Each month, NAAEE shares narratives from the CEE-Change Fellows as they implement their community action projects and work to strengthen environmental education and civic engagement capabilities, all supporting the mission of cleaner air, land, and water.  Join us on their journey! The Civics and Environmental Education (CEE) Change Fellowship is NAAEE’s newest initiative to support leadership and innovation in civics and environmental education in North America. This ee360+ program is a partnership between NAAEE, U.S. EPA, and the Cedar Tree Foundation.

How can we empower educators as change agents to create a more sustainable world? That is one of the key questions that drives my professional work and motivated me to apply to join the 2023 NAAEE CEE-Change Fellowship. As a former high school teacher passionate about systems thinking and sustainability, I partnered with the nonprofit Compass Education for my CEE-Change Community Action Project to make systems thinking education more available to PK–12 educators across North America. After years of working internationally, upon returning to the United States, I wanted to cultivate a community of practitioners closer to my ‘home’ country using systems thinking education to engage youth in climate education and civic action.

For my fellowship project, I envisioned a virtual workshop series for PK–12 educators passionate about integrating climate education and civic action into their work from across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Thanks to the support of my fellowship cohort, the NAAEE community, and some fantastic educators, this big dream became a reality. I co-facilitated this learning series with two amazing Compass Facilitators, Cait Barnum, STEM+ Department Lead at the American Schools Puerto Vallarta, and Suji DeHart, co-founder of Make A Difference Courses.

Defining Participants: How to Maximize Our Impact?

An important learning moment for me was when I was challenged to confirm my assumptions about the best participants for my project. When our team at Compass Education began outreach and recruitment for this workshop series, we started by recruiting teachers working in formal school settings with PK–12 students. My rationale was that I wanted to ensure participants would have the opportunity to implement their learning with students and that schoolteachers would have the best position and knowledge to integrate systems thinking tools into their existing curriculum in a short time frame. This was also informed by Compass Education’s history of working with 3500+ educators from schools in 110+ countries around the world. Our organization's habit was to focus first on teachers when striving to equip 1 million educators with systems thinking by 2030, in line with the UN SDG agenda.

However, within a few days of opening the application, I received my first submission from an educator working in a community organization that partners with local schools to bring more climate education and civic action into their community. This query helped me pause and realize the potential to have a bigger impact by collaborating with other nonformal education organizations supporting PK–12 schools with climate education and civic action. By inviting any educators who worked with PK–12 youth on climate education or civic action, not just those in schools, we could reach more students and create space for uplifting each other’s work and ideas with our different communities. This was an opportunity to develop one of the key ideas I’ve taken away from my CEE-Change Fellowship: we can achieve more to advance environmental education through collaboration than competition. After this reflection, we worked with 20 passionate educators from a diverse array of organizations and places to explore how systems thinking could support their existing climate and civic education goals.

Participant Experiences and Experiments

During the workshop series, we explored how systems thinking mindsets and tools can help educators achieve their teaching and learning goals while integrating more climate education and action into their work.  We utilized The Sustainability Compass to navigate complex issues and identify opportunities for systems change. We also applied the Systems Iceberg to practice recognizing the mindsets and systemic structures that shape the everyday events and patterns surrounding us.  

By the end of the session, I am confident that participants gained an understanding of systems thinking. One participant reflected that “I used to think most about sustainability and its impacts through a nature-centered lens. But now I know the value of expanding that view to incorporate Wellness, Economy and Society as a richer path toward systems thinking.” I also believe they left feeling empowered to tackle complex sustainability issues with their students, as another participant reflected, “By examining the natural and societal structures that affect human behaviors, we educators are better prepared to break down these large concepts into actionable pieces with students.”

Moreover, I’ve begun to receive some examples from participants of how they’ve been using systems thinking to engage their communities in climate education and civic action, including examples from:

• Eric Oldmixon, Arts Department and Eco-Committee Chair at The Branson School in CA, USA, used The Sustainability Compass with his intergenerational Eco-Committee to explore how they might create “a fully sustainable food program at Branson.”
• Berenice Reyes, Community Outreach Coordinator at the American School of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, used the Systems Iceberg to analyze challenges her high school seniors faced in organizing their community outreach service day.
• Keelyn Tougas, Education Coordinator at EcoSuperior in Thunder Bay, Ontario, CA, used the Systems Iceberg with her team to strategize ways to engage their community members in a “Commuter Challenge.”
• Melissa Chapman-Ait Belaid, Founder of the Bilingual International School of Texas Micro-School in North Texas, USA, used The Sustainability Compass to explore SDG 6 and local water issues with her community members. 

During the remaining months of my CEE-Change Fellowship, I look forward to supporting our participants in implementing more classroom and community projects using systems thinking tools and sharing their experiences and outcomes on the Compass Education blog. Furthermore, I am excited to continue practicing an open mind to find new and valuable opportunities to collaborate with educators in and beyond the traditional education system to encourage more education and action for a sustainable world.