not that easy
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: to stick around, to create favorable conditions, to to be able to stand the test of time on this planet. And yet it is possible the horseshoe crabs have been here 450 million years, the bees 100 million years horses 50 million years. So it is possible to thrive over time on this planet. So how are they doing that?
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: They're they are contributing to the health
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: of the social and physical systems they depend on.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: And in a nutshell, that's what it takes. You want to create favorable conditions to be able to thrive over time. It's not a random.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: and that in the context of interdependence, everything we do and everything we don't do makes a difference. So we want to make sure that the intended consequences, and even the unintended consequences of our thinking and our behavior, contribute to the health of the places in which we live.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: So that's what. When I think of sustainability, John Ehrenfeld has a nice one-liner, he says it's the possibility that human and other life will flourish on earth
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: forever.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: yeah. And and emphasis on the word possibility again, given the fact that we don't have a guaranteed seat on spaceship Earth. We have to earn it.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: We have to learn how to live well in our places
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: and contribute to to the health of the social and physical systems. It's obviously not something we know how to do.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: We are not in control.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: there's no top or bottom in an in a system. So we need to recognize that we're a part of the system and
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: act accordingly.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: And then, to your question about unsustainability unsustainable
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: is when you take out more faster than you put back in, or then is put back in such as in the case of fish, stocks, or biodiversity, or
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: any any stock.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: and a stock is something that can increase or decrease. So if we look at fish stocks as an example, if you take out more faster than is replenished.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: you're going to crash your system. So that's an unsustainable situation. If you take out more money in your savings account faster than the deposit rate or the interest rate.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: you can do it for a little while. You can do anything for a little while.
Scott Jamieson: I'm gonna pause a second. My wi-fi if you can pick up from the I just wanna make sure we get clear audio there? From the bank account. Example.
Scott Jamieson: Yeah.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: If you take out more money faster
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: than the deposit rate or the interest rate in your savings account.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: you will be able to do that for a short time.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: but you won't be able to keep doing it, and when we say sustainable, we are by definition talking about standing the test of time.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: Why? Because it we need time to unleash our potential, not some. It's not instant orange juice.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: and so unsustainable is either taking out more faster than is being replenished, or the opposite putting in too much faster
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: than can be absorbed or utilized. So if we eat more faster than our body can process it and utilize it and turn it into energy. Then it's going to be unhealthy for us
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: if we emit more Co. 2 and greenhouse gases faster than the earth can absorb them. Then we're going to overwhelm the system and disrupt the balance. So the healthiest state of a system is in dynamic equilibrium.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: And and whether that's the brain, the body, the ecosystem, the community, the school
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: potential relies on things being in a dynamic balance, because if they're out of balance. Then all the energy goes to rebalancing. And then, you know, you're you're basically treating problems, not
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: not evolving in the way that we can.
Scott Jamieson: I love those examples. And I think it's really you're right. It's not such a complicated idea to think about sustainable versus unsustainable.
Scott Jamieson: And I really like. This is something that I took away. It was one of my big takeaways from a workshop that I did with you. The idea that we're all responsible, and that not only our actions, but our inactions, are also playing a role in shaping our future. And if we want that to be a sustainable future
Scott Jamieson: where we're thriving, we need to really be purposeful in thinking about our actions. Thinking about is this sustainable? And how might we be more sustainable through the systems, you know whether it's at our home or at our school, or all the different things we're doing are going to play a role in shaping our future. It's not something that's happening to us. And I think that's
Scott Jamieson: empowering in a way, when we think about it that way.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: Yes, and when we think about our thinking, Danella Meadows, who was the director of the Sustainability Institute, wrote a little
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: piece on called the 12 places to intervene in the system, and she was looking for leverage. How do you make systemic change?
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: What's the highest leverage, you know? Where where can we have the greatest impact? And she realized that thinking about our thinking was the most upstream place to intervene in the system. And then the thinking itself was the next most upstream. Which is why I work in education, because if thinking and thinking about thinking are the 2 most upstream places to intervene, then this is the job of educators.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: So, and to your point.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: thinking about our thinking, making sure it's the most robust thinking, linking our thinking to our behavior and then linking our behavior to the results and taking responsibility for the results. That's the key. I have so many students, adult and young people
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: who cannot wrap their mind around the fact that they had something to do with the result, especially if it wasn't a good one.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: they say. Well, that wasn't me.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: I had good intentions.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: so that wasn't me.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: I didn't have anything to do with that. Well.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: back to your point and mine. Everything we do and everything we don't do makes a difference. So you have to take responsibility for that. Whether you intended for it to happen or not is not the criteria.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: The criteria is what were the results? And let's read the feedback
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: and and self-correct
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: did I get? Did I did the results I get?
