Before the break #GreenerSchoolsCast hosts and ISBL Fellows, Helen Burge and Paul Edmond, interviewed two whole-school-sustainability champions. In our third episode of the series, we've captured part one of this interview with some inspiring minds from the Girls’ Day School Trust (GDST).
Joining Helen and Paul is Sarra Pardali, Head of Infrastructure and Sustainability and Amy Bailey, Educational Partnerships and Engagement Manager. GDST is a family of 25 independent schools and academies across England and Wales with an impressive history of engaging with sustainability and ecology. Below the episode we've included links to some of the projects mentioned by Sarra and Amy.
🌍Earth Warriors PenPal Programme: we piloted this with Year 2 classes in Spring 2022. More information about Earth Warriors can be found here and a write-up of the PenPal programme is linked here.
📣Speaker series: we ran a series of online speaker talks in 2021-22, open to our students in Year 10 upwards. Speakers have included GDST alumna Jo Ashbridge who founded the AzuKo, a charity working towards a “world in which every person enjoys the right to dignified living conditions” and Tessa Clarke, co-founder of the food app Olio. You can find out more about Tessa’s talk here.
👗Fast Fashion: our students are very interested in sustainable fashion and students at Oxford High School organised a conference raising awareness of the issue. You can read more about their project here and some of our follow-up initiatives, linked to Fashion Revolution Week, an annual global campaign which aims to bring about a more just and equitable fashion system.
🌳Outdoor Classroom Day: across the GDST we look for opportunities for our students to engage with nature and enjoy outdoor learning. A summary of these projects can be found here.
🏆21 of our schools are working through the eduCCate Global Bronze Award. More information about the scheme can be found here (although note the requirements of this award have changed since we signed up).
✔️Several GDST schools have received training and use the curriculum resources provided by ThoughtBox Education- more about their work can be found here.
📻GDST releases a parenting podcast called Raise Her Up. We use this as a platform to raise awareness of, and talk about, sustainability and have released episodes on eco-anxiety and fast fashion, and most recently, an interview with Amanda Owen aka The Yorkshire Shepherdess.
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