The EQS model is an interdisciplinary, project-based course that empowers students to apply their learning in real-world contexts and examine complex sustainability issues. Essential questions are relevant, timeless, and broad, and enable students to explore new avenues of inquiry and apply knowledge from all content areas. These courses, which connect students with local experts and the broader community and are fueled by passionate teachers with deep content expertise, help students develop relevant background knowledge while simultaneously exploring their own interests and learning in a real-world context.
Each EQS course:
- creates a real-world context within which to apply disciplinary knowledge and skills
- focuses on interconnections between humans and the environment
- engages community members as partners in learning
- empowers students to choose the focus of their project
- motivates students through authentic project exhibitions
- is constantly evolving, guided by the interests, desires, and expertise of students and teachers.
At the School for Examining Essential Questions of Sustainability (SEEQS), where the EQS model and course were developed, EQS is combined with rigorous core learning in English, math, science, social studies, and the arts, as well as deliberate community-building and community maintenance, to enable students to apply their learnings to real-world situations and build critical sustainability skills. SEEQS Model SEEQS Overview
What Makes This Model Innovative?
Active Self-Direction
Social Consciousness & Action
Relevance
Related Models
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Environmental Action Civics embodies the belief that participation in local environmental decision-making is critical to equitable processes, innovative solutions, and enduring democratic and civic skills. It gives more people a voice in local environmental decision-making, particularly youth who are likely to bring fresh perspectives to problems. It also helps young people build a civic toolkit to solve problems as they develop a sense of social responsibility that fosters environmental stewardship and community engagement.
Each year, Earth Force works with approximately 67 schools and organizations in 28 states to engage students in Environmental Action Civics. Earth Force offers resources, professional development, consulting, and a community of practice for schools and organizations interested in implementing the model. What is Environmental Action Civics? Young People Reflect on Community Resilience to Natural Hazards Environmental Action Civics Overview
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Innovation Diploma
The Innovation Diploma created by Design Tech High School (d.tech) is a unique opportunity for students to earn a specialized credential that represents their ability to apply design thinking skills to real-world challenges with efficacy. Design thinking is a problem-solving methodology used by designers, engineers, and entrepreneurs. In the Innovation Diploma (ID) model, design thinking helps students think about the future and use their imagination and intelligence to find a way to make the world better.
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d.tech offers professional development and school visits for educators as a part of a growing network of schools offering an ID. They also offer direct programming for non-d.tech students who want to earn an Innovation Certificate. Innovation Diploma Program
Goals
The EQS model is designed to help students develop into stewards of planet Earth and healthy, effective citizens of the world. Along with core content standards, EQS courses utilize the Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education’s performance indicators to help students develop and master key skills and understandings that will prepare them to participate in, and lead, the shift toward a sustainable future. These skills are measured using the Education for Sustainability standards and performance indicators. Cloud Institute Education for Sustainability Standards
Responsible Local and Global Citizenship
Students will know and understand the rights, responsibilities, and actions associated with leadership and participation toward healthy and sustainable communities.
Healthy Commons
Healthy commons are those upon which we all depend and for which we are all responsible, such as air, biodiversity, climate regulation, water, libraries, heritage sites, etc. Students will be able to recognize and value the importance of the commons in our lives and assume the rights, responsibilities, and actions necessary to care for the commons.
Dynamics of Systems and Change
Students will understand the changing nature of complex systems and be able to apply the tools and concepts of system dynamics and systems thinking in their present lives, to make informed choices that will affect our future.
Multiple Perspectives
Students will know, understand, value, and draw from multiple and diverse perspectives in order to co-create shared visions and actions in the service of a healthy and sustainable future.
Strong Sense of Place
Students will recognize and value the interrelationships among the social, economic, ecological, and architectural aspects of a place and contribute to its continuous health.
Experience
The EQS model works to create a seamless and meaningful link between academic content and real-world application through project-based learning.
The essential questions of each course are relevant, timeless, and broad in scope. They do not have a simple answer but open up new avenues of inquiry, enabling students to explore and apply knowledge from many content areas. Examples of previous essential questions at SEEQS include:
- How can tourism honor and sustain Hawaii’s land, people, and culture?
