Systems thinking for systems change

The Problem:

The challenges that we face today as a global community are complex, multifaceted  and systemic. Climate change, polarized politics, growing inequality, pandemic disease and biodiversity loss will require brave change makers with innovative  ideas, cooperative leadership skills, systemic thinking capabilities and a sustainability mindset. Unfortunately education is not adapting rapidly enough and  educators are not equipped with the tools that they need to empower students to  effectively navigate these unprecedented and precipitous times.  

As a result, we are experiencing record levels of educator burnout, disillusionment, student anxiety and lack of civic engagement caused by: 

• Educator skills deficit to meet their curricular goals AND prepare students for the world they will inherit.  A collective sense of  “I’m not sure anything I’m teaching really matters anymore”

• Students skills deficit to understand, adapt and feel agency to determine their future.  Students are left wondering, “How does what I'm learning relate to the real world?” or “What difference can I really make?

In the recent UNESCO report by the International Commission on the futures of education, the portion dedicated to the transformative work of teachers begins with this statement in bold, “In a new social contract for education, teachers must be at the centre and their profession revalued  and  reimagined  as  a  collaborative  endeavour  which  sparks  new  knowledge  to bring  about  educational  and  social  transformation(80). 

The Tufts University Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) reports that as a national average, 67.2% of youth discuss political and social issues with their friends and family but only 20.6% report doing something positive for their community. CIRCLE research has shown that “communities where young people vote, volunteer, help their neighbors, and belong to groups or associations can be more prosperous and resilient places.”  Multiple research sources demonstrate that educators who are equipped to include conversations about climate, and political and social issues in their classroom will prepare students to take action in their communities. 

We are at a critical juncture in our history and in the future of education.  We must choose a new path for education that prepares our students to be engaged citizens, inspired to innovate new solutions for a better world.   To accomplish this, we must support and empower educators as systems changemakers and provide them modern tools for a new generation of thinkers and leaders. 

How can we help students cultivate a personal connection to complex challenges like climate change and social justice? Moreover, how can we equip them with the knowledge, skills, and motivation to assert their agency to address them?

At Compass Education, we believe the answer is systems thinking with a sustainability lens. Human and natural systems work in tandem or in conflict to uphold systems of oppression, perpetuate unsustainable global trends, and obscure the path towards creating a better world.  As Einstein famously said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” To help our students find a path forward to a more sustainable world we need new perspectives, new thinking, and new tools.

The Solution:  The Compass Tools

The Compass Tools are systems thinking tools that support educators to bring complex, real world topics into their classroom and curriculum, providing easy access points and common language for students and educators to feel empowered to connect classroom learning with present day challenges and engage them as active contributors to innovative and sustainable outcomes in their communities.   

The Compass Tools are unique as they are NOT another curriculum or data set and require no specific knowledge in climate science. The Compass Tools integrate holistic sustainability education and systems thinking skills into every subject taught in K-12 school – math, art, languages, science, drama, history, literature and civics!   The tools support  21st century learning objectives and fit organically into a range of curriculum standards, supporting educators to accomplish multiple objectives in a single classroom practice. When students use the tools in the classroom it  facilitates communication, deepens current learning, broadens perspectives, develops empathy and enhances collaboration around topics  - making them invaluable for designing meaningful civic engagement projects.

One of the tools, The Sustainability Compass supports holistic understandings of any local or global topic and uses the points of a traditional compass to consider the four foundational elements of a sustainable world (N=Nature, E=Economy, S=Social, W=Wellbeing). The integration of wellbeing in our understanding of sustainability is a significant inclusion that acknowledges individual wellness as an indefatigable partner to accomplishing an equitable and flourishing future.  To illustrate how well the Sustainability Compass supports conversations about environmental and social justice while developing important social emotional skills like empathy and perspective taking, consider the video linked here that explores how we might explore a seemingly simple, but highly complex issue: Why is land important?  

