A Conversation with Andrew Watson, Co-Director of SusEd
Andrew and I have known each other for over twenty years, first meeting over lunch in Milan when he was introducing the IB Diploma at the St.James Henderson School, the British School of MIlan. Subsequent to that we met regularly as fellow workshop leaders for the IB in lots of different locations in Europe and further afield. Fortunately, he invited me to attend a Sused’s summit in Berlin, which was a wonderful experience and exposed me to some inspirational speakers including Professor Johan Rockström, who spoke with both great passion and knowledge about the planetary boundaries that were being challenged. This conference was also quite special in having school administrators, teachers and students present. It helped individual schools to consider and plan for their individual sustainable path and empowered student involvement.
The conference was modelled on previous summits that had been held in South Africa and Singapore. Otto Scharmer's “U” Model provided the framework for these events, taking participants from a point of anger and perhaps despair to one of hope for the future. Before the Covid pandemic took hold of the world, summits were also held in Jerusalem and Scotland. These events helped to create a network of both educators and students who were interested in trying to encourage schools to embrace a more sustainable operation and curriculum.
In the interim between summits, several webinars were held in collaboration with Hawkwood followed by two “changemakers” webinar series hosted by Alexandra Catallo and myself; “Case Studies for Change” and “Shifting Minds”. These webinars had the effect of making us realise how many individual changemakers there were in schools and organisations trying to speed the otherwise glacial process of change in Education. Sadly, many of the changemakers were having to try and encourage change in their own institutions with little support. Richard Calland (SusEd’s Co-Director) and Andrew were very much aware of the issues and were looking at ways of building on the networks that had been established and also trying to provide new materials to help facilitate change in schools.
Developments in SusEd over the last twelve months:
Andrew in particular, has been able to focus greater attention on the development of the organisation and has been proactive in recruiting more members to the team (he refers to them as “A Players”) and sustaining the networks the organisation has developed. In particular, he has supported graduates of SusEd summits in pursuit of their aspirations.
The organisation itself has developed its capacity. Both Andrew and Richard, have a tremendous interest and experience in Peace Education. SusEd is looking to create further summits in sustainability and in peace and in wellbeing, following successful programmes in Bosnia & Herzegovina and the USA respectively
The organisation has now registered itself in Ireland which brings with it both financial and organisational advantages. That has helped to provide some impetus to the organisation.
The website of the organisation has been revamped and has been managed very well by Zana Yassin. Websites are very much the life blood of any organisation and there is no doubt having someone with experience in both designing and promoting work digitally has been a great asset. (https://www.sused.org)
They have looked to support the Sustainability Accelerator Programme which is based in the Netherlands and provides schools with a concrete development plan for sustainability in schools. More details can be found here.
Workshops with Amity International School in Amsterdam
(Amity is a k-12 international school located close to the centre of Amsterdam)
In partnership with an exceptional Dutch sustainability educator, Wieneke Maris, SusEd provided professional development over the course of the year. One of their first objectives was to get staff using the same language about sustainability - a problem that has arisen in many schools where perception of the term has many meanings for people. Connecting with Joanna Macy’s work, participants were invited to create their own Spiral of Hope that enabled them to indicate how they saw themselves connecting with nature. The Spirals of Hope really helped people to start changing their mindsets about sustainability.
Later in the professional development sessions there was a clear focus on how we make this happen with the three IB programmes in the school: PYP, MYP, DP..
There was also work done on to establish a vertical overview of how education about sustainability could be developed from k-12 throughout the school.
Some outcomes of the SusEd Education & Sustainability Leadership Summit in April hosted by the International School of Luxembourg, which focused on Regenerative Leadership, Collaborative Action and Sustained Impact:
It helped to rekindle and invigorate some of the networks that had been established at previous summits with several groups present that had been present at previous summits.
A highlight of the summit was a world cafe where delegates have discussions with leaders from different sectors and constructively engage with their vision for the future. The focus of this was on Economic regeneration. One of the sector leaders, from Education, was Jennifer Brandsberg-Engelmann, who has just launched an online course and Textbook on Regenerative Economics which she had been working on for some time.
Among the SusEd faculty was Dr.Michael Johnson from Frankfurt International School, who has been really working hard to empower students through his changemaker programme. This provided an opportunity to promote and connect with a student-led “Base 10 Solutionary Summit” at Munich International School in May.
It helped provide a support network for people who were appointed as Sustainability Coordinators in their school and were unsure how to proceed. This is clearly a need that people appointed to that position have.
It provided schools with the opportunity to plan their own Sustainable future.
Some exciting new developments for SusEd
A professional development workshop for school educators that lasts for 10 x 90 minute sessions over 2.5 days. This has been written and developed by Andrew and Chris Wright, an extremely experienced leader in IB education.
SusEd is developing a workshop for Sustainability Coordinators. This seems to be an area of need at the moment.
Alexei du Bois, a programme leader for SusEd, has co-developed and piloted a course for students on Sustainability at Hilton College in South Africa. He has generously allowed SusEd to lead the wider marketing of the course. A significant percentage of revenue generated by the course with create sustainable revenue streams for local school projects and SusEd development projects for Rohingya refugees on the Thai/Burmese border, a peace education project in Israel/Palestine and an education development project in Zambia.
In 2025 it seems likely there will be summits in the UK, the Netherlands, southern Europe and Canada (watch the website for more details).
SusEd.org has definitively evolved over the last two years, as the organisation inspires, sustains and invigorate the schools it is linked with through connected summits, consultancy and project work. Their conscious move into areas of professional development for teachers is a natural progression of their vision; “Enough for all forever”.
Acknowledgement
Many thanks to Andrew for sharing his thoughts with me.