- How can service lead to change?
- What is required to feed a community?
- How does culture influence the goods we consume and what are the impacts of our consumption?
While EQS topics and activities change, the flow throughout the semester generally remains the same: students begin by participating in EQS Camp, then spend the semester engaging in project-based learning to explore their essential question, and lastly present their projects and findings to a broad community audience.
Each EQS course kicks off with a series of field studies, expert interviews, and experiences directly with community partners whose work relates to the essential question. Through this experience, referred to as EQS Camp, students develop background knowledge and begin to focus on aspects of the broad essential question, pursuing their interests and learning in a real-world context.
EQS Camp occurs a few weeks into the semester after norms and expectations have been established. It typically takes two full school days and no other classes happen during these days, meaning that students are truly immersed in their EQS experience. During this time, students leave school to learn directly from community partners. Community partners help deepen the investigation into the essential question and provide students with a real-world context for their inquiry and project work. Examples of community partners include:
- legislators and/or local government officials
- local farms
- scientists with botanical, geological, environmental, or other specific expertise
- local nonprofits, including food banks, clean-up organizations, and eco-friendly businesses.
Students meet daily in two-hour blocks for their EQS course. During this time, an interdisciplinary team of teachers engages with a multi-age cohort of students to investigate the specific essential question. Students and teachers work together to meaningfully structure their learning during these blocks. Though there is significant flexibility for each class, the average class period is chunked into separate parts:
- teacher-led content
- learning from experts (e.g., guest visits, community outings, field work, etc.)
- developing, proposing, and working on student-driven projects, as well as asking for and receiving feedback
- independent reflection on growth of sustainability skills, which students may use in their 8th grade portfolios.
Student projects vary from class to class and depend upon a mutually shared vision between students and teachers. In some EQS courses, there may be a single overarching class project and student groups contribute to individual portions of the overall project (e.g., the entire class is designing one business and each group focuses on a separate aspect), whereas another EQS course may have an overarching theme with separate student projects (e.g., in an art-focused course, student groups choose their own art modality).
At the end of each semester, student teams showcase their EQS coursework in public project exhibitions to an audience of students, parents, teachers, and community members. Project exhibitions are an opportunity for students to share their expertise in the projects they have created and designed themselves; they are also an important part of the learning process. Interfacing with community members and other adults that are not their teachers helps students understand that their schoolwork is genuinely relevant and important.
Students and teachers treat the exhibitions as professional events; for instance, they send save-the-dates to community members in advance, and design maps and programs so that attendees know which spaces to go to when looking for specific projects. The exhibitions vary in terms of presentation type: some are “science-fair style” with students presenting their processes and final projects; others are experiential events related to the essential question, such as a sustainable meal or a stream cleanup. Sample EQS Project Rubric Sample 6th Grade Public Project Exhibition Sample 8th Grade Public Project Exhibition
Supporting Structures
The EQS course can be implemented by any school that values sustainability, but it does require certain commitments in instruction, adult roles, community partnerships, and schedules.
Interdisciplinary, project-based learning drives the EQS student experience.
Essential questions are developed by teachers with input from students. While no standard curriculum exists for EQS, teachers use a guidebook to support their planning and implementation. EQS Guidebook
To plan and assess the meaningful work students do in EQS courses, teachers use standards from the disciplinary content areas represented in the course, as well as the Education for Sustainability (EfS) standards published by the Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education. Cloud Institute Sustainability Standards These standards and performance indicators represent the key skills and understandings that will prepare young people to participate in, and lead, the shift toward a sustainable future. Teachers select two or more priority EfS standards to assess against and score students based on these scales. The cadence of this assessment varies with the course teachers, but most courses include three to six summative performance assessments over the semester course.
Students also engage in consistent self-reflection and assessment of their growth. Throughout their years at SEEQS, students build a collection of work across all of their courses, including EQS, that demonstrates their progress in developing the SEEQS Sustainability Skills. In their 8th grade year, SEEQers collate the best of those works into a portfolio, then deliver a public defense of their progress before a panel, making the case that they are ready for the next stage of their education. Portfolio Defense Guidebook Example Portfolio: Myumi Portfolio Defense
Schools must practice deliberate community building to create an intellectually safe learning environment for students and educators.