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: Are they aligned with my intention.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: and if not, then
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: where did I go wrong? Was it in the thinking? Was it in the behavior? Let me let me improve on that.
Scott Jamieson: You talked about leverage points, and where we can have impact and lead change. And you talked about how that led you into education.
Scott Jamieson: Now you've been in the field of sustainability in education before it was a field.
Scott Jamieson: It really was kind of the very beginning. I wonder if we can go back to the very beginning of how things all started, how the Cloud Institute for Sustainability and Education came about, and maybe some examples of some of the work you've been doing lately to really shape our future.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: Sure love to, so I always begin my story in the 6th grade.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: I won't go year by year after that, I promise, but I woke up in the 6th grade. I was in the 1st experimental program in global education in 1968. So at the ripe old age of 11 our teachers walked in and said, Welcome, now you have to take responsibility for your own learning.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: because we are charged with
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: preparing you for the 21st century again. This is 1968,
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: and we're not sure what that's going to look like for you. And they said, You know, we're pretty sure we've been tracking trends, and we're pretty sure your future will be characterized by more and more rapid change, more and more diversity, more and more uncertainty. The state of the planet is not so going so well. So you're going to have to do something about that
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: and
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: so that's what we think. Your world will be like.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: So we're trying to figure out how to be useful to you. We don't know what kinds of technology you're going to use, what kinds of jobs there will be. So we're going to teach you how to learn to learn how to think about your thinking and how to stay open minded.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: because we think those things will be the most useful, no matter how things go.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: And I remember having the fixed mindset by the ripe old age of 11,
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: I thought to myself, oh.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: that seems like a lot of work. Why don't you just tell me what you want? And I'll give it to you because I learned how to play the game of school. Every smart kid figures out how to play the game of school.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: and they said, You know we might be tempted to just tell you an answer, but we don't actually have them. We need to co-create this with you.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: and that got my attention. I had never occurred to me that they needed me there. I thought I was just doing time.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: so as soon as I understood that I had a role to play, and that, learning that this was all about learning.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: I was intrigued, and it took me a few weeks to realize, oh, my gosh! This is all about learning we have to. That's evolution for human beings. That's how we're going to adapt. That's how we're going to thrive over. Time is we have to keep learning. So lifelong learning was the term that they used at the time, and so fast forward. I grew up to become a global educator, because I thought that was the edgiest, most 21st century way of thinking. And I think it was one of them.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: And then 1987 rolls around, and the our common future report was published.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: Some people call it the Bruntland Report, and that was the 1st time that that it was written that the situation is unsustainable, and we need to move toward sustainable development. That was the phrase. And I read that report. And I thought.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: Huh, I've been tracking the state of the planet data since I was 11. We didn't have a word to describe it, but I think I would call it unsustainable.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: All foundational systems in decline. What is sustainability? And how do you educate for it? That seems like a much better idea. Let's turn this ship around. But without language. We couldn't really wrap our minds around what we were seeing. Once we had the language
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: we could get to work. And so I, as a global educator went to work thinking, Well, what am I already doing? I should keep doing? And what do I need to change? And that was 1987. And then, 1992, there was the big Rio summit.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: 174 countries, signed agenda 21, which was a promise to one another that we would all move toward a sustainable future individually and collectively.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: And in that agreement is chapter 36, which is the official birth of the field of education for sustainability, educators from around the world.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: Coming up with a draft
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: what we needed to know and be able to do and be like if we wanted to contribute to a healthy and sustainable future for humans and other life on the planet.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: And I took that. And I said, Okay, I have a 1st draft. Let me see what this is going to look like. And I founded the center in 1995, we still didn't have Internet yet you can imagine. And so I started working on. Well, what would this look like? And I created learning communities of educators in New York City because we didn't have any materials.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: We didn't know anything. We got people to come in and talk to us. And then eventually people started saying, so. I am one of the founders of the field. As it turns out, I didn't know that at the time, because we didn't really know who else was out there other than that group that gathered in Rio.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: And so we were. Suddenly people were saying, well, this is intriguing. Could I see what it looks like in a 7th grade history unit could I see what it looks like in 9th grade math.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: And so we started developing exemplars. Because in practice, if you're going to marry theory and practice, you have to build something. So we started building units of study, then whole courses. Then we started working with whole schools. Now, we're working with whole schools and school districts and their communities because we think schools and communities that learn and work together are the greatest unit of change.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: So that's how it started. And then, more recently, my my most exciting projects
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: having started, and with those humble beginnings, I have just finished a series of 9 years of curricula
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: for the Oxford International Press. They have a series of curricula on well-being and global skills. And this is the new one on sustainability. So it begins with 1st year, and it runs through 9th year, vertically articulated, absolutely gorgeous. And people all over the world are subscribing at a rapid pace. So that's very, very exciting.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: And then the other big project is the International Baccalaureate organization has created a new platform for asynchronous learning and micro credentials and micro learning.
