Change is Simple

Mission Statement: Instill lifelong social and environmental responsibility through experiential learning that inspires action for healthy people, planet & community.    

Change is Simple (CiS) was established to reimagine the framework for teaching environmental issues to young students. The organization brings climate and sustainability education into public school classrooms across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts through a series of hands-on lessons that inspire students to take action for a healthier planet and healthier communities while helping to close the achievement gap in core school subjects. Shifting the paradigm from a nature driven perspective, CiS lessons focus on the human element of our environmental crisis. Our program provides critical hands-on and experiential education that touches upon nearly every facet of environmental science. But what students learn is not just science; it’s math, English Language Arts (ELA), engineering, problem solving, social emotional learning and more, all taught through the lens of sustainability.

Our primary goal is to inspire students to adopt environmental values at an early age and carry them through all the chapters and endeavors in their life. Our secondary goal is to boost education engagement and skills in the core subjects that allow students to foster skills, envision life goals and pursue successfully.

Since 2011, Change is Simple has engaged 40,000 students in at least one full school year of our programming. Currently, we partner with 35 schools in the greater Boston area and serve over 8,000 students annually in their classrooms. Our curriculum spans from kindergarten to 7th grade and touches almost every facet of environmental science. We aim to increase equity in STEM and climate education. Given that 90% of American students are educated in public schools, our focus in these educational environments allows us the maximum equitable reach and impact.  Most importantly, we aim to reach as many children as possible, as our planet needs all of its inhabitants to care for it. 

Through partnerships with schools we support the need to engage students in real world learning that allows children to gain skills in math, english/language arts, and science.  Our programming helps them to develop an understanding of the college and career opportunities they will be faced with as they grow up on a rapidly changing planet. We do so by providing a highly engaging and hands-on program that encourages and empowers students to discover the ways that their 21st century life impacts our changing planet. 

Team Lead Kylie Kean is the Evaluation Coordinator for CiS. She has been working with our education staff and third party evaluators from Northeastern University to develop the best means for evaluating our programming. A percentage of her time is dedicated to strategy, execution, and outcome reports on our program. In her role, she works closely with CiS founders, program director and Dr. Sara Ewell of Northeastern university on the ongoing efforts to evaluate our mission, methods, and delivery of the programming. 

Kylie has over ten years of experience working in various educational environments, from early childhood classrooms to nature-based experiences for students in Madagascar. She has helped nonprofit schools develop nature-based classrooms and published her educational evaluation research in Madagascar Conservation and Development. After studying and working for environmental education organizations around the world, she realized that she wanted to ensure that children in the US, a country that has contributed a nearly unparalleled amount to the climate crisis, receive critical education about how they can choose a different path for their future. She holds a BA in biology from Wellesley College and an MSc in Primate conservation with a focus on environmental education from Oxford Brookes University.

In addition to Kylie Kean, our Team Lead, this program will be supported by program director Skye Fournier, CiS co-Founder Patrick Belmonte, and 3rd party research partner Dr. Sara Ewell. 

Kylie will oversee and manage the LEAP project for Change is Simple. Having managed the CiS program evaluation data collection and analysis for the 2022-2023 school year and coordinated with partner schools to ensure timely delivery of all evaluation materials, Kylie is well versed in our current evaluation protocols and understands the needs of our education staff and partner schools in moving forward with developing new tools.  

As program director, Skye Fournier is CiS’s direct liaison with our partner schools. She understands their needs and will attend meetings with LEAP fellows and coordinate with our team lead to ensure that the evaluation tools put forth by fellows will meet those needs. 

CiS co-founder Patrick Belmonte understands the capacity, strategy, and current direction of CiS and will coordinate with our Team Lead to ensure that the LEAP project is moving in sync with the current trajectory of the organization.

Having been an integral part of our first program evaluation, Dr. Sara Ewell will provide necessary context and background on CiS evaluation history. She will also play a key role in the scaling up and long term implementation of our evaluation tool for all of our partner school communities. 

Our education team members are also well situated to support the LEAP project, as administering our current evaluation tool is part of their roles as educators with CiS and they are well versed in the importance of evaluation for the organization. 

Change is Simple instills lifelong environmental responsibility through hands-on STEM learning while improving core skills for elementary and middle schoolers.

Change is Simple fills an important education gap in Kindergarten through 7th grade classrooms by providing engaging and comprehensive climate education in a way that builds awareness, empathy, and a sense of empowerment in taking action. Without proper climate education, students may remain unaware of the critical challenges our planet is facing as a result of our changing climate such as food insecurity, water scarcity, and pollution. This lack of awareness can hinder their understanding of the urgency and importance of addressing these issues. Our hands-on program has been developed alongside teachers and is built upon current curriculum standards, allowing it to be seamlessly integrated into public school classrooms. Our team brings exciting learning experiences into classrooms while mentoring students in STEM, sustainability and environmental justice all year long at no cost to students. This ensures all students have equitable access to the program. 

