Working on renewable and/or sustainable energy is one of the major “subjects” at Green School. They don’t “benchmark” the students using conventional educational standards. Children learn to explore the upper limits of their potential by working on projects.

 

At Green School, few students are trapped by feeling they have a “weak (or strong) subject”. As Mr. Kyle King, one of the math teachers, said, “Few of them have that because the boundaries of academic subjects are blurred at Green School.” For example, through the Bio Bus project, students solve problems of mathematics, such as using algebra to determine how much used cooking oil they need to collect to run their Bio Bus. Moreover, the equation changes all the time depending on the schedule of the Bio Bus and the number of passengers. The mathematics the students deal with can be quite complex; however, they don’t think of it in that way because they are working with real facts and solving real-life problems.

Maths is not the only subjects that students learn through projects. In order to make bio soap, they experimented with different recipes for liquid and solid soap. The success of Bio Soap is the result of their efforts to achieve high quality.

Developing a project from the initial idea to the final result is an alternative approach that creates a valuable educational experience. The students have an appetite for knowledge because they want their projects to succeed.

 

Tackling local environmental issues with the help of Green School’s international community means students realize how the local issues connects to global issues.

 

To further develop the Bio Bus, students came up with the idea of creating an online booking system. They learned to design apps with help from students at Hong Kong Polytechnic University (which is one of a Green School’s international community). That experience gave them the skills to design the current Bio Bus online booking system.

Later on, they learned the practical skills to create their apps. They worked very closely with computer programmers to learn computer science and still communicate with those programmers to continue to improve the booking system.

Building, developing, and financing their own apps is a unique way of studying IT.

The students have an appetite for deep study because they want their projects to succeed. Thus, they work on projects collaboratively with organizations from all over the world. When they tackle local environmental issues, they also learn to be aware of and respect cultural differences.

Green School is an outstanding change-maker for a greener world.