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: and we are one of the 1st to build a series of micro credentials for them, for education, for sustainability. So teachers, both Ib and teachers anywhere in the world or any educator. Anybody can take these micro credentials which are really
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: delicious and robust and
Jaimie Cloud, The Cloud Institute: going to be quite useful. And then we're also building 10 microlearning modules.
unknown: To that they can take with or without the credentials that are also designed for people to begin to think about how to do how to what we call sustainableize your curricula.
unknown: I love the idea of connecting schools and communities a lot of times when we see especially international schools exist in a community, but aren't necessarily part of that community. And I love that focus on something that definitely resonates with our work at inspire citizens. Think about who in our community
unknown: can we build a reciprocal partnership with? Can we learn from and act with and engage in some meaningful work? We're applying our learning in a meaningful way to have a positive impact in our community and work towards our aspirational, sustainable future. So I think that sounds really amazing.
unknown: You also talked about getting this into our curriculum.
unknown: and we're going to move into a space that's somewhat unpopular here when we think about curriculum curriculum mapping. And really, how we set up systems to bring this into a school. A lot of educators. Sustainability, I think, resonates with people, especially educators, who are kind of shaping that future by working with students. You know, we understand the why we understand
unknown: some degree. I think now, with some help in this, podcast what that is.
unknown: But how do we do it. We're all busy.
unknown: and we have our curriculum standards.
unknown: How do we take a systemic approach
unknown: to bring this into schools in a meaningful way?
unknown: So. To us
unknown: sustainability and regeneration are the purposes of education. Why educate? Why get up so early in the morning for an unsustainable future
unknown: and to prepare kids for an unsustainable future. It doesn't make any sense. So we think of it as the purpose of education itself to be able to unleash potential and thrive over time.
unknown: That seems like a worthy
unknown: goal.
unknown: So.
unknown: and over the many years we are operating with 2 major documents, one is our standards, the Cloud Institute standards and performance indicators, which is a aggregation of everybody's thinking over the course of since 1987, basically, and the ideas, the core content standards, the performance indicators, the enduring understandings
unknown: that kept coming up again and again when we scoured the literature of everything everybody was writing. And they're still holding up today. So that's 1 major document. It's in the weeds with performance indicators. We can get those performance indicators and enduring understandings into our unit plans.
unknown: And I'll I'll circle back to what happens next on that.
unknown: The other great document is the educating for sustainability, benchmarks for individual and social learning. Both of those are on our website@cloudinstitute.org under the Resources Section. That's a much more high level document. And it's a consensus document of the educators for sustainability around the world who've been working on this for 30 years.
unknown: And so we got together and said, we need somewhere where we can say to people, this is what education for sustainability is to our best, the best of our knowledge. Right now, this is our best shot.
unknown: That's a great document to share with school boards and that kind of thing. Our standards and indicators was our contribution to that document, and as it turned out, we we got the core content standards right? We got 9 out of 10 global consensus.
unknown: And the 11 is the many ways of knowing. And we're just now building out performance indicators for that. So now you have all the ingredients. It's a different way of thinking. As Einstein was asking us for.
unknown: So how? What do you do with that different way of thinking? We still need the academic disciplines. We still need math and science, and writing, and reading and arts and all the different disciplines. And so what we do is sustainableize existing curriculum. Sometimes you can write a new course that's focused on sustainability like I did with Oxford.
unknown: but otherwise we already have curriculum. We're already teaching math and history and all the different disciplines. But are we doing it in a way that is helping us thrive over time. No, we're not because we're headed toward an unsustainable future. So what needs to change?
unknown: We
unknown: we take those standards and performance indicators and enduring understandings. And we work with educators, curriculum folks in the building, in the district or the school building. And we say, Okay, what's the match? So we do an alignment exercise 1st of all. Now, if we are just starting out.
unknown: we love mapping documentation and mapping because everybody knows when you write it down, your thinking is clarified. Everybody knows that. And yet for 200 years nobody wrote anything down. New teachers come into a building. Nothing is there for them.
unknown: It's it's so ridiculous the way that schools operate with curriculum. We think of curriculum as the continuity
unknown: and instruction as the creativity. It's not that the curriculum can't be creative, but the role of curriculum is continuity. So pre-k to 12, we want to be able to see it.
unknown: And that means it's been documented and mapped, and we can look at it, and we can talk about it, and we can ask questions of it. We can evolve it when we need to evolve it. We have vertical articulation. We can see the learning progressions over time. There's so many things we need to know about the what.
