Espie grabs her lunch before heading out to the bus stop where the solar powered school bus picks her up. She’s excited because today she’s giving her year-end presentation in Future Class. As a sixth grader, she has already earned five Transforming the Planet badges. Her teacher has earned a Planet Sustainability certificate from WOU. She inspires Espie and her classmates for ways they document their own positive steps towards reducing carbon emissions, recycling and reusing resources, and mentoring younger students. The emphasis of the class is not to predict the future but explore possible futures. Each day her class has a chance to share results of environmental scanning of local, state, national, and international news. They practice using trend analysis, backcasting, scenario writing, and simulations.

Espie’s project on poison-less pesticides started when her parents provided a section of their backyard vegetable garden for experimentation. She was able to earn points for both her science and math classes for graphing and explaining her process and results. Today she has the opportunity to earn additional points in communications in the categories of Technical Explanation and Persuasive Presentations. She’s already volunteered in the 4th grade classroom helping them study the lifespan of ladybugs and pairing with a classmate to teach the importance of bumblebees to sustainable gardening.

The school Espie attends encourages all students to select a “minor” for intensive study across multiple years, with teachers matched to students to help them acquire more and more advanced knowledge as they progress through each grade. Each Friday, students work in small groups on their independent studies, often connecting virtually to content, experts, and other students interested in related topics. During the rest of the week, they participate in an interdisciplinary seminar focused on sustainability. They learn and practice using a variety of future studies strategies. Each year they participate in a month-long climate change study, collecting local data and contributing to the state’s climate change data system. Her communications teacher helps students select readings on sustainability, requiring them to read both sides of any issue they study. They practice advocacy presentations and critique local and national spokespersons on topics of interest.

Espie is already looking forward to high school where she will take at least one online class each term, selected from a large list of sustainability courses developed and shared through Open Educational Resources. Some of the materials are developed by university level students who can earn college credit for developing and offering an online course for K-12 students. Each course culminates in a performance assessment evaluated by community volunteers who use a rubric to provide feedback to students on their projects. Participating colleges and universities view the collaboration as an effective recruitment tool for future students and a retention tool for current students who often mentor their younger peers.