The Compass Tools are made available through the use of internet based technologies, including the LMS system that delivers online course content, the video material produced by students and educators and the web based systems that collect and distribute educator sourced lesson plans and information.  Due to the ease of use and adaptability of the Compass Tools,  our dream would be to expand their distribution in the form of gamification, online curriculum integrations and anywhere that an introduction to systems thinking and a shared language for sustainability would serve better civic outcomes. 

Educators are tasked with a growing list of responsibilities that span not only curricular outcomes but life skills and personal wellbeing.   Yet, they are not provided tools, training or support to address such a long list of needs.  They are struggling to provide students what they need and simultaneously to satisfy what feels like outdated and bureaucratic educational objectives. 

Students are calling for education that connects to the world that they are living in and the world that they will inherit.  They are feeling frustrated and underserved by their education and without power to meaningfully change the system.  The result is growing trends in eco-anxiety and mental illness and a disillusionment with the purpose of education. 

The Catalyst 2030 Pathways to Transforming Education global report provides evidence of these challenges and makes the following powerful call for education transformation, ‘Education is to be understood broadly and comprehensively, as enabling the learning of the knowledge, skills and values needed to live a life of personal flourishing and the capacity to shape the future, with a deep sense of caring, connectedness with the universe/planet and everyone in it. Given the rapidly changing future, the purpose of education must enable people, societies and the planet to thrive’. 

Providing quality tools to support educators to integrate real world topics such as climate change, systemic injustice and  into their curriculum supports them to feel that they are reaching the students with information that they can apply today and with skills that will serve them in their future. 

Compass Education began in 2010 when a group of educators attended a corporate workshop on systems thinking delivered by Alan AtKisson and  asked for permission to adapt the tools for education.  It continued for ten years as a completely volunteer, organic movement of committed educators who shared the tools, improved them, co-designed workshops and collaborated on new practices in the classroom.  Despite having no paid staff or structured leadership model, the organization continued to spread and to grow, attracting new volunteers in 2020 including the current Executive Director, Nicole Swedlow and the co-lead on this project, Gitanjali Paul.  Together with the founding educators, Nicole and Gitanjali committed to formalizing the organization and working to find the best pathways to scale the work. 

Nicole Swedlow discovered the Compass Tools just as any other educator might -  in a google search.  She was frustrated that her own kids were not receiving an education that would support them to be engaged, thoughtful citizens and had offered to support their school to introduce service and sustainability on campus.   In an effort to inspire curricular connections to real world challenges in the community, Nicole introduced the Compass Education systems thinking tools to the educators at the school.   Just two years later the school won the Tie-Association Global Leadership Award for their community outreach and sustainability leadership. This experience inspired Nicole to use her 20 years of non-profit leadership experience to do everything that she can to see that other schools and educators have access to these powerful tools. 

As the child of two international educators, Gitanjali Paul, grew up knowing she wanted to work in education that would help communities value their unique contexts and experiences as opportunities for learning. She discovered the Compass Tools while working as a high school educator at the International School Manila, Philippines when she took over student workshops coordination for the Global Issues Network Conference in 2012. At this conference,  25 high school students used Compass Education system thinking tools to facilitate 400+ students from around Asia in sustainable action planning. Gitanjali was impressed by the way these tools fostered analytical conversations and helped students develop agency and skills to take action in a way that she had never witnessed elsewhere.  After completing her Master's degree at the University of Massachusetts , she decided to use her considerable skills in curriculum design to support the development of the online delivery of the Compass Tools. She is currently the Education Program Manager for Compass Education.    

The Compass Education movement is powered by the generous contributions of time, energy, and expertise of passionate educators in classrooms around the world.  In the last two years, Compass Education has worked to create a scaffolded selection of products, the organizational structure and digital platform to support the rapid dissemination of systems tools in K-12 education.  The movement has spread to 96 countries, 800+ schools and boasts 3000 trained educators.  Compass Education has 34 trained facilitators operating in 21 countries and is positioned to scale.