unknown: the what and the why? What are kids learning? Why are they learning it? When are they learning it? At? What? At what developmentally appropriate moments. Are they learning it?
unknown: We need to be able to see the curriculum and work with it.
unknown: Instruction should be linked to the curriculum, so we can toggle back and forth and make sure the instruction is delivering on the curriculum. But there has to be a there there. In order to really, you know, we need to be playing our a game. We have to turn this big ship around. And that means kids need to know and be able to do very, very specific things
unknown: with the math, with understanding that history, you know, we can learn from history to invent our future. We need to be great communicators. We need to be creatives, so we cannot take.
unknown: Take it for granted that kids are learning something because we can't see it. So documentation and mapping is key in your show notes. I'm going to put 3 protocols that I wrote for people who are frustrated with documentation and mapping, or don't have it yet
unknown: one is the rationales. Why are we asking everybody to write it down these days?
unknown: What are all the rationales for? Why we are doing this? And I always say to people, just see if there's at least one compelling reason that you find compelling, and if you have more than one great, but make sure you have at least one, because we're all on a need to know basis. If we don't know why we're doing it. It's not the old binder. It's not a digital version of the old binder that was had no instructional value. It's the curriculum that we're actually all looking at and operating from.
unknown: And then the second one is, what can you do with it? Once it's documented and mapped. One big mistake folks make is they ask everybody to document and map, and nobody ever looks at the map.
unknown: Well, there's a whole lot of things we can learn about what's going on in the building if we're looking at it. So a second protocol is, what are the applications? What are all the ways we can use these maps in critical conversations, and what are the favorable conditions that administrators need to give us. So we can actually document map and analyze the data and continually improve it.
unknown: And then the 3rd protocol is the solutions to common challenges, because everywhere I go people have an opinion about mapping. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad.
unknown: So when it's bad, I ask them, well, what happened? What'd you do wrong? Why do people hate mapping?
unknown: And then I realized, Oh, there's pretty much 7 reasons why. And so I I
unknown: wrote up a protocol that said, Here are the symptoms of this thing. Here's the upstream reason. This is the root cause of this. And then here are the solutions.
unknown: and I'll just give you a quick example. In many schools the veteran master teachers as when they leave, or even while they're there, they won't share
unknown: their materials.
unknown: And 1st of all, curriculum should be in the comments, instructional materials. Okay, that's that's your own magic, your own teacher, magic. But the curriculum is a shared document. It should be in the comments.
unknown: We depend on it, and we're all responsible for it.
unknown: But they leave, and they don't share. Well, why.
unknown: these are great teachers they've had.
unknown: Oh, sorry, Jamie, you just froze there.
unknown: They've got great stuff, great way.
unknown: Can I pause you there and jump back in.
unknown: Because people plagiarize their work.
unknown: I just said, these are great teachers. Sorry we just had a blip in there.
unknown: Absolutely.
unknown: Oh, yeah.
unknown: Okay.
unknown: These are great teachers, and so why don't they want to share? Well, their work has been plagiarized
unknown: period.
unknown: So how do we avoid that. Well, if you're map documenting and mapping, you can put your name on as the original author, and then anybody after that is an adapter.
unknown: All wanted was attribution
unknown: so simple.
unknown: So we created a box in the unit, planning template called author adapter, adapter, adapter
unknown: problem solved. So some of these things are not rocket science, and then there are other ones I won't get into. But the idea of documenting and mapping and continually improving the curriculum, and then making sure that our instruction is delivering on the promised curriculum and the agreed upon curriculum.
unknown: so that you have vertical articulation, so that the day makes sense to kids across the disciplines, that that everything's connected to everything else. This is the aspiration, and it is possible. But no one could remember all of that. If it's not documented and mapped.
unknown: You can't see it.
unknown: So that's that's I'm a huge fan of it. If you do it right.
unknown: For sure, and I think that's really important is how that's presented. You and I have talked about that in the past, and I love talking about just that idea of continuity and making sure that we understand where our target is, as we're designing learning experiences, you know. How do we reflect and think about. Are we successful?
unknown: If we don't know the target we're shooting for, or if that target is inconsistent across the school.
unknown: and also like how you talk about how making the day for students and having them see those dots that connect and making it interconnected. So a lot of times we think about school, especially in the upper levels of existing in our math, is over here. Our science is over here. Our language and all these different things are kind of exist in these silos, but really it is all interconnected. And if we can, through our curriculum, kind of think about
unknown: how we make those connections. I think that's really powerful for students, and really allows them to kind of leverage their learning in meaningful ways.
unknown: I want to talk a little bit about, you know, a lot of times we think about sustainability. Oh, maybe that's like a high school topic. But you mentioned when you were designing, you know, curriculum and courses. We're starting from the very beginning.
