Compass Education

How sustainable is your school—really?

Creating a more sustainable school starts with understanding where you are today.

Our School Sustainability Self-Assessment helps you evaluate current practices, identify strengths, and uncover opportunities for meaningful action across your whole school community.

In just a few minutes, you'll receive personalized results to spark conversations, guide planning, and support your next steps.

Take the free assessment:
https://compasseducation.org/school-sustainability-self-assessment/

"Participating in this course has been a truly transformational experience for my instructional practice. Learning how to integrate systems thinking tools—such as Causal Loop Diagrams, Connection Circles, and the Sustainability Compass—completely changed how I approach transdisciplinary unit design. Instead of teaching global challenges as isolated facts, I am now equipped to help my Grade 5 students map out complex relationships, uncover missing stakeholder perspectives, and recognize their agency as global changemakers."
— Nidhi Menon, Grade 5 Homeroom Teacher & IB PYP Inquiry Specialist

Our Level 1 Summer Intensive 2026, thoughtfully facilitated by Lucy Thompson, brought together a diverse group of people from a variety of educational settings and locations.
Each call we had people waking up early in California and staying up late in China to come together, share, learn, and celebrate!

Their Final Action Plans and DUMB Goals showed the many ways educators are applying the Compass Tools in their own contexts:
• Reducing food waste in the school cafeteria
• Deep dive into the varied perspectives on AI
• Meaningful integration of sustainability during PYP adoption
• Reviewing assessment protocols to best reflect student learning
• Supporting meaningful CAS projects
• Incorporating systems thinking tools into a Grade 5 PYP Healthy Lifestyles unit to enable more meaningful and sustainable actions

📚 Next online cohort: August 31–October 18, 2026
Learn more and register: https://compasseducation.org/compass-education-level-1-online-course

Quality education helps shape a more sustainable future. 🌍📚

SDG 4 is about more than access to education. It’s about helping learners make sense of the world, think across perspectives, and engage with the challenges their communities face.

At Compass Education, we support educators with practical tools, courses, and whole-school approaches that bring sustainability and systems thinking into everyday learning.
Explore our learning opportunities: https://compasseducation.org/learn-with-us/

A sustainable world depends on more than one perspective.

Nature. Economy. Society. Wellbeing.
The Sustainability Compass helps learners explore how these four dimensions are connected, making it easier to understand complex challenges and imagine more balanced solutions.

Want to see how it works? Take our free 15-minute introductory course: https://compasseducation.org/discover-the-sustainability-compass/

How can education prepare learners for a more sustainable future?

A recent OECD report highlights the important role education plays in helping people respond to an increasingly complex and interconnected world. It argues that preparing learners for the future means going beyond academic knowledge to develop the skills, perspectives, and agency needed to address today's challenges.

"This report takes a strategic life-span perspective on education and skills policies for a sustainable future... providing actionable insights on the role that education and training systems can play in fostering transformative change and building resilient societies."

For schools, this means creating learning environments where students can make connections across disciplines, explore different perspectives, and understand the relationships between environmental, social, economic, and wellbeing systems.

At Compass Education, we support schools through sustainability education, systems thinking, professional learning, workshops, and practical tools that help create meaningful learning experiences for students.

📖 Explore the OECD report: 🔗 https://ow.ly/xv7j50ZvnAA

🌍 Learn how Compass Education supports schools on their sustainability journey: 🔗 https://ow.ly/7gkm50ZvnAI

"Simple yet powerful tools that anyone—young or old, student or retiree, in personal or professional settings—can use to contribute to a more sustainable future."
—Poorani Thanusha | Training Consultant

Systems thinking helps us see connections, navigate complexity, and make more informed decisions. Our Teaching & Learning for a Sustainable World: A Systems Thinking Approach course gives educators practical tools and frameworks to bring these skills into everyday teaching.

Join a global community of educators, expand your systems thinking practice, and design meaningful learning experiences that help students better understand our interconnected world.

📚 Next online cohort: August 31–October 18, 2026

🔗 Learn more and register: https://compasseducation.org/compass-education-level-1-online-course

How is artificial intelligence shaping our world?

A compass helps us find our way. The Sustainability Compass invites learners to explore the connections behind the issues shaping our lives.

In this classroom activity, students placed artificial intelligence at the center and used the four Compass perspectives—Nature, Economy, Society, and Wellbeing—to examine its impacts.

As the discussion unfolded, students considered both the opportunities and the challenges AI presents. They reflected on how it can support people and the planet, who stands to benefit, the challenges it may create, and the unintended consequences that can arise. Exploring the topic from different perspectives helped them recognize how closely these issues are connected.

There were no right or wrong answers—just thoughtful questions, different viewpoints, and new connections.

🔗 Learn more about the Sustainability Compass: compasseducation.org/the-compass-education-toolkit/

How can we help students see sustainability as more than an environmental issue? 🌍

In this lesson plan, Danielle Jennings, from the British International School, Phuket - BISP, introduces high school students to the Sustainability Compass as a tool for exploring sustainability from different perspectives. As students sort ideas, discuss connections, and consider Nature, Society, Economy, and Wellbeing together, they begin to see how these dimensions influence one another.

📖 Read the lesson plan: https://ow.ly/PvzJ50Zsqfb

This lesson is one of many created by educators who completed Compass Education's Level 1 certification. As part of becoming a Compass Practitioner, participants design and implement learning experiences using systems thinking tools such as the Sustainability Compass and Systems Iceberg, showing how these approaches can be applied across different subjects and learning environments.

📚 Explore more free lesson plans, classroom resources, videos, and tools to support sustainability and systems thinking in education: https://ow.ly/fqsu50Zn5T2

🌱 Interested in using these tools in your own classroom? Learn more about our workshops and courses: https://ow.ly/wLnq50Zn5T3

| VALUE THE UNSEEN

What shapes our decisions that we can't always measure?

Not everything that matters can be counted. Curiosity, trust, belonging, beauty, hope, and joy all influence how we learn, connect, and take action—yet they often go unnoticed.

This Sustainable Habit of Mind invites learners to look beyond data and measurable outcomes to recognize the values, relationships, emotions, and experiences that shape the world around us. By appreciating both the visible and the invisible, students develop a more complete understanding of complex challenges and what it takes to create meaningful change.

Try it in your classroom this week—invite students to identify something important in their learning or community that can't be measured with numbers. How does it influence the way people think, feel, or act?

🔗 Explore the Sustainable Habits of Mind: https://lnkd.in/e7j62yvP