Implementing the EQS model requires students to ask and explore big questions and practice collaborative co-learning – alongside each other and their teachers. When students build and foster relationships with each other, it allows them to examine questions critically, build empathy for others, and collaborate throughout their courses.
SEEQS believes that a strong school community and culture are the soil that enables their EQS model to thrive. At SEEQS, all students participate in multi-age advisory and the school embraces restorative practices as a means of creating an intellectually safe learning environment. While implementing EQS does not require a specific community-building structure, a strong community and culture are the foundation for successful implementation.
Content teachers are also responsible for co-teaching EQS courses with the guidance of an EQS coordinator.
Each EQS course is co-taught by two to three teachers with expertise in a variety of subject areas. These teachers, who also teach content courses within the school, design and prepare the course together. They help to develop the essential question and guide students as they decide which specific aspect of the broader question to focus on. EQS teachers are responsible for:
- co-leading a student-centered classroom with an emphasis on inquiry, classroom collaboration, integration of technology, and self-exploration
- developing and implementing mini-lessons that enable students to develop content-specific skills, tools, and knowledge
- providing feedback on and strategies for improving student projects
- implementing formative and summative assessments that measure student progress toward content standards and performance expectations.
In addition to the subject-area teachers, some EQS courses are co-taught with a student support teacher, who has the role of supporting students with Individualized Education Programs (IEP) in scaffolding project work.
Schools must also identify an EQS coordinator to take on the instructional leadership and logistical responsibilities of the model. Depending on the size of the school and the number of students participating, these responsibilities can be built into the role of a current school-based employee (e.g., the assistant principal), can form a teacher leadership role similar to that of a department chair, or can be a separate position entirely. The EQS coordinator supports teachers in preparing content and coordinating the logistics of field learning.
Schedules must allow for extended chunks of time for EQS courses, as well as additional prep time for teachers.
SEEQS recommends that EQS course participants meet for two hours per day, on four days per week. In addition to course time, schools must plan for additional EQS-related activities, including time at the start of the semester for students to “shop” for an EQS course by getting to know the essential questions and teachers, as well as time for EQS Camp.
Teachers also have a daily designated prep period in which they can collaborate with their partner teachers to ensure smooth implementation. New teachers are onboarded into the EQS process through after-school meetings, and all teachers participate in EQS-related professional development at the start of the school year, as well as in regularly occurring faculty meetings.
Schools must build strong community relationships so that students can learn from experts outside of the school building.
A critical component of EQS courses are the relationships built within the local community. Each course kicks off with a series of field studies and expert interviews with community partners whose work relates to the essential question, and students revisit these experiences, conversations, and relationships frequently throughout the course. Schools must build both formal and informal relationships with experts in the community to help students integrate their classwork into real-world contexts.
At SEEQS, examples of these community partnerships have included:
- 808 Cleanups, a nonprofit committed to supporting communities in restoring the Islands of Hawai’i 808 Cleanups
- policymakers at the Hawai’i State Capitol
- Aloha Tree Alliance, a nonprofit working to mitigate the impacts of climate change Aloha Tree Alliance
- Hawai’i Food Bank, an organization committed to getting food into the hands and homes of people in need. Hawai’i Foodbank
Schools should create flexible spaces designed to encourage collaboration.
EQS courses should take place in large, open spaces that encourage conversation, community, and collaboration. These can be classrooms or school spaces with desks that are easily rearranged, or lounge-style spaces where students can break into small groups.
Schools must allocate funding for EQS Camp, field trips, and project materials.
In order to bring the EQS model to life and put their projects together, students will need the opportunity to travel into their communities and access various materials. Funding should be built into school budgets to allow for items like field trips, buses, and project supplies. A suggested amount for the EQS model is $100 per student per year.
Schools must listen to the interests, desires, and expertise of students and teachers to constantly evolve EQS course offerings.