unknown: So how do we make this developmentally appropriate? How do we scaffold this? How do we engage our youngest learners with sustainability.
unknown: Absolutely so.
unknown: I think that Oxford curriculum is a great exemplar of of vertical articulation. So we start at the very beginning with pre-k kids 1st of all, just connecting them.
unknown: Because being connected, developing a sense of place being connected to each other and to the living systems.
unknown: is paramount. So that's why we love all the place based education work connecting, connecting, connecting, falling in love with the places in which they live so that they take care of them so that the places can take care of them.
unknown: So they develop positive reciprocal relationships with their places. So for the little tiny kids, one example of what we do. So one of the enduring understandings is that healthy systems have limits right? They're just thresholds
unknown: beyond which you don't want to go. You want to make sure you have just enough of this, and not too much of that. It's not a loss of autonomy, it's not scarcity, it's limits.
unknown: thresholds, and that people have such a hard time with that. So for the little tiny ones, if they plant a seed and they grow something in the classroom, or they have a fish tank, and they use the fish
unknown: poop to fertilize the plants and just begin to understand the relationships. The interdependencies between the soil and the fertilizer and the plants and the water, and their job is to care for
unknown: the plants.
unknown: and they need to learn well if I put too much water in. That's not good, but not enough, is not good and not too much sun, but they need some sun, and each plant needs different things. And we need to really start thinking about, what do these living things need to to grow? And how can we respect those thresholds? That's all they need to know at that point is to connect, to place, and to begin to understand their bodies. If you eat too much, if you don't eat too much if you eat too much of a certain thing
unknown: just beginning this to to understand that that healthy systems have limits. And to start thinking about, okay, how do I set those limits for myself?
unknown: And how do I know if I've eaten too much, or if I put too much water in the plant. So just to begin to love the idea and not think of limits as some sort of loss of autonomy. But just as a regular way that systems stay in dynamic balance. So for the little ones, that's really very personal, very
unknown: another big idea is that change is inevitable. So for kindergarteners or little kids that are going to school for the 1st time, just to link into. It's a big change, and it feels scary because it's so uncertain. But hey, change is, you know, change is life. Life is changing. If it's living, it's changing. So let's embrace the change.
unknown: All the new fun things. And and let's let's figure out what we do when it scares us. So it's not always about sustainability. Sustainability is not a topic.
unknown: It's an aspiration.
unknown: And so, but the thinking, but it should always be for sustainability, for the mindset and the muscle, so that when they're little they're developing the mindset and the muscle. So when it comes time to really start addressing some of the challenges. They already have the mindset and the muscle, and they can get to work
unknown: if you don't have the mindset and your muscle. By the time you start learning about the challenges, you're just overwhelmed and depressed. So this way we develop their understanding of the ways of thinking
unknown: of somebody who's being prepared to thrive over time and contribute to the health of the systems they depend on.
unknown: And we always say David Sobel says no bad news till the 4th grade. I could wait till the 6th grade, but if they're asking about it, then, of course, we want to tell them, but we want them to to have the
unknown: the ways of thinking that they need to grapple with whatever they're ready for.
unknown: Like here. You're talking about mindset and muscle. Even in your story you talk about having a fixed mindset when you were 11. But if we can develop this mindset with our younger learners. Yeah? And then think about the mindset and the muscle, and then scaffolding. You know that age and stage as we continue to go through our school, I think that's really exciting.
unknown: encouraging students to embrace change and just falling in love with our planet. You know. How do we expect students to
unknown: take care of our planet if we don't give them an opportunity to fall in love with our planet? That's.
unknown: Of course.
unknown: It's only my friend, Steve Sostack would say all the time, we can't fall in love with the planet in the classroom. You gotta have opportunities to get out and experience. Yeah, yeah.
unknown: Yeah, exactly. And so just to follow that through. So if it's limits or change that, we're starting the little ones with, or place sense of place. Then, as they get older now, they're mapping the assets and liabilities in their neighborhood and or in their community, and they're looking at the indicators of well-being for their community. And they're, you know. So so it's the same
unknown: concepts of limits and change. But now we're scaling up the the geography of it. It's not just me and my own self. Now it's our community. And eventually they can get to the world. So the same ideas follow through. They're they're the through lines.
unknown: no matter what. In the benchmarks. We did a nice job of organizing everybody's enduring understandings in that document. We call them big ideas. And the 3 big categories are living on planet Earth which gives you all the operating instructions we need for living on the planet and then taking responsibility for the difference we make. And that's a lot about the Commons and
unknown: linking thinking and behavior and results. And then the last one is about making change. And that's a lot more about the system dynamics and interdependence and making win win
unknown: impact.
unknown: So that's a really nice way to organize it. That's how we organize the Oxford series. And so within there we came up with Icann statements again from from the beginning to 9th year, from 1st year to 9th year, and you can just see how it gets more and more complex over time.
