To support students to take informed and meaningful climate and sustainability action, teachers need more than just good intentions. They need a foundation of enabling conditions—the essential groundwork upon which informed, meaningful, and sustained action is built. 

The four conditions outlined below are not just supports or resources—they are catalysts that transform intention into purposeful, sustained student action.

To center VALUES in action-oriented work, educators might reflect on:

• What values that shape my own teaching and leadership?

• What values are driving me to engage students in these particular issues/topics?

• How will I create space for students to surface, reflect on, and articulate their own values?

• Am I prepared to engage with values that may differ from mine — and to support respectful, generative dialogue across these differences?

To ground action in KNOWLEDGE, educators might consider:

• What knowledge will students need to act meaningfully — and how will I support them in accessing it?

• What disciplinary knowledge is foundational for this issue we are exploring?

• What experiential or community-based knowledge do I or others have/bring that could enrich our understandings?

• How will I help students integrate diverse forms of knowledge to analyze root causes, consider solutions, and make decisions?

• What gaps in my own knowledge do I need to address?

To foster supportive PARTNERSHIPS, educators might ask:

• Who will students be learning and acting with— and how can I help broker these connections?

• What relationships in my school, community, or networks could enrich or support this work?

• What roles might students, peers, community members, or organizations play as collaborators or co-creators?

• How can I model shared leadership and prepare students to collaborate respectfully and ethically?

• How can I promote ethical and reciprocal partnerships, and avoid extractive ones? 

To ground action in COMMUNITY STRENGTHS AND ASSETS, educators might reflect on:

• What tangible assets (e.g., access to a local watershed, public spaces, equipment, or other resources) and intangible assets (e.g., oral histories, social networks, resilience strategies) can we build on?

• How can I help students recognize and value their own and others’ lived experiences as sources of knowledge and resources for effecting change?

• How can our action align with, amplify, or extend what already exists in the community, rather than being duplicative or disruptive?

• School Participatory Budgeting: The Green Participatory Budgeting for Green Schools and Colleges initiative enables students to directly engage in democratic decision-making by proposing, developing, and voting on sustainability-related projects that use real school funds to improve their campuses and communities.

• The K–12 Environmental Education: Guidelines for Excellence is rich with examples of student-centered, real-world, consequential learning that meet AOP’s definition of action—as informed, intentional, meaningful, contextualized, and consequential.