In order to ensure that EQS courses stay relevant and meaningful to students, it is important for teachers and administrators to continually reflect on their successes and areas of growth. At various points throughout the year and the planning process, teachers engage in “plus, delta” conversations in which they articulate the model and course components that are going well and should therefore continue (plus) and the things that need to change in order to improve (delta).
Student feedback is also solicited at various time points to ensure that learning is meaningful and relevant to students, as well as to identify topics for future EQS courses.
As teachers develop new essential questions annually and prepare for new EQS courses, they spend time planning as a whole faculty to incorporate feedback from previous years and courses.
Interdisciplinary, project-based learning drives the EQS student experience.
Essential questions are developed by teachers with input from students. While no standard curriculum exists for EQS, teachers use a guidebook to support their planning and implementation. EQS Guidebook
To plan and assess the meaningful work students do in EQS courses, teachers use standards from the disciplinary content areas represented in the course, as well as the Education for Sustainability (EfS) standards published by the Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education. Cloud Institute Sustainability Standards These standards and performance indicators represent the key skills and understandings that will prepare young people to participate in, and lead, the shift toward a sustainable future. Teachers select two or more priority EfS standards to assess against and score students based on these scales. The cadence of this assessment varies with the course teachers, but most courses include three to six summative performance assessments over the semester course.
Students also engage in consistent self-reflection and assessment of their growth. Throughout their years at SEEQS, students build a collection of work across all of their courses, including EQS, that demonstrates their progress in developing the SEEQS Sustainability Skills. In their 8th grade year, SEEQers collate the best of those works into a portfolio, then deliver a public defense of their progress before a panel, making the case that they are ready for the next stage of their education. Portfolio Defense Guidebook Example Portfolio: Myumi Portfolio Defense
Schools must practice deliberate community building to create an intellectually safe learning environment for students and educators.
Implementing the EQS model requires students to ask and explore big questions and practice collaborative co-learning – alongside each other and their teachers. When students build and foster relationships with each other, it allows them to examine questions critically, build empathy for others, and collaborate throughout their courses.
SEEQS believes that a strong school community and culture are the soil that enables their EQS model to thrive. At SEEQS, all students participate in multi-age advisory and the school embraces restorative practices as a means of creating an intellectually safe learning environment. While implementing EQS does not require a specific community-building structure, a strong community and culture are the foundation for successful implementation.
Content teachers are also responsible for co-teaching EQS courses with the guidance of an EQS coordinator.
Each EQS course is co-taught by two to three teachers with expertise in a variety of subject areas. These teachers, who also teach content courses within the school, design and prepare the course together. They help to develop the essential question and guide students as they decide which specific aspect of the broader question to focus on. EQS teachers are responsible for:
- co-leading a student-centered classroom with an emphasis on inquiry, classroom collaboration, integration of technology, and self-exploration
- developing and implementing mini-lessons that enable students to develop content-specific skills, tools, and knowledge
- providing feedback on and strategies for improving student projects
- implementing formative and summative assessments that measure student progress toward content standards and performance expectations.
In addition to the subject-area teachers, some EQS courses are co-taught with a student support teacher, who has the role of supporting students with Individualized Education Programs (IEP) in scaffolding project work.
Schools must also identify an EQS coordinator to take on the instructional leadership and logistical responsibilities of the model. Depending on the size of the school and the number of students participating, these responsibilities can be built into the role of a current school-based employee (e.g., the assistant principal), can form a teacher leadership role similar to that of a department chair, or can be a separate position entirely. The EQS coordinator supports teachers in preparing content and coordinating the logistics of field learning.
Schedules must allow for extended chunks of time for EQS courses, as well as additional prep time for teachers.
SEEQS recommends that EQS course participants meet for two hours per day, on four days per week. In addition to course time, schools must plan for additional EQS-related activities, including time at the start of the semester for students to “shop” for an EQS course by getting to know the essential questions and teachers, as well as time for EQS Camp.
Teachers also have a daily designated prep period in which they can collaborate with their partner teachers to ensure smooth implementation. New teachers are onboarded into the EQS process through after-school meetings, and all teachers participate in EQS-related professional development at the start of the school year, as well as in regularly occurring faculty meetings.