In 2021, Compass Education adopted an ambitious vision to empower one million educators with the tools to inspire students as systems thinkers and sustainability advocates. We are unsure if the best organizational structure to accomplish this is as a 501(c)3 non profit organization (our current structure), as an investor ready social enterprise or a hybrid model.  

Although Compass Education started in 2010, we began our process of formal leadership in 2020. For this reason, we have qualities of a start-up and need similar support, but unlike a startup we have a mature product and dedicated practitioners. Due to our unique circumstances (an established global organization with demonstrated impact but very limited revenue history), we are an organization that does not fit into standard funding models.  We are looking for financial and legal support to better identify the best framework to accomplish our goals and maximize the number of educators that we can reach with the Compass Tools.

Similar to the spread of IDEO’s concepts of design thinking, the sustainability and systems tools of Compass Education are easy to use, broadly applicable and support better outcomes in education and a host of other industries. The Compass Tools are currently trademarked and copyrighted but we believe that the world would be a better place if more educators and students could have access to these tools. We are not sure how to maintain organizational solvency, while at the same time supporting the dissemination and distribution of the work.  Is the IDEO model the right one for us, or are there other models that would provide for the greatest social impact?

Ultimately, we aim to share our tools with every educator in the world who is looking for support to integrate holistic sustainability and systems thinking in their curriculum.  Our organizational values drive us to do so through collaboration and partnership.  Support to expand our network, develop more technology based integrations of our tools and the ability to widely distribute them in education would be the tremendous opportunity afforded by participating in Solve.

Although the world is calling for systemic change in the introduction of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and in multiple contexts and conversations, including the regular practice of referring to systemic racism, or systemic poverty - there is almost no active introduction of systems thinking in schools.    How can we expect systemic change if we are not teaching the skills of systems thinking?   

There is a growing number of curricular products being offered to educators to address the challenges that have been identified.  Almost exclusively, these offerings propose singular thematic solutions.  Climate change curriculum packs abound, as does wellness curriculum and others.   Although needed and welcomed, the approach continues to silo learning into subjects and themes which is in direct opposition to the transversal, integrated and systemic thinking that is required to effect lasting change in the world. 

The Compass Tools support systemic thinking which is foundational to better outcomes in education across subjects and school systems.   The simplicity of the tools provide educators and students an easy scaffold towards understanding holistic sustainability while developing the basics of systemic thinking skills.  Just as the concepts of design thinking have been adapted and utilized in multiple contexts, the Compass Tools can be easily integrated into every subject, every curriculum, every school event and community and civic engagement. 

One of the most important conversations in education today is the challenge to address climate change and climate education in schools.   Although data driven science education about climate is important, a holistic understanding of sustainability is a critical stepping stone to understanding the interconnectedness of climate challenges with the human presence on this planet.  Currently, this kind of learning is relegated to science classes.   The Compass Tools are unique, specifically the Sustainability Compass because it encourages educators to introduce holistic sustainability without any formal knowledge of climate science and empowers them to support students to understand and embrace complexity, develop empathy and practice systems thinking for sustainable outcomes across a wide variety of topics and contexts – currently this solution does not exist in education.

Compass Education Impact - 2030

A network of organizations, schools, educators and students using systems thinking tools for sustainability, across a range of institutions and learning communities.

Greater educator confidence in teaching systems thinking and sustainability in the classroom and discussing and sharing their learning with others.

Students are empowered and engaged to redefine current challenges as opportunities and take positive action in their communities. 

Evolving public perception of educators and students as changemakers in their community leading to policy change to require the integration of systems thinking skills in education. 

Educator and Student Impact goals 

1. Increased educator CONFIDENCE to integrate climate change, sustainability, and other real world issues into their curriculum. 

2. Increased educator SATISFACTION in their ability to prepare students with the skills that they need for an uncertain future. 

