Sustainability in Elementary School Education
Sustainability is a hot topic in the education domain, with many teachers wondering how on Earth one can manage to survive in this career. Now, I’ve had plenty moments of exhaustion and frustration that had me question sustainability in this capacity, but at the end of the day I question sustainability in another sense: how could my classes generate so much garbage?
I am someone who has always tried to be conscious of my waste, albeit imperfectly. I compost consistently, sort my recyclables, have been vegetarian for years, but I still succumb to the sweet song of a McDonald’s Diet Coke in a plastic cup. However, the levels of waste produced in my class feel significant. Markers left without caps, worksheets for a single activity, and seemingly endless mounds of disinfecting towlettes gather in heaps in my trash cans and I’m left wondering:
How can I expect my students to put their environmental learning into action when I cannot even practice sustainability within my own class?
The irony of my Marine Biology class burning through half a box of rubber gloves as we study the Pacific Garbage Patch is not lost on me. At the same time, I don’t think switching to a solely digital model is a realistic expectation. The students spend too much time on screens, I spend too much time on screens; it’s preposterous to expect a six year old to learn about animal adaptations on a tablet when they can feel them with their hands in person. But with eleven classes, fifteen lessons a week, that’s a LOT of paper to expect to be single use. When we flippantly hand out materials, the students don’t learn to respect them. A first-grade student during a craft activity went to throw away a cap-less marker, rather than look for the cap that was simply underneath his chair. I’m not sure if all NYC schools are like this, but the two that I’ve worked in do not participate in mixed paper recycling. Even our beloved Expo markers end up putting more plastic into the landfills!
At scale, I cannot begin to fathom the environmental impact that our classrooms are having, and the lessons our students are taking about caring for our Earth in return. As much as I can turn out the lights in my class or repurpose mis-printed paper, I often feel a debate about how I can reconcile my relatively eco-friendly lifestyle with my practices as a teacher. Perhaps my first step is to encourage mixed paper recycling and try to reduce the amount of waste in experiments in class, with a future step being a compost bin (though, on an urban campus, should I fear rats?). As I scoured the internet for sustainable practices to integrate, it seems as though the buck stops here. Recycle, compost, turn out the lights. Though with the climate crisis at hand, I believe there needs to be much more drastic steps to take to create a more environmentally aware educational space.
I’m curious to hear your ideas. If you have thoughts, don’t hesitate to contact me. In the meantime, the least I can do is power off my laminator and try to make sure the markers keep their tops!