Schools must build strong community relationships so that students can learn from experts outside of the school building.
A critical component of EQS courses are the relationships built within the local community. Each course kicks off with a series of field studies and expert interviews with community partners whose work relates to the essential question, and students revisit these experiences, conversations, and relationships frequently throughout the course. Schools must build both formal and informal relationships with experts in the community to help students integrate their classwork into real-world contexts.
At SEEQS, examples of these community partnerships have included:
- 808 Cleanups, a nonprofit committed to supporting communities in restoring the Islands of Hawai’i 808 Cleanups
- policymakers at the Hawai’i State Capitol
- Aloha Tree Alliance, a nonprofit working to mitigate the impacts of climate change Aloha Tree Alliance
- Hawai’i Food Bank, an organization committed to getting food into the hands and homes of people in need. Hawai’i Foodbank
Schools should create flexible spaces designed to encourage collaboration.
EQS courses should take place in large, open spaces that encourage conversation, community, and collaboration. These can be classrooms or school spaces with desks that are easily rearranged, or lounge-style spaces where students can break into small groups.
Schools must allocate funding for EQS Camp, field trips, and project materials.
In order to bring the EQS model to life and put their projects together, students will need the opportunity to travel into their communities and access various materials. Funding should be built into school budgets to allow for items like field trips, buses, and project supplies. A suggested amount for the EQS model is $100 per student per year.
Schools must listen to the interests, desires, and expertise of students and teachers to constantly evolve EQS course offerings.
In order to ensure that EQS courses stay relevant and meaningful to students, it is important for teachers and administrators to continually reflect on their successes and areas of growth. At various points throughout the year and the planning process, teachers engage in “plus, delta” conversations in which they articulate the model and course components that are going well and should therefore continue (plus) and the things that need to change in order to improve (delta).
Student feedback is also solicited at various time points to ensure that learning is meaningful and relevant to students, as well as to identify topics for future EQS courses.
As teachers develop new essential questions annually and prepare for new EQS courses, they spend time planning as a whole faculty to incorporate feedback from previous years and courses.
Supports Offered
SEEQS offers the following supports to help schools implement the EQS approach.
SEEQS Sharing Hub
Free, Cost Associated
SEEQS can provide customized professional development support to school communities. Existing opportunities include:
- Introductory webinars on EQS courses (free)
- SEEQS school structures (cost associated)
- Understanding the Portfolio Defense Process webinar (cost associated)
- SEEQS “Camp” professional development sessions (cost associated)
School Visits
Free
Visitors are always welcome at SEEQS’ Honolulu campus for student-led tours.
Light-Touch Consulting
Cost Associated
SEEQS faculty and administrators offer customized implementation support, such as 1:1 coaching for faculty or staff or consulting for interested schools. These sessions can be tailored around the needs of each particular school community and its areas of interest.
Reach
SEEQS, which opened its doors in 2012, serves approximately 180 students each academic year.
Impact
At SEEQS, where the EQS model is combined with a strong community and rigorous academic courses, results are promising.
Students at SEEQS consistently outperform their peers on the Hawai’i State Assessment.
- English Language Arts (ELA): in 2022–2023, 74% of SEEQS students performed at or above the ELA standard, compared to the state average of 50%.
- Science: in 2022–2023, 67% of SEEQS 8th grade students performed at or above science standards, compared to Hawai’i’s average of 40%.
Students at SEEQS see the value in the EQS model.
In a doctoral student’s dissertation study of SEEQS, 92% of interviewed students stated that EQS was an impactful or meaningful part of their school experience, and 83% of participants felt prepared for the level of academic work required in high school.
“The curriculum and community inspires me every day to do better for my education and planet.” – SEEQS Middle School Student
“Before I came to SEEQS, I didn’t care as much, but over my time at SEEQS I’ve started to see that the world isn’t just this nebulous idea; it’s the people and places around us, and a major step to being a steward of planet Earth is to care about the world around you.” – SEEQS Middle School Student