3. Increased student ENGAGEMENT in curriculum topics and real world conversations

4. Increased student AGENCY and HOPE that their actions can contribute to a better world. 

The long term impact of supporting educators as systems changemakers is that we develop future systems oriented leaders that will be positioned with mindsets and skill sets to transform education to positively impact student, school, community and  climate outcomes.

Our strategy includes:

1. The integration of the Compass Tools  through partnerships with existing curriculum providers, enriching any curriculum with fundamental training in systems thinking for sustainable outcomes. 

2. The documentation of educator and student practice of sustainability education understood through measurement of confidence, engagement and impact.

3. The cultivation of research partnerships with Universities to document and disseminate the transformative outcomes of using systems tools in education with the intention of contributing to policy change.  

To accomplish this, we will:

• Develop a quality collection of FREE TRAINING RESOURCES  to distribute our tools to our partners and in a diverse range of topics and subject areas. 

• Continue to improve our use of technology to create multiple access points to disseminate the tools. 

• Develop language translations of our free resources in 10 languages. 

• Develop low cost access points for training of government and public school educators. 

• Develop integrated lean models to measure impact from our work.

Anticipated results

By 2024

• 100 partner integrations in existing climate change, sustainable development and global changemaker curriculum programs, resulting in 10,000 educators introducing systems thinking tools in their classrooms. 

• 15 professional development workshops in government and public school settings resulting in 500+ formally trained educators integrating systems thinking in their school curriculum and context.

By 2027

• Compass Tools translated in ten languages providing equitable access to sustainability and systems thinking tools in the world. 

• 1000 partner integrations in existing curriculum across subjects in K-12, Higher Education, social entrepreneurship and related applications resulting in 100,000+ educators introducing systems thinking in their classrooms. 

• Dissemination of research reflecting the transformative outcomes on education through the introduction of systems tools. 

By 2030

• Government and school district mandate for integrating sustainability and systems thinking in school curriculum 

• One MILLION Educators using systems thinking for sustainability tools in their curriculum and contexts. 

Compass Education has worked hard over the past few years to improve our capacity to measure and track our impact.  We have made great strides and with mentorship and funding support we expect to increase our capacity.

Currently we are measuring the following quantitative indicators:
# of educators in our professional development trainings
# of educators who download our free courses
# of educators who participate in our conferences
# of students who are exposed to the Compass Tools (educator reported)
# of countries where are tools are used
# of schools that contract our services
# of partner organizations

In addition we measure our educator experience and track the following qualitative data:

• Testimonials from educators who participate in our workshops
• Blog posts from contributing educators
• Crowd sourced lesson plans and educator reflections
• Student videos and evidence of their use of the tools 

At Compass Education we believe that educators are powerful systems changemakers. If we encourage educators to expand their understanding of sustainability across disciplines and contexts, empower them with systems thinking tools, and support them to develop confidence to integrate sustainability in their curriculum, then they will equip their learners with skills and mindsets to tackle challenges and feel agency in our complex, dynamic world.  

The details and associated research can be found in the reinforcing positive feedback loopthat we use to describe our work. 

Compass Education relies on internet technology including a multitude of web based tools. We use a Learning Management System (LMS) to develop our courses. We use design tools such as Adobe for our interactive videos, and other design tools such as Canva to support our social media work.

We develop and distribute free resources that are co-created by educators in our global network.  There are multiple technologies involved in this ongoing and robust global crowd sourcing experience. We want to explore several practices such as gamification and 3-D design to distribute our tools in multiple channels as well as newer technologies such as blockchain to potentially track our impact. 

Compass Education is managed by a small, women-led, culturally diverse team and supported by a burgeoning network of Compass Educators across the world.   More than 70% of our facilitator network speak more than one language fluently and 95% have lived in multiple countries and cultures.  Our learning materials are crowd sourced and team developed, which supports multiple perspectives and viewpoints to be considered. 