unknown: And that's the kind of thing that when you're working with existing curriculum.
unknown: You want to. Once you've documented and mapped it, you can actually generate reports to find out if you do have that vertical articulation, or if you are identifying gaps or redundancies, or or things like that. So that's another good reason to map is that you can see that vertical articulation.
unknown: Absolutely. And, you know, to be doing this work. We need those skills. And we want to be scaffolding those through our curriculum and have it aligned vertically. And how do you do that? If it's not documented, I 100% agree.
unknown: I want to touch on you mentioned bad news
unknown: and thinking about. Our students are consuming media like younger and younger, and a lot of what they get bombarded with is bad news. We're seeing a lot of eco anxiety
unknown: around climate change.
unknown: How do we
unknown: present this work? Maybe through the lens of evidence-based hope and thinking about long-term thinking when we're engaging with this.
unknown: Absolutely so. 1st of all, a lot of people think that education for sustainability is
unknown: means educating about unsustainability. So I would like to to distinguish those 2 right at the get-go. They're not the same thing at all.
unknown: Educating for sustainability builds the mindset and the muscle educating about sustainability. We have to do very carefully.
unknown: and we have to begin to think about. When do we start introducing the great challenges of our time
unknown: in education for sustainability? One of the distinguishing methodologies is that we are Futurists. So we always begin with the end in mind, just like in a backwards design or ubd curriculum methodology. But this is for life. This is the methodology for life. What do we want to bring into existence? What's our vision of the future? We want? What are our goals? Where do we want to go?
unknown: So we start there.
unknown: that creates structural tension
unknown: between where we want to go and where we are, what we call the current reality.
unknown: The challenges are part of the current reality story.
unknown: The vision of the future is the pull.
unknown: the structural tension that gives us a place to get out, that
unknown: it gives us a reason to get out of where we are, so we can move toward where we want to be if you don't have that structural tension, there's no movement. You're just stuck with the challenges, but you don't have any anything pulling you forward from them.
unknown: So first, st you need to create structural tension by establishing, where do we want to be?
unknown: Even if you start with a challenge, you can take a step back and say, Okay, well, before we get to dealing with this challenge, what? What's the future we want? And then how do we get from here to there. So that's going to breed not only structural tension
unknown: but emotional tension, because maybe it seems like really far away where we want to be from where we are, and that then generates creative tension.
unknown: So okay, how the heck are we going to get from here to there? But you always begin discussing a challenge in the context of this is just our current reality. It's not our destiny, it's not our fate. It's got history. We can explain how we got here. And so where are we going next? It's got to be where you attach the love.
unknown: Because if you're scaring kids before again back to our point earlier, if we're scaring kids before they even love it.
unknown: You know, they're just under their beds in despair. So so first, st we have to know we have to create that structural tension. Then.
unknown: when we deal with the challenges we need to help them understand, make sure, 1st of all, that they are developmentally appropriate. I have worked with educators who tell me, oh.
unknown: I teach about climate change for 6 weeks to my 1st graders.
unknown: Why, why are you doing that?
unknown: Well? I want them to care.
unknown: Is that the result you're getting? No, they're terrified.
unknown: Okay, well, let's stop doing that.
unknown: And that's the story for everyone. And I look at people's curriculum all the time. And I see, oh, yeah, we educate for sustainability. We teach about climate change and the acidification of the oceans. And this and that, and it's like, no, that's education about unsustainability.
unknown: What kind of thinking this is all about a different way of thinking.
unknown: so that you get a different result.
unknown: So if we have, for example, if we are going to address a challenge, name a challenge that we need to address, and I can show you how we would do it. You can educate for sustainability through a challenge.
unknown: or you can address a challenge through the thinking of sustainability education. It doesn't make any difference.
unknown: So but pick a challenge, and I'll tell you how we would approach it.
unknown: Deforestation.
unknown: Okay.
unknown: so deforestation. So 1st of all.
unknown: what would we like to see? We would like to see healthy forests.
unknown: We would like to see biodiversity thriving, we would like to see. So we start to figure.
unknown: what's the opposite of of deforestation?
unknown: A forested area, you know whether you would call it reforestation, which is a solution, or you would just call it. Let me picture what the world
unknown: would look like, you know. What did it used to look like when it was forested before we started deforesting. All right. Well, we can use some of those historic pictures to envision what it'll look like again. You know they deforested Vermont. If you've been there recently, it's been reforested. It's it's a. It's a series of forests. So it's possible.
unknown: Okay. So now we know where we're headed. Okay, so why are we deforesting? What is the point of that? And and what does it even mean? And and why are we doing it? Well?