While the program is built around STEM education, every workshop is taught through the lens of climate change, sustainability, and environmental science. We aim to inspire those we work with to become advocates for the natural world, environmental justice, and to connect environmental health with the health of their families and communities. Elementary school is an ideal time to instill a sense of environmental responsibility and stewardship, as it is at this point in their lives that children build the foundational knowledge and beliefs that will propel them throughout their lives. Climate education helps children develop empathy towards our natural environment, understand ecosystems, and grasp the connection between human activities and their impact on the environment. Without this education, children may miss out on opportunities to develop environmentally conscious habits and empathetic behaviors towards nature and their communities. A lack of climate education for elementary school students deprives them of essential knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to address climate change effectively and contribute to a sustainable future. Additionally, climate education provides students with a context for using their skills in real world ways that are meaningful to all people and species. 

Change is Simple’s supercharged STEM curriculum brings environmental science, sustainability, and climate education to more than 8,000 elementary and middle school students in the Boston area each year. We use STEM as a vehicle to teach sustainability and climate issues with the aim to facilitate positive behavior change and help students to gain the knowledge they need to grow up on a rapidly changing planet. Our methodology is predicated on breaking down high level topics and communicating them effectively for students and those with very little understanding of science. Through a mixture of STEM, experiential, hands-on and social emotional learning, our pedagogy allows us to teach topics such as bioaccumulation of microplastics to students as young as 6 years old. 

Every student receives 4-10 units per year with CiS, and each unit includes:

• One-hour workshops with the CiS educators, volunteer scientists and undergraduate college science students from Northeastern University & Endicott College;

• Resources, activities and projects for participants and families to implement between workshops;

• Challenges/friendly competitions for students to take on at home;

• Access to online lessons, virtual field trips, activities, and more that students can use regardless of where they are learning;

• Concrete, immediate ways for students to live healthier and more sustainably 

Our integrated, multi-year sustainability programming is custom-designed for individual learners at each of our partner schools. Each grade level at each school receives its own unique programming designed specifically for its students and teachers and their various needs. Our team designs the program with input from the classroom teachers and ensures it is aligned with classroom objectives. By customizing our work exclusively for public schools in a range of communities throughout the greater Boston area, we have developed a program that accounts for learning variabilities in reading comprehension levels, English language learning, physical and cognitive special needs, social emotional factors and more.  With lessons that build in scope and complexity year after year, these young students are becoming the next generation of ambassadors for our planet. Delivered by a team of trained STEM educators, our pedagogy allows us to connect with students and kindle their connection to science and the environment. Supporting our Lead Educators are college student mentors who develop relationships with youth and foster social emotional growth. We tackle dozens of environmental issues facing our world, from pollination, oceans and endangered species, to plastic pollution, sustainable energy and the global food system. Participants build problem solving, team work, and critical thinking skills, all the while having fun and enjoying the learning process.  

Our model serves K-8 students throughout the Greater Boston area. Our program targets schools in middle and low income communities in the Greater Boston area that may not have access to high quality STEM education. We work with many schools to expand our programming and provide resources and activities that minorities, specifically English Language Learners can engage in. 

Over the past decade we have seen students thrive in our program, as indicated by their improved skills and comprehension in core subjects of math and literacy. We strive to boost engagement in STEM and inspire pro-environmental behavioral changes. To validate outcomes, CiS has utilized The Evaluation Institute led by two Northeastern University Graduate Professors of Education (Dr. Sara Ewell, Dr. William Ewell). In 2019, they embarked on a longitudinal, multi-year evaluation. This formative research study was a comprehensive assessment of our program and of student knowledge growth within four of our partner schools of varying socioeconomic statuses (Essex, Woburn, Salem, Revere).The report for the 2019-2020 school year is available upon request. The evaluation examined both qualitative and quantitative data to demonstrate how we are boosting student engagement, improving established learning skills, and instilling pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors. Some results: 

• 100% of the time observed was time-on-learning  

• 100% of the time students were visibly engaged in the lesson  

• Students scored 85% higher in environmental science content knowledge

• Students demonstrated marked improvement in their understanding of math, literacy and science

• Students demonstrated a 90% engagement rate in their learning with Change is Simple 

• Students & teachers recognized a significantly higher level of motivation to learn about climate change and environmental sustainability 

• Students reported a higher degree of pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors 

 The following are notes from Dr. Sara Ewell’s interviews with administrators and teachers: 

• Administrators universally spoke about the “whole package” Change is Simple brings to the school. They are referring to the ability to bring “critical STEM content”, “connect to the curriculum”, “create developmentally appropriate lessons”