This course regarding environmental sustainability education at schools took place in the middle of summer, and as such it was a natural choice since we are about to lunch our Eco-school application. The training took place in one of the two headquarter buildings of Europass Academy in central Florence. My classmates came from Bulgaria, Greece, Portugal and Spain, and also one Hungarian lady.

The main themes of this teacher training were the 17 UN sustainability goals and Permaculture. I have to admit that our trainer Tamara was very well prepared and knowledgeable, at long last a professional which is very rare to get as usually random-looking trainers are commissioned to hold a given training with materials sourced from the internet, lacking in-depth practical knowledge and many times disappointing savvy participants. In this case it was exactly the opposite as Tamara really strived herself to introduce real, in-depth content to us with a lot of practical hints and examples and data. We have even gone to visit a local community garden, a vegetable garden run by locals and open to visitors where materials were recycled as useful accessories for the garden, so we spent one full morning there and left it with a good impression.

Our trainer went through the UN sustainability goals to make sense to them for school education. I have since introduced them to our high school AIC, having put the plan with pictogrammes on the wall in every classroom open to debate and discussion panels as some of the goals can be interpreted in many ways and some of them are too optimistic to be implementable so it can be up for discussion for our students in Science lessons.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also known as the Global Goals, were adopted by the United Nations in 2015 as a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity. The 17 SDGs are integrated—they recognize that action in one area will affect outcomes in others, and that development must balance social, economic and environmental sustainability.

Regarding the permaculture approach that the garden visit helped us to better understand, Permaculture is a set of tools and knowledge, focused on ecological and regenerative design and thinking; a system to respond to the needs of the planet and its rising human population. Permaculture is an approach to land management and settlement design that adopts arrangements observed in flourishing natural ecosystems, so it is to stick with local possibilities and value conservation when growing plants for food.

By paying close attention to the importance of closing cycles, permaculture imitates nature, so any waste becomes a nutrient for the system itself. This discipline is vital to the field of education, contributing values, and methodology for solving practical school management problems and promoting creative thinking which can be applied at very different scales and over different sectors of society.

I could sum up the useful outcome of this course as it follows:

• Acquire a holistic and systemic perspective toward your educative reality;
• Foster creativity and social environmental responsibility, regarding any of our daily decisions and actions as human beings in schools;
• Acquire dynamics and resources for non-violent communication, shared leadership, and group cohesion;
• Introduce ecological thinking in our mental framework and educational planning;
• Facilitate the transition to education in values, and improve the quality of our inner well-being, that of our community, and that of the planet, for this and the next generations.

All this, in a really beautiful renaissance city of culture and cultural heritage with long and bright free afternoons and evenings to discover the built-cultural and natural beauty of the Tuscan landscape dotted with olive groves and vineyards all over the place, with beautiful hilltop terraces.

This mobility was funded by the European Commission.

The information presented here does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission.

written by Steve Szabó
14-19 Aug 2023