unknown: Once we figure that out, we can say, All right. Is there a way
unknown: to have wood
unknown: and not deforest? How? How can we find this win-win-win solution?
unknown: And and are they really mutually exclusive?
unknown: No, of course not. Well, why are we? Well.
unknown: and how much wood is being wasted? That's the other side of it. You've got the sources, but then you've also got the Sinks. Where is all the wood going?
unknown: And it turns out, you know, we waste almost 50% of the biocapacity on the planet. Waste
unknown: food fiber, all of it.
unknown: So are we wasting a lot of what we're actually
unknown: cutting down. Well, let's stop doing that as a 1st point of reference. But that doesn't make any sense, because we're we're actually, you know. And what are the implications of deforesting. So we want to make sure we understand. What does that actually mean, and what are the intended and unintended consequences? And so then you would come up with a way of saying, All right in this place.
unknown: We need to find out a way for the economy, for the you know, for the ecology and for the people to be able to thrive over time and and
unknown: develop regenerative forestry practices. So it would be you would be unpacking it. But you would always be saying, Well, obviously, we want regenerative. We want to regenerate our forest. That's where we're headed. So now we just need to understand. Why are we in this situation? So we can figure out how to get from here to there.
unknown: Climate change, same idea. Climate change is a symptom
unknown: of global warming which is a symptom
unknown: of emitting too many greenhouse gases, and Co. 2 faster than the earth is able to sequester. It, absorb it, which is a symptom of bad thinking.
unknown: So it always comes back to thinking
unknown: and thinking about our thinking. And so once we realize that we need that that system. Healthy systems have limits.
unknown: Then we can realize, okay, how do we sequester 80% of the carbon and greenhouse gases that we that are the the too much part.
unknown: We need that greenhouse effect to protect us. But anything over that
unknown: is excess. So how do we get back to the place or move forward to the place. You can't go back.
unknown: move forward to the place where it's back in its right percentage. Then that becomes the goal. So you don't want to spend too much time just talking about the problem you want to talk about. All right. It's a stock and flow issue.
unknown: very simple. It's got a it's a bathtub. It's got a faucet and a drain, so we need to close down the faucet and open up the drain.
unknown: And then there are lots of simulations. There's a lot of it's also always useful to draw on. What's going on in the world. Who's doing? What about this thing, so I would always send people to the 2 great webs. 3 great websites draw down the regeneration project
unknown: and
unknown: and Roads, which is at Mit, where they have the simulator. So kids and teachers can can look and see more of this, less of this, more of this, less of this. How do we get to the right percentage. So
unknown: always experiential.
unknown: always understanding what's going on, but always with the eye to where we're headed. Next.
unknown: Those simulations are so cool and just a really kind of way to actively engage with some of those systems, and thinking about where that balance is, I love the way you're talking about being Futurists, and that's something we talk about a lot with. Inspire citizens in our work and thinking about
unknown: our future? And what is our what is the sustainable future look like? What does it sound like? What does it feel like? And we spend very, very little time in school thinking about that. It turns out we're really good at thinking about post-apocalyptic or dystopian futures. We got a lot.
unknown: About that.
unknown: Yeah, we have lots of movies. We've got lots of books to help us with that. But what does a sustainable future look like? We don't know what we're shooting towards.
unknown: Then how do we get there? And I love that idea of kind of thinking, where do we want to be? Let's not focus on the problem. Let's focus on not where we are now, where we want to go. And then we back map and think, how do we get there?
unknown: Because that's how you're going to have criteria for knowing if it's whatever your solutions are going to help you get where you're going or not, if you don't have that as a measure, how do you know that it's the right thing to do? If it doesn't help you get where you're going. And as the Cheshire cat said, if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there. So that's not going to work.
unknown: Yeah. So I think
unknown: you're absolutely right. And everywhere I go, the literacy teachers tell me, especially in middle school.
unknown: we're we've got. We teach dystopian, not these 3 dystopian novels. So kids all over the world are learning about dystopia.
unknown: Why?
unknown: Well, because we want them to know that's a warning.
unknown: But that's all they're getting
unknown: so.
unknown: Oh, pause it for a sec, Jimmy.
unknown: That.
unknown: To warn it.
unknown: Oh!
unknown: Just introduction. We just blip there. Can you jump back in? They see it as a warning. I think it's where we lost it.
unknown: The teachers want the books, those dystopian novels to be used as a warning. That's their intention.
unknown: and it's good literature. If it's a genre. They want to teach all that's fine, but they are assuming that the kids are receiving them as a warning, and they're not. They're receiving them as oh, this is! It's doom and gloom. It's over. This is the way it's going to be.
unknown: and we have nothing to to. We can't do anything about it. They don't see that as a warning.
