
COLLABORATION AND THE ADVENTURES OF PHILBERT THE PHOENIX - Educating for Sustainability and Responsible Consumption
By: Layla of Korea International School
SDGs: Responsible consumption and production, Climate action, Life onland
Seuss’ Lorax. MacLachlan’s My Friend Earth. Rey’s Curious George. Many iconic authors of children’s books illustrate how to treat others - and our Earth - with respect. Their goal? Teach future leaders to avoid past mistakes, and pave the way to positive change. Here at KIS, over the last two years, this mission has been embodied by the ECO Green School Club.
Several club meetings, whiteboard brainstorming, and our members’ collective imagination altogether birthed The Adventures of Philbert the Phoenix. We were united under a common vision of stacks and stacks of hardcovers, each embalmed with our feathered mascot soaring through skies, equipped with scientific knowledge. After drafting a basic plot and ideating a storyline, however, we soon were met with our first challenge - how could we divide up the work?
A book is easy to think about holistically - a cover, a few pages, and then the back binding. Yet we frequently found ourselves stumbling upon pits we imagined to be potholes.
Take illustrations. We had worked with elementary school students in a series of educational activities to produce the artwork (since they were our target audience), but now were unsure how to format it. Although I was leading the group, I had limited art skills and couldn’t decipher the world of digital design easily.
Then, while I was fretting over the (seemingly thousands of) folders of drawings, I recalled one of our members talking to me about her animation aspirations. I approached her with it, and she was able to solve our design problems in a fraction of the time I spent worrying about it. In fact, then I told her about having to re-edit each paper drawing into digital form, she laughed, and replied: “You know, you could have just scanned and directly uploaded them. That would’ve taken you five minutes!”
If I hadn’t burst out of an isolationist mindset and asked for her input, I would have taken over ten times longer to finish uploading the illustrations.
Taking another step, we decided our artistically inclined members (including my friend) should focus purely on the visuals. Others that enjoyed storytelling more spent each club block doing nothing but writing dialogue and building the narrative. Those who enjoyed coordinating ‘bigger-picture’ details ideated promotional work post-publication and contacted printing companies. We all had our own jobs, and we all contributed our own unique, specialised skills to them.
This is the strength of delegation. Rather than forcing members to contribute to a large, overarching project, it becomes far more effective to let them give their own talents and interests to our progress. When we are given the chance to show what we know, we become emotionally invested. We take pride in our work. Our group’s productivity grew exponentially when we divided up the work and gave each other the opportunity to do what we loved.
Together, we ended up producing over forty copies of our very first book, and are in the midst of working on a sequel with students from London, Finland, and Nyaka, all aiming towards education around sustainability and responsible consumption.
Several club meetings, whiteboard brainstorming, and our members’ collective imagination altogether birthed The Adventures of Philbert the Phoenix. We were united under a common vision of stacks and stacks of hardcovers, each embalmed with our feathered mascot soaring through skies, equipped with scientific knowledge. After drafting a basic plot and ideating a storyline, however, we soon were met with our first challenge - how could we divide up the work?
A book is easy to think about holistically - a cover, a few pages, and then the back binding. Yet we frequently found ourselves stumbling upon pits we imagined to be potholes.
Take illustrations. We had worked with elementary school students in a series of educational activities to produce the artwork (since they were our target audience), but now were unsure how to format it. Although I was leading the group, I had limited art skills and couldn’t decipher the world of digital design easily.
Then, while I was fretting over the (seemingly thousands of) folders of drawings, I recalled one of our members talking to me about her animation aspirations. I approached her with it, and she was able to solve our design problems in a fraction of the time I spent worrying about it. In fact, then I told her about having to re-edit each paper drawing into digital form, she laughed, and replied: “You know, you could have just scanned and directly uploaded them. That would’ve taken you five minutes!”
If I hadn’t burst out of an isolationist mindset and asked for her input, I would have taken over ten times longer to finish uploading the illustrations.
Taking another step, we decided our artistically inclined members (including my friend) should focus purely on the visuals. Others that enjoyed storytelling more spent each club block doing nothing but writing dialogue and building the narrative. Those who enjoyed coordinating ‘bigger-picture’ details ideated promotional work post-publication and contacted printing companies. We all had our own jobs, and we all contributed our own unique, specialised skills to them.
This is the strength of delegation. Rather than forcing members to contribute to a large, overarching project, it becomes far more effective to let them give their own talents and interests to our progress. When we are given the chance to show what we know, we become emotionally invested. We take pride in our work. Our group’s productivity grew exponentially when we divided up the work and gave each other the opportunity to do what we loved.
Together, we ended up producing over forty copies of our very first book, and are in the midst of working on a sequel with students from London, Finland, and Nyaka, all aiming towards education around sustainability and responsible consumption.