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Mary’s Runway to Action: A Teacher’s Journey into AOP
Mary’s Runway to Action: A Teacher’s Journey into AOP
At a public middle school in Mesa, Arizona, Mary teaches sixth, seventh and eighth-grade students in interdisciplinary STEM classes that tackle climate change, energy use, water conservation, and carbon cycling. Her classroom is a space where past professional experience, pedagogical experimentation, and community engagement intersect. In 2024, she began actively integrating Action-Oriented Pedagogies (AOP) across multiple sustainability-focused projects, including a carbon sink initiative.
Mary’s runway into AOP is long and layered. Her teaching practice draws on years of content-rich STEM instruction combined with real-world relevance, a commitment to student agency, and a keen understanding of the sociopolitical dimensions of sustainability. Before ever using the term AOP, she was already cultivating the mindsets and skills that AOP values: curiosity, civic thinking, and systems awareness.
Photo: AdobeStock
Mary habitually prompts students to project themselves into the future. In units on genetics and climate change, she invites them to speculate: what will medicine look like in 100 years? What role might they play in shaping that future? Her own experience attending a futures-thinking workshop expanded her pedagogical toolkit, offering her a structured way to guide students through imaginative yet grounded exercises in foresight. That experience became a turning point—connecting curricular standards with personal and planetary futures.
Culturally responsive practice also shaped Mary’s AOP runway. With 30% of her students identifying as Native American, Mary sensitively navigates cultural boundaries and amplifies local relevance. When discussing energy transitions, for example, she challenges students to think beyond simple binaries by considering the impact of coal plant closures on entire communities, like those on Navajo land. In doing so, she builds empathy and ethical complexity into sustainability conversations.
Mary's prior community-based experiences, including partnerships with county-level environmental agencies and nonprofits, laid the groundwork for collaborative impact. Whether facilitating stormwater pollution investigations or organizing food drives with a creative twist (a viral cereal box domino challenge during COVID), Mary had long practiced mobilizing students around collective action. These experiences perfected her her belief that sustainability education must be joyful, participatory, and memorable.
Photo: AdobeStock
Mary’s classroom didn’t become action-oriented overnight. Her runway was built through years of layered practice: inviting student wonder, honoring local knowledge, building community ties, and translating complex issues into accessible and empowering learning moments. With this foundation, her transition into AOP was not a departure—but a natural unfolding of what she had already begun.
"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 Dilraba Anayatova
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