Our education tools and products are developed with a focus on equipping individuals with the skills to identify systems that perpetuate trends leading to inequitable impacts. As an organization and as a practice we use our own tools to discuss our organizational structure, impact and opportunity as an annual practice to support reflection and improvements in our practices of diversity, inclusion and equity.  The outcomes of these conversations are documented and shared in our community in the form of our Community Guidelines. 

Although the cultural diversity within the Compass Education network is expansive, the socio-economic diversity is an area where we hope to make improvements. For the last twelve years we have primarily worked with educators and students at private international schools.  This has been a natural development of the organization which was founded by international school teachers and the tools shared within those networks.   Also, our funding model generates revenue from paid workshops and it is private schools that have both the mandate for more innovative teaching models and the funds with which to pay for professional development.  As a result, public school and government school educators and educators in non-english speaking schools have not yet had access to our paid longer format workshops.  

In order to begin the process of providing more equitable access to our training and tools, we developed the online free introductory course and we have hundreds of free lesson plans and learning resources available for download.   We plan to continue to leverage technology to create additional free courses and learning opportunities in the near future, as well as providing options in other languages so that every educator who wants to use systems thinking for better outcomes, will have access to the tools that they need. 

Compass Education is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization and global movement of educators who are committed to creating a more just, equitable and sustainable world through sharing tools for systems change and sustainability with educators.  In the last two years, 

Compass Education delivers on-site and virtual professional development experiences that engage educators, students and school communities in teaching and learning that leads to empowered global citizens and a more sustainable world. Compass Education training is delivered in multiple formats to best serve our educator community including: 

On-site professional development workshops Virtual professional development workshop (live facilitated) On-line asynchronous learning experiences in multiple lengths and formats Micro learning in two hour intensives (online and onsite)

Free resources and trainings for tool introductions and classroom use

Compass Education has worked to create a scaffolded selection of products, the organizational structure and digital platform to support the rapid dissemination of systems tools in K-12 education with the intention of supporting educators as systems changemakers.

Compass Education is using a hybrid approach to achieve financial sustainability, with the expectation in 2023 that we will generate 50% of our operating revenue from paid professional development and 50% from grant and corporate funding.  We are also exploring converting our 501(c)3 to a social enterprise, but this is only at the preliminary conversation stages. 

Compass Education is currently operating as a fee-for-service revenue model for our paid professional development programs.  We expect to maintain this model but to expand and support our work with foundation sponsorship for public and government school educators. We currently have no operating budget for marketing or promotion, but feel confident that with a small application of resources and time, our reputation and history will provide significant opportunity to grow our paid business. 

In 2023 we began to execute on our strategic goal to generate at least 50% of our operating revenue from foundation and corporate donations.  We are dedicating time to prepare the appropriate materials and apply for funding opportunities as they arise.  We expect to generate a minimum of $75,000 in grant funding in 2023. 

Aligned and in parallel to our business plan is the expectation that we will significantly impact our revenue generating potential if we are able to raise our professional profile in global networks and align our brand as an innovative industry leader in systems thinking and sustainability education.    We are actively working to expand our partnerships with global networks such as Catalyst 2030, The Worlds Largest Lesson (global goals), The Global Citizenship Collective, the IB Festival of Hope and others. 

We are just beginning our journey to financial sustainability, as we have had the astounding gift of 1000's of hours of volunteer professional support for many years.  Although rarely recognized within financial frameworks, we consider this donated support a testament to the depth of spirit and the potential for growth that Compass Education has.   Look at all that we have done with almost no budget... imagine what would be possible if we had the resources that we needed to pay a staff, scale and grow! 

In January of 2023 we began applying for grants and funding for our 501(c)3 and have applied for ten opportunities (including SOLVE!), for which we hope to have positive answers next quarter. In 2022, Compass Education generated $88,898 usd from paid professional development trainings.  This supported our contracted facilitator network and small stipends for our internal operations team to work part time.

In January of 2023, a private investment firm provided us with a free initial evaluation to see if we were qualified candidates for venture capital investment.  Although preliminary, we were given an 83% RMD and were valued with an exit sale at $20 million.