Sustainable Development Spotlight: Putting sustainability at the heart of teaching and learning
Posted on Monday 4 August 2025
The York SU Sustainable Development Grant offers funding to projects that aim to address at least one of the Sustainable Development Goals within the York Community. Funded by the University’s Latte Levy, it helps York SU deliver on the commitments they set out in their Declaration of a Climate and Ecological Emergency. With 17 Goals to choose from, this means the Grant funds a broad range of innovative, inspiring and impactful initiatives.
Georgia Ramsay, Department of Education, applied for funding to sponsor two teaching and learning events.
In this article, York SU chats to Georgia about how they used the grant to run a Schools Sustainability Day which saw students coming to campus from across the local area to learn about sustainability.
Tell us a bit about the events and what motivated you to run the events.
I’ve been working on developing Schools’ Sustainability Curriculum Days for a few years and each year I look at how to build on the previous events. I run the geography teacher training course and this event is designed to develop the trainee teachers’ leadership skills as well as putting on something great for local schools. Believe it or not, sustainability isn't always embedded into the geography curriculum, but I think it's a really important part of being a teacher and we often find that geography teachers are the people who are leading curriculum enrichment or innovation around sustainability within schools. I want my trainee teachers to be equipped with the skills and experience of having already organised and led work around embedding sustainability into the curriculum.
It’s also a way to support local schools. There isn’t much room within a busy curriculum to do wonderful, enriching things as we would like there to be. We also are very aware that schools are time poor and they don't always have the capacity to be able to sit down and plan events such as these. Therefore the intention was for it to be a day which benefited my trainee teachers, but also created an enriching curriculum experience for the students as well.
How did the day go?
We had 40 students attend and the atmosphere on the day was just so positive!
The trainee teachers from the University of York Geography PGCE planned and delivered workshops which focused on: how homes and buildings can adapt to climate change and decarbonise; how to increase biodiversity and the importance of green corridors; and green careers. Once the school students had completed their 3 workshops then they worked in teams to re-imagine the Guildhall ward of York into a more sustainable community. We had 4 judges who attended the event (3 members of staff with sustainability roles from the University of York and Jenny Kent a local Councillor), which raised the status of the competition with the students.
The day gave my trainee teachers the opportunity to work more collaboratively on a project as they’ve spent most of the year teaching in different schools so this was a great chance for them to form further connections with their coursemates. Initially, the trainee teachers were surprised by the volume of the logistics and planning involved in planning such a day but it was really beneficial for them to get experience of the inner workings of running school events. All of the geography trainee teachers felt the day had developed their sustainability leadership skills to a large extent and clearly enjoyed being involved in a cross-school event.
Some of the workshops involved the children mixing with students from other schools. This was a great aspect of the day and one of the students said that the highlight of the day was getting a chance to meet new people from different settings. The students came in with some really fantastic questions and knowledge and took a lot away from the day. 95% of students felt they learnt at least a few new things about sustainability from their curriculum enrichment day with 37/40 students scoring their enjoyment of the day as 4 or 5 (5 being the highest level of enjoyment).
How did the York SU Sustainable Development Grant help make this event happen?
We were able to use it to resource the day, rather than doing everything on a shoestring and we also bought prizes to encourage engagement and made little eco party bags for all attendees. One of the workshops during the day introduced the idea of guerilla gardening and seed bombing derelict areas, so all of the students and attending staff got some seed bombs to take away with them. There was a lot of excitement about that!
Getting students out of the classroom is really big deal for schools, so we wanted to make sure it felt like a special day. The grant sponsorship helped us make it really meaningful. All of the goodies and prizes we got were all eco-focused so that we were giving the students nice little rewards whilst also embedding the values of sustainability that they were learning about.
You said you run this event every year, do you have plans for how you will develop this even more in the future?
I’d like to look at trying to reach children from a wider range of backgrounds. Some of the attendees this year were from families who are well engaged with sustainability with some students being on eco-councils at school. I’d like to look at how we could reach more students and families who are not as engaged in sustainability for whatever reason. I don't have the answers to how we make that happen yet, but I think it opens some really interesting thoughts and conversations ahead of next year.
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If you’ve been inspired by the Schools Sustainability Day, visit York SU’s Sustainability page and scroll down to ‘Sustainable Development Grant' to find out more about applying for your own grant funding.