The Green School in Bali, Indonesia is the inspiration driving our work identifying and researching Green Schools for Everyone. We believe Green Schools represent an innovative and impactful strategy to learning for the 21st century. Environmentally sustainable settings inherently encourage experiential learning and model problem solving and resolution. Students study, explore, and play in spaces that physically demonstrate creative possibilities for a sustainable future. Green schools benefit our students, community, and earth.
The Green School began as a simple idea in 2006. Motivated by Al Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" John and Cynthia Hardy, then residents of Bali, decided to create a "Green School" by building a "temple to education and sustainably". They envisioned a school without walls where children could learn in harmony with nature. Using the "environment as the third teacher" the school seeks to provide "A natural, holistic, student-centered learning environment that empowers and inspires our students to be creative, innovative, green leaders." |
MissionSustainable
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Lessons from Green SchoolAs of school year 2014-2015, The Green School has 400 students with 80+ teaching staff. The school is thriving and has made a name for itself in public media (read here: The Guardian, CNN).
The current head of schools, John Stewart, describes a history of the Green School, from it's inception through financial crisis to earning the "Greenest School on Earth" award in 2012. He writes, "As artists know, the creative process often runs a recognizable yet unpredictable course. Starting with the thrill of possibility, followed by the torture of doubt, the agony of red-blooded struggle until, at last, the joy of epiphany and the relief and peace in completion. In pioneering innovation in education Green School’s story follows a similar path." Read the history of Green School Bali here. |