Stu­dents are learn­ing valu­able cli­mate skills

This autumn, six upper sec­ondary schools from Oulu, Ii, Kuusamo and Ylivies­ka will take cli­mate actions seri­ous­ly as they par­tic­i­pate in the City of Oulu’s project “Cli­mate Upper Sec­ondary Schools”.

Each school will find out their cur­rent car­bon foot­print and cre­ate an action plan on what they could do as a com­mu­ni­ty to low­er the school’s envi­ron­men­tal bur­den.

“It means sim­ple choic­es made in every­day life. For exam­ple, not tak­ing hun­dreds of small juice car­tons to a school trip where they would end up fill­ing 18 garbage bags. Instead, every­one could just take their own bot­tle that can be filled. The val­ues of the school have a major impact on stu­dents,” says edu­ca­tion devel­op­er Jus­si Tomberg, the leader of the project. 

As sup­port for plan­ning their cli­mate actions, the schools can use a dig­i­tal learn­ing envi­ron­ment called Repair Man­u­al for Schools. Togeth­er with Häme Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences, they will also design a cli­mate cal­cu­la­tor tai­lored for schools. 

Stu­dents at Oulun suo­ma­laisen yhteisk­oulun lukio upper sec­ondary school start­ed a pod­cast on cli­mate issues when the school par­tic­i­pat­ed in the pre­vi­ous cli­mate project designed for upper sec­ondary schools. In the pho­to: Jen­ni Karp­pinen, teacher Min­na Kor­pierk­ki, Kan­er­va Mur­to­vaara and teacher Iiro Oikari­nen record­ing an episode about sus­tain­able food and veg­an diet. Pho­tog­ra­ph­er: Saga Bru­un.

Cli­mate know-how is the high-tech of the future

The Repair Man­u­al for Schools will be fin­ished this autumn. On the web­site, stu­dents can com­plete cli­mate skills badges and study to become cli­mate experts. 

Accord­ing to the project leader Jus­si Tomberg, cli­mate skills are high-tech of the future – a valu­able asset in work­ing life. 

The Repair Man­u­al cov­ers the cli­mate impact of food, school infra­struc­ture and logis­tics. Tomberg says that the whole school com­mu­ni­ty is respon­si­ble for the actions. 

“With this man­u­al we can show, for exam­ple, that it mat­ters what one hun­dred thou­sand stu­dents choose to eat every day. What if the veg­e­tar­i­an option was not the last option in the line but the first one?” he asks.

Sus­tain­able lifestyles are taught already at kinder­garten 

Oulu aims to achieve car­bon-neu­tral­i­ty by 2040. Chil­dren are learn­ing envi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able think­ing through­out their school path, start­ing already from day care.

The City of Oulu is also com­mit­ted to the UN’s Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals, which means that in addi­tion to envi­ron­men­tal think­ing, chil­dren and young peo­ple are raised to con­sid­er social, cul­tur­al and eco­nom­ic sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

In May 2021, the Agen­da of Hope 2030 event gath­ered stu­dents from the Oulu area to con­tem­plate the imple­men­ta­tion of the UN’s goals. Chil­dren and young peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ed in plan­ning the pro­gramme from the begin­ning. More than 10 000 view­ers attend­ed the online broad­cast of the hybrid event.

The broad­cast includ­ed a video from the stu­dents of Kel­lo School in which the stu­dents say what they think the UN’s Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals could mean in their every­day life:

Cli­mate Upper Sec­ondary Schools

• Project peri­od 2021–2022. 
• Fund­ed by Finnish Nation­al Agency for Edu­ca­tion.
• Led by City of Oulu’s Edu­ca­tion­al and Cul­tur­al Ser­vices.
• Con­tin­u­a­tion to the Cli­mate Change in Upper Sec­ondary Schools! project (2019–2021) that gath­ered 24 schools from North­ern Ostro­both­nia.
• For more infor­ma­tion on the project’s web­site. https://www.ilmastonmuutoslukioihin.fi/ilmastonmuutos-lukioihin/in-english/  

Main image: One of the project’s schools, Haukipu­das Upper Sec­ondary School, won the inter­na­tion­al Luma StarT com­pe­ti­tion in June with a mobile appli­ca­tion called “Upper sec­ondary stu­dents’ cli­mate cal­cu­la­tor for green­house gas emis­sions”. Haukipu­das par­tic­i­pat­ed in Jus­si Tomberg’s pre­vi­ous project, “Cli­mate Change in Upper Sec­on­daty Schools!” (2019–2021). In the pho­to: the win­ning team of Miina Kar­jalainen, Inka Jäm­sä, Jaakko Ojala and Max Nab­b­vik. Pho­tog­ra­ph­er: Anna-Hele­na Isopahkala.