Schools in Transition
Transition Network is now offering a pathway to schools that want to be part of this positive movement towards a low-carbon, local and sustainable future.
We have developed a whole package of support from published resources to mentoring and go beyond the eco-schools territory to invite our schools to engage with a pedagogy (way of learning) that is aligned with an ecological world-view.
The overall journey that the school makes is from awareness-raising to its own Great Unleashing (celebration) as a Transition initiative.
We are currently seeking three more secondary schools, and three primary schools, to be part of the pilot for this programme. If you would like to take part download the information sheet and flyer for the secondary school residential in October, called Next Generation Leaders for Sustainability
Awareness-raising might start with showing the film In Transition 2.0 and having a discussion about what the school can do (this could be done through Open Space and a future visioning). It moves onto working through the Transition Streets workbook and adapting that for the school and its local area. The school is generating a positive vision and a practical plan as well as saving money and energy.
We suggest the school creates a directory of local people and organisations that it would like to build relationships with: bee-keepers, orchard-growers, organic farmers, bike-menders, composters, recycling everything, food hub (if there is one), local Transition community if there is one…… and invites these people into the school for Great Re-Skilling sessions. It can also create maps of the local area showing things like places to forage, places for locking up and repairing bikes, charity shops, recycling points, local food farms and shops, eco businesses, and green spaces.
Pupils identify a project in the community that will add to the community’s resilience. It could be a local Incredible Edible project, it could be setting up a Food Hub, it could be a bike repair and ride project, it could be bee-keeping, cleaning up a waterway, clearing up a patch of waste ground and guerrilla gardening…… The projects are filmed and/or photographed and posted up on the Transition Network website.
By being out in the community the school builds relationships with local people. When these are well developed the school invites the community in and holds a Great Unleashing of itself as a School in Transition. This is a celebration of its collective ingenuity and readiness to embody a local and resilient future.
If you would like to join the pilot you will be in a small learning network of British schools that are leaders in taking learning for sustainability to the next level. These include Wellington College (Crowthorne, Berkshire), KEVICC Co-Operative Trust School (Totnes, Devon) and Crispin Academy (Street, Somerset). You will experience CPD through Action Research learning that links pupils to teachers to communities. The basic cost is £500. For more information contact Isabel Carlisle, Transition Network Education Co-Ordinator: isabelcarlisle@transitionnetwork.org
A school in Transition is:
- Relevant and specific to place and community: each school finds its own expression of that by mapping itself into a learning eco-system of relationships
- Pursuing resilience on many levels and making that explicit. It’s about whole-school change
- Adopting approaches to learning that put healthy eco-systems and social systems central and in doing so is re-visioning what education is for
- Involving pupils in its thinking, planning and doing as a matter of course. It’s all about designing for the future
- Applying minds to real-world problem-solving so that purpose and meaning are integral to the work. Solving local problems locally