Educating for sustainability means inspiring children to think about the world, their relationship to it, and their ability to influence it in an entirely new way. Children learn the knowledge, skills, and mindsets to work towards their preferred future - a new paradigm for living with one another on Earth that celebrates our capability to thrive over time in the context of a rapidly changing and interdependent world.
Apart, Together - A Book About Transformation uses everyday scenes such as gardening, mixing color, playing a sport, and playing with blocks, to invite children and their grownups to read, discuss, play, imagine, and together, be curious about the connections that make up their world.
Having these types of conversations helps children build the muscle to see not only objects — a bee, soil, a soccer player— but to imagine how the interconnections and interactions among those objects can create something entirely new.
With each new page, critical thinking skills grow (such as observation, prediction, and sharing their ideas about how change happens) and the brain itself grows! And whether you’re 5 or 55, imagining how different parts interact to produce the results we see, is the first step in “systems thinking.” Developing early habits to imagine interconnections helps children feel more confident when dealing with complex problems as they grow.