unknown: and especially if you start with the threat. The other thing about the problems and the threats is that they a. They generate dopamine in the brain, but they don't solve anything. But they put people in this threat state where your brain shuts down.
unknown: All of the energy goes from the frontal cortex, where everything good happens into the fear state. And so everything is shut down because you're supposed to fight or flight or gather. And so you're not going to get people's creative best in a threat state, they need to be in a toward state.
unknown: And so if you begin with the visioning and the future we want.
unknown: And then, if you need to teach those novels
unknown: 1st to your point, I think we need to have kids picturing in their minds what would it look like if we had what we wanted, and literally drawing it, writing about it, looking at other other Science Fiction people's depictions of it, whatever it is. But get clear. Storytelling is one of the great ways to develop schema
unknown: and to shift schema.
unknown: So if somebody says it's something's impossible. If you have several great stories about how people have already done it.
unknown: it can't be impossible. Impossible. At the same time it creates cognitive dissonance.
unknown: So we want to create cognitive dissonance. And we want to say, No, this is possible. Here, look at these pictures. Look at these stories. This is where we're going.
unknown: So then, when they read the Dystopian novels, they can understand them as warnings. It could go this way, or it could go this way now they have comparison. But you have to create that structural tension so they can compare the dystopia. And it's not Utopia that we're headed towards. It's life. It's happiness, it's good food. It's, you know, dynamic balance. It's it's.
unknown: Friday.
unknown: Sustainable and thriving regenerative place, you know, that's a new reality.
unknown: So. But then you can put that dystopian, those dystopian stories in a context of, yeah, this is a potential scenario. But that's juicier. We want to go there. Let's go there. Let's not do this, you know. So that that's the way I would do it.
unknown: The solar punk genre. It might be a cool counterbalance, I think, to to our Dystopian novels to create that cognitive dissonance. I wonder if that would make kind of a cool unit.
unknown: Oh.
unknown: we'll see. Jamie, you've been working, you know, since you were 11 in this space.
unknown: What gives you hope for the future?
unknown: Oh, I have huge
unknown: respect for the human spirit.
unknown: and I think we are worth sustaining.
unknown: We have made a lot of mistakes. We can be real idiots, we really can.
unknown: But that is usually a reflection of our education.
unknown: and I don't mean our schooling.
unknown: I mean our education, which could involve schooling, but could also be. You know what we learn everywhere else in our life.
unknown: and I think that the reason that I'm
unknown: so passionate about educating
unknown: based on the Greek root, educate to bring out of us our potential
unknown: is that
unknown: with the proper education.
unknown: people really think deeply and well and creatively, and they understand interdependence. And they understand
unknown: that diversity makes our lives possible. If they've been educated for sustainability, they they understand a lot. They know a lot. They can put pieces together, they turn problems into opportunities, they create value.
unknown: And it's happened so quickly. And we have student work samples from pre-k right up through university. That shows you what happens when kids are learning
unknown: these things and then want to take action because they always want to do something about what they're learning, and if and and when we see how quickly that happens and how quickly the human spirit wants to
unknown: contribute
unknown: to the world.
unknown: You just can't resist it.
unknown: And that's what's possible.
unknown: And so if it's possible.
unknown: I'm gonna I'm gonna be there with with what's possible.
unknown: everything else is and is, is a product of bad thinking, and that is something we can do something about.
unknown: Thank you. That was really inspiring. And we keep talking all day. But I'm gonna pause here, and I just want to say, thank you.
unknown: Just thinking back to, you know the very beginnings. And all the way through, from the start of the Cloud Institute to all the different schools, all the different teachers, all the different students, all the different families who have taken this learning and run with it.
unknown: That's such an amazing impact. And you continue to do this work and inspire us. Inspire me
unknown: to continue to work in this space, to lead, change, to inspire others. And
unknown: yeah, I think there's a lot of hope there to be when we kind of look at it that way. And just think of the impact with all of those people. So on behalf of
unknown: you know everybody who's listening and everyone who's been influenced.
unknown: Thank you. I just want to share my gratitude. I've really admired your work for a long time, and it's been such a pleasure for me
unknown: to get to have this time with you, and you know, listen to you. Tell these stories and
unknown: help us to think as Futurists help us to think about how we
unknown: use the knowledge and skills that we're picking up in our learning
unknown: through the lens of sustainability working towards a sustainable future. And
unknown: like, you say, that's what education that's the purpose of education.
unknown: and that's something that I think we can all get behind. So thank you so much for your time, and thank you so much for everything you do.
unknown: Thanks, Scott, I appreciate the appreciation. I just like to be useful.
unknown: Fans.
unknown: There we go. I'm gonna turn off our recording. That was fabulous, Jamie, thank you so much.
unknown: Yeah, you're happy. Oh, good!