At The Hawaii Preparatory Academy (HPA), the imperative is magnified by geographic location (educators live and work in a pristine and diverse ecosystem situated on the island) and made still more urgent by the astonishing and unacceptable absence of infrastructure for even basic sustainability efforts on the island and in the state of Hawaii, relative to what’s available elsewhere in the mainland United States. For example, the town surrounding this boarding school only began recycling in the last few years, and residents rely on landfills to handle solid waste management — islanders are running out of space for the unending flow of tons of rubbish.
Students Make the Case for Change
While serving as HPA’s headmaster in the Spring of 2006, my administrative team and I were invited to attend a presentation by a group of environmental science students. For their term project, they formed small groups to investigate the environmentally-friendly energy alternatives available to our school; after researching our electricity consumption history, meeting with representatives from the local power company, county waste management and water use consultants, and interviewing our maintenance and business directors, they were prepared to make bold and assertive arguments for change that would benefit our school well into the foreseeable future.Given the 50-year old diesel-burning water heaters then serving our dormitories, the massive propane-burning boiler heating our swimming pool year-round, the ancient, inefficient window mount air conditioners humming in our technology center all day and night regardless of ambient air temperature, and the inexcusable absence of solar or wind power generation on a campus with year-round tradewinds and solar exposure on par with the Sahara Desert — it’s safe to say that my administrative team and I knew these determined young women and men had a very big target to hit.
First, the students provided clear (and remarkably accurate) representations of our energy use along with estimates of fuel, electricity, and cost savings available to us through conservation efforts and assorted sustainable technologies. And then they made compelling and persuasive appeals for us to take action. The school’s senior administrators left this presentation with a shared realization that, other than figuring out how to fund the elements of their plan requiring capital expense, there was simply no justification for us to continue on our present, wasteful course. That morning, nearly three years ago, was a catalyst for an initiative we called — perhaps unimaginatively now that it has become a banner for environmental awareness internationally — Go Green.
Moving Toward Institutional Sustainability
Like many schools, ours has a long history of noteworthy periodic efforts at energy conservation and occasions of responsible environmental stewardship, led by individual teachers who engaged their children in reforestation efforts, beach and highway cleanups, and recycling drives. But each of these efforts rested on the interests, passion, and time afforded by specific teachers, staff members, administrators, or parent volunteers.
Historically, when these green-minded individuals left the school or moved on to other projects, their initiatives went away. Prior to Go Green, we had not attempted an institutional drive to implement and integrate sustainability into our day-to-day operations, our instructional program, and our long-range planning. How, my colleagues and I wondered when we reconvened the next day, could we unite the school around Go Green in a way that would transcend the tenure of any one faculty member, and not exhaust the one or two adults behind the hit-and-miss green efforts of the past? That is, how might we make environmental sustainability, sustainable?
The answer: Let the students lead it.
We proceeded to design Go Green at our school so that students would be integral to every aspect of our planning. Several lead teachers and I actively encouraged students to recruit support from among their peers. It is not difficult to get young people excited about idealistic causes, especially when they are inspired by other young people rather than by adults! Students were Go Green leaders from day one, serving on our steering committee, identifying projects and priorities, and joining the administration in placing actions on a timeline. We made sure that the older students reached out to their friends and siblings from the younger grades, extending well into our elementary and middle school levels, to strengthen continuity and create de facto succession planning — a pipeline of leaders moving up through the grades — for Go Green.
Student voices spoke louder than we expected, in another critical aspect of the Go Green effort: fund raising. We featured student projects and testimonials, replete with lots of photographs illustrating children at work in their various projects, in our appeals to prospective donors. To our surprise and delight, this strategy resulted in an immediate six-figure gift that got us started, followed by several smaller contributions and, recently, a seven-figure gift that will make Go Green perpetual at the school, supporting student-led projects as well as environmentally-friendly capital improvements. Indeed, we found that the adults whom we approached for support were extremely interested in what our students were thinking and doing and planning — we are confident that it was the appeal of the student testimonials, proposals, and projects that inspired such unexpected and generous support.
Student-Led Projects
At any given time during the past two years, across both of our campuses, there are as many as a dozen student-led sustainability and stewardship projects underway, with adults (mostly teachers) serving to advise and provide access to resources. The program’s initial student projects included efforts to meter our energy use and implement conservation strategies to measure their impact; our middle and high school students competed to see who could reduce the most, resulting in a monthly electricity savings totaling nearly $1,800 that we’ve managed to maintain after the contest ended. (At one point during the competition, I fielded calls from middle school parents complaining that the classrooms were too dark — because their children were insisting that the teachers leave the lights off!). Meanwhile, in the elementary grades, our younger students learned about composting and cleared overgrown areas to plant organic gardens, began recycling plastic six-pack rings and cell phones, and more.
