As part of the Alcoa W5 project, students and teachers from Woodland Hills Senior High School in the US decided to identify areas of overconsumption and waste in their own lives and design a behavioural experiment to improve their habits!
The One Small Thing initiative was inspired by a similar activity done by a fellow environmental educator. Students identified one small action in their daily lives that they could change to benefit the environment and monitored their achievements over a period of 30 days. They also did research on the impact their behaviour had on the environment before and after the change. The ultimate goal was to improve their own habits and to positively influence their peers and family with their behaviour change.
The One Small Thing initiative started in December 2021 and lasted until February of 2022. It involved a five-step process that students had to go through:
Completing an Ecological Footprint Survey to monitor individual students’ consumption habits and areas of overconsumption.
Focusing on their top three areas of overconsumption, they identified actions that could lessen the impact of their behaviours. From those actions, they had to create an Action Statement.
Collecting baseline data before completing their Action Statement. The baseline data was to provide a comparison of behaviour before the change took place.
Starting the Action Statement and carrying out the change for a duration of 30 days. During this step, students were asked to journal their actions, their struggles, and successes.
Creating a Final Report consisting of a summation and reflection of the entire process.
Through this process, students learned that changing their behaviour could be very difficult especially when the impact seems small or insignificant within the context of a larger, complex problem like climate change. However, they also realised that even the biggest problems and challenges can be broken down into smaller, manageable, and actionable steps – and that their lifestyle choices and behaviours have a greater impact on the environment than they realized!
As highlighted by the organising teacher:
“Through this project, my students learnt they can develop a real-life experiment involving themselves and come to real conclusions”!
The Alcoa W5 project of Woodland Hills Senior High School supports the following SDGs:
