Jon Rees is Sustainability Coordinator at ICHK

It’s my second term working in my new role as Sustainability Coordinator, and I’m really enjoying the professional challenge of reading into the subject, finding ways to support other staff members in this aim, learning how to bind together aspects of the ICHK school experience such as Human Technologies, Deep Learning, the Y7 Pastoral programme, Enrichment and Flow, as well as developing resources within the traditional curriculum subject areas too.

I chose to share the above photos to represent what attracted me to the position of Sustainability Coordinator. The first photo is at Old Harry’s Rocks from a summer holiday hike with old university friends in Dorset this summer. My love for nature and hiking was inspired through a childhood growing up in the countryside and these remain core passions today. ICHK’s Outdoor Dept. allows our community to develop these interests, and I’m delighted to be joining students and Outdoor leader, Arthur Wong, for a week-long series of hiking and outdoor activities during Deep Learning later this term.

Human Technologies, a subject I’m teaching at Y8 and Y10, allows us to examine how we experience our world, and make choices, from the various material, social, spiritual and cognitive technologies through the lens of our own bodies. While there are certain genetic blueprints which are handed down to us from our parents and ancestors, there are choices we can make about diet, nutrition, fitness and mental well-being to impact our lives, and it is sports and hiking which allow me to calm my mind, stimulate my imagination, build friendships and many other positives. These are important lessons which I feel are essential to share with students.

The sustainability role here at ICHK means more than just implementing the more traditional technologies of sustainability that exist at most other schools and which are offered as solutions to the effects of Climate Change, such as, recycling, solar panels, reducing our carbon footprint etc. It’s not to say that those material remedies aren’t important, they are, but these technologies are more symptomatic of a global economic system in need of radical systemic overhaul, the success of which will hinge on new mindsets, social systems, and spiritual aspirations. Sustainability at ICHK encompasses those elements no less urgently.

So it is that the achievable goal we cultivate is the idea of being sustainable humans from an internal, holistic standpoint, as well as learning how we can develop the social and cognitive technologies of empathy and understanding others, exploring and inquiring about the world, building positive relationships to help us lead more balanced, sustainable lives. 

At ICHK, we want students to have the energy and motivation to explore the world around them, to be aware of the lifestyle changes they might make to impact the planet more positively, rather than engage in hand wringing for a carbon consumptive lifestyle which has been foisted upon them by the social and economic systems of the world they are born into…

Every bit helps and concrete action also prompts conceptual change, so, we have joined up with We Love Recycling to ensure that all our glass, plastic, paper and metal bi-products are recycled properly…and we are looking forward to receiving data back from the company who itemise what we send off to their recycling plant so that we can be more explicitly aware of our patterns of consumption, and how to reduce, and reuse, and then hopefully lower the volume of what we then recycle. If you don’t have recycling bins close to your homes, please feel free to bring in items from home and place them in the recycling station!

Over the last term, I’ve been working with Nelly Loi-Fong, Head of Y7, about how we can develop Compassionate Systems throughout the Y7s Transitions programme at the school. I also had the opportunity to speak with our wonderful Y7 students, as well as our SRC coordinators, Phoebe Wong and Alyson Donaldson, about the possibility of creating a sustainability group within ICHK. I’m looking forward to also supporting Michelle Rines, Head of Science, and Outdoor Leader, Dave Addis, on their project to map the mangrove swamps around Starling Inlet to create an evolving record of the local ecosystems to help make the case for their conservation years hence…

At ICHK, unique and nuanced approaches inform how we help students learn about the complexity of their worlds

So, a busy and incredibly fulfilling brief that speaks to my own varied interests within the complexity of a highly innovative school. In our staff professional development at the beginning of term, we explored how Martin Seligman’s concept of PERMA took us a good part but not all of the way to defining what it is that ICHK is trying to achieve for its students. One ingredient that was missing from Seligman’s formulation is energy. My goal will be to help support this mission of bringing energy to school life - and to draw on it to cultivate relationships, leading to positive emotions, so energising a school experience founded in meaning, resonance and engagement, leading to action and accomplishment. To that end, I’ll share shorter updates about my progress to this goal throughout the year, as well as any interesting books, podcasts, articles and documentaries which might be of interest to members of our community. Be in touch..!