In summer 2007, a group of high school students proposed that we host an event on campus to coincide with the global Live Earth concert series, to take place on July 7 (the storied 07/07/07). Their plan was to invite several popular musical groups from the area to play on campus at a festival featuring informational booths and displays from area “green” merchants, along with guest presentations from environmental experts and scientists focusing on themes such as climate change and conservation alternatives.
Spurred on by the administration and guided by consultation from a few key adults, the students proposed to do all the organizing, fund raising, and event coordination; the event would be “zero impact,” with 100 percent recyclable beverage and meal containers and serveware, and biodiesel-powered generators to meet the energy demands of vendors and the musicians (a handful using vegetable oil from our own dining hall). Fifty student volunteers working the event hoped to host 500 participants — a stretch in a rural community of about 10,000 inhabitants spread over a 25-mile radius, with virtually no media advertising — to break even on a $20,000 cost.
While some faculty members and parents were initially skeptical, our students successfully hosted Waimea Green Fest in July of 2007, earning a slight profit with more than 500 participants enjoying a wide variety of educational and entertaining green activities. As of this writing, Green Fest II is in the initial planning stages.
The Student Congress on Sustainability
Following the injection of funding from our first major donor that propelled such student efforts, and in the interests of building a sustainable sustainability program, we enlisted a professional environmental planner from the mainland to lead an all-day strategic sustainability charrette. Each of our planning teams included a student leader. Emerging from one group was the idea for an annual gathering of high school students to share what they are doing at their schools to promote sustainable habits, and to generate ideas and possibilities for expanding their collective efforts. In this way, young people might expand and reinforce the network of student-led sustainability — to pay it forward, if you will, promoting environmental stewardship among their peers at schools statewide whose legacy it will be to reverse the course of environmental degradation they’ve inherited from generations of shortsighted adults.
As we worked collaboratively with community organizers, educators, students, and environmental consultants to design this event, which we called the First Annual Student Congress on Sustainability, we were motivated by the collective conviction resulting from two years of intensive student-driven environmental education: it is imperative to facilitate widespread education and collaboration among our children, helping to cultivate and shape habits of mind that will translate sustainable ideology into practice. We envisioned our Student Sustainability Congress to be a proactive step toward celebrating and spreading environmental consciousness, and enabling youth-driven conservation and stewardship initiatives to spread through student-to-student networking.
In its first iteration in summer 2008, the Congress hosted young women and men from the 25 public, independent, and parochial high schools on our island, as well as teleconference participation from students at schools in Alaska and Hamburg, Germany. HPA’s dormitories accommodated students attending the Congress, with all meals onsite and access to hiking and outdoor activities on the ranchland adjacent to the 200-acre campus. Adults and students solicited donations and grant funding to cover all costs for the student participants and adult chaperones during the three-day event.
At the Congress, students engaged in small- and large-group seminars to share the various projects underway and proposed at their schools, with opportunities for both interactive and poster sessions. Workshops also featured a series of speakers, drawn from environmental scientists, community activists, educators, and others whose work provides inspiration and direction for the students, and our groups set out on several field trips across the island to see sustainable technologies and practices in action.
The school hosted a mini-Congress in November, five months later, reconvening 25 student representatives to consider their progress on their action plans, re-establishing their network, and beginning the planning for the 2009 Congress. Congress planners intend to expand the Congress in year two to invite participants from the entire state, with select invitations to schools on the mainland; in year three, it will be a nationwide event, inviting students from several international schools; and in its fourth year, the Congress will become an international student event featuring various models of student sustainability initiatives that will be well underway at the schools on the island at that time. One hopes that the Student Sustainability Congress can serve as a model to inspire other school communities in pursuing similar student-led sustainability-awareness efforts.
Why Students Should Lead
All of us know of schools whose marketing materials, mission statements, and websites broadcast environmental sustainability as a value, and this is laudable. However, the vast majority of independent schools engage a piecemeal approach to promoting sustainability — by building a “green” facility, for example, or engaging in “environmental awareness” activities like service projects and fund raising for green causes.
We believe that by integrating sustainability into the daily lives of students — in their classes, with their teachers, led by children — we will integrate sustainability into the daily experience, ethos, and behavioral norms of our school much more effectively than such piecemeal efforts might. Indeed, it’s happening; over the course of the past two years, groups of children, faculty, staff, parents, and alumni across the school community have embraced student-led sustainability as integral to HPA’s mission and strategic aims. The language of environmental stewardship is increasingly woven into the school’s instructional program and day-to-day operations. HPA’s administration and board of directors are united in believing that Go Green and projects associated with student-led sustainability are worthy of the fullest investment of time and resources. Our children leave us little choice but to trust in their leadership, and support them as if, otherwise, there’s no tomorrow.
