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Cultivating Visions for a Regenerative Future
Cultivating Visions for a Regenerative Future
In Ben Curtiss's 4th through 6th-grade elementary classroom in Phoenix, students are positioned as active agents shaping their world. The school environment, characterized by significant freedom and challenge to traditional practices, provides fertile ground for student-centered sustainability work. Here, in this vibrant space emphasizing relationships and symbiotic systems, imagining preferred futures becomes a powerful engine for learning and action.
from: https://www.cgesd.org/o/coil
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Ben intentionally guides students to envision alternatives by first helping them understand existing challenges. Students analyze the current food system, discovering that much of their food travels 1,500 miles. They observe local agriculture, identifying monocrops and confinement operations. This critical examination couples knowledge-building discussions of current conditions with envisioning improvements, supporting students as they disrupt ingrained assumptions about existing systems.
Ben’s pedagogy is also deeply attuned to navigating tensions and dilemmas. Rather than simplify sustainability to good-versus-bad behaviors, he introduces students to complexity. For instance, as the Arizona heat intensified, Ben led conversations about the implications of climate extremes on their garden, asking: How do we adapt our systems in conditions we can’t fully control? What does it mean to compost during drought? These dilemmas became invitations for students to Imagine Preferred Futures—not in the abstract, but right there, in their classroom-turned-garden. Students proposed ways to build shade, conserve water, and redesign systems for resilience.
Photo: Ben Curtiss
Photo: Ben Curtiss
Through this, Ben consistently fosters Agentive Action. He opens up leadership roles. For example, students teach hydroponics to peers, design marketing materials for their farmers market, and speak with community members about food justice. Importantly, Ben steps back at key moments, making space for students to lead, experiment, and sometimes fail. But his presence is always felt: as a guide, a co-learner, and a facilitator of possibility.
The work didn’t end with one cycle of compost or harvest. Under Ben’s guidance, students continue to adapt, envision, and expand their impact. New tools and partnerships have emerged, and the project now inspires long-term sustainability initiatives across the school. More than a teacher, Ben acts as a systems thinker and collaborator—a relational weaver who models how education rooted in care and complexity can help students imagine better futures and begin to build them.
"Real Work, Real Consequences" Stories feature real-world examples of Action-Oriented Pedagogies (AOP) in practice. Each story illustrates how students—across grade levels and contexts—engage in meaningful work that addresses pressing sustainability challenges with tangible outcomes. These stories exemplify the AOP framework’s core commitments to Imagining Preferred Futures, Planning for Co-Produced Impact, Taking Agentive Action, and Leaving a Legacy.
By sharing these stories, we aim to spark ideas, foster collective inspiration, and demonstrate the varied roles students take—from innovators and artists to scientists, stewards, and advocates—in shaping a more sustainable and just world.
This "Real Work, Real Consequences" Story was written by Nicole Oster
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