Upon first being introduced to the Sustainability Compass through a brief workshop hosted by Compass Education, I was first and foremost struck by the tool’s simplicity. A simplicity in its design, a simplicity in its use and ease of understanding, as well as in its ultimate purpose of guiding learners in thinking about sustainability. But resting beyond that initial simplicity lies a very important and complex depth, allowing for a collaborative and interactive way of thinking about the world, and its sustainability. A tool made specifically for creating meaning among elements that may seem otherwise unimportant.
Before continuing, I’d like to provide some needed context. I am not a professional educator. Although I work within the field of education as an instructional designer for Ocean School, a free-to-use online education platform, I admittedly have very little teaching experience, let alone teaching in a live setting, which was my exact mandate for using the Sustainability Compass. I was tasked with introducing the Compass to several groups of students between the ages of 11 and 17, in the context of the Learning for a Sustainable Future (LSF) workshops. Despite the Compass’ noted simplicity, I was admittedly quite trepidatious about this task. Considering the age of the audience I was teaching, my task was to adapt this systems-thinking tool into something accessible, valuable and most of all fun to use. As I’m sure most teachers would already know, be it through experience or simple knowledge of the basics, memorizing a script and reading from it is assuredly not the best way of engaging your learners, especially when dealing with the unpredictability of a young group of learners. I unfortunately learned this the hard way after the first workshop I conducted using the Compass. My plan was to borrow from a script I had memorized, with a definition pulled straight from Compass Education’s highly valuable 15-minute crash course. I first explained the idea and overall purpose of the Sustainability Compass, before continuing on by further explaining in detail its four Compass points: Nature, Economy, Society and Wellbeing. This was a very difficult task in practice, as the Compass’ primary role, being a resource helping the learner think about sustainability, was something that seemed to float just out of reach of most student’s comprehension. They had trouble connecting their preconceived ideas of what a basic compass was, with the elements of sustainability I was teaching. As a result, I pivoted to using their own perceptions as a learning opportunity and adjusted my approach to the second workshop of the day.
Introducing the Sustainability Compass
This time, I opted to embrace simplicity and focus on the very essence of what a compass represents. I placed the learning in the student’s hands by asking them first and foremost what they thought a compass represented to them. A common answer amongst the over 100 students I presented to over the 3-day workshops, was that a compass “helps people explore” or “helps people find directions in the world”. These answers resonated with all the learners because it depicted a compass as a valuable, important tool. Using this premise, I was able to better contextualize the Sustainability Compass. One commonality among all the answers I received was the concept of “exploration’. Be it an idea, a specific topic or question, the Sustainability Compass is a tool helping learners explore the world. Rather than it being a physical exploration, we explore it through the four aspects of sustainability previously mentioned. This framing device was very important in helping the young learners understand the purposes of the Sustainability Compass as a starting off point. Working from this simpler, more accessible definition, I used the same approach to help the learners understand the 4 aspects of sustainability. I asked students what each point of the Sustainability Compass meant to them, and expanded upon their definitions when needed. Typically, Nature represented animals, Economy represented money, Society represented jobs and cultures, and Wellbeing was perceived as being happy. Having the students themselves define the Sustainability Compass allowed them better freedom in their overall comprehension of the tool. They could create their own meaning and associate it to the visual Sustainability Compass they were asked to work on. As an instructional designer, I understand the power that freedom and discovery play in learning. Allowing students to relate to the material is definitely an approach I recommend, should you use this Sustainability Compass with a younger audience. No matter how high level a concept may appear, relating the material to tangible, concrete experience or perception allows for learners to inherently feel part of the learning experience.
Using the Sustainability Compass
After explaining the theory behind the Sustainability Compass to these young learners, the rest of the workshops were about practice. The second part of these workshops were a series of collaborative exercises where we all worked on a singular Sustainability Compass together, led by myself.
First, I had students watch an Ocean School mini-documentary about biodiversity in the St-Lawrence River. The video’s focus was on the diverse range of aquatic species in the St-Lawrence River, as well as the wide range of experiments and studies conducted on those species to better understand their role in the shaping of the River’s ever changing biodiversity.
After this, I projected a blank Sustainability Compass on screen, with the central topic being “biodiversity”. Being a visual learner myself, a takeaway of mine when using the Sustainability Compass with kids is that they really need to see their interactions with the Sustainability Compass in real time in order to better understand its use, as well as the interconnected nature of their ideas. I recommend using a whiteboard or collaborative tool for this. While practicing the worked example, I questioned the students about what “biodiversity” meant to them and pasted their answers directly on-screen using a digital whiteboard. This allowed the learners to see their answers and thought processes in real time, as well as help them in creating the all-important connections between their varied answers. Also, rather than cycling through all four points of the Sustainability Compass in a sequential order, I first and foremost asked the kids to think about the central topic (biodiversity) and tell me what the first thing that came to their mind was. After this, I then asked them to relate their answer to the correct Sustainability Compass point. For example, if the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of biodiversity is “fish”, then I know that fish would most likely best fit within the Nature Compass point. By populating the Sustainability Compass in this way, learners had the freedom and peace of mind in exploring the central topic in whichever way they chose, rather than being forced to think along a singular path. The freedom to explore is crucial in this context. To finish, I then prompted the kids to make connections between their answers by drawing lines between their various responses. My main takeaway from this experience is that there is a lot of value in working together on a singular example. Although the Sustainability Compass is intuitive by nature, working together not only allows for more room to learn, but also creates a sense of reassurance, collaboration and cohesion in a group. The final part of the workshop was all about the kids practicing on their own. I asked them to work together in groups of up to four, to create their own compasses with a central topic of their choosing (providing it was related to the environment). I printed the Sustainability Compass on a sheet of paper and provided them with pens and markers to freely create their own Compasses.
All in all, having performed this workshop a total of 12 types thus far, both in English and French, I can safely say that the Sustainability Compass is an incredibly valuable, and important resource in educating the youth on sustainability and the promotion of sustainability practices. The collaborative and interactive nature of this tool invites discussion in a way that may not be feasible through other tools or systems of thinking. As I mentioned previously, I am not an educator. But having taught this tool several times to a range of students, there is a natural ease and comfort that has come with transferring this powerful tool to others. The fact that this tool can be taught to an audience of professionals or to a group of young kids and encourage meaningful discussions and actions in both groups is a testament to the power of ingenuity of the Sustainability Compass.
Author

Steven Bernucci
Instructional Designer Steven Bernucci holds an MA in Educational Technology and has a background in video and media production, as well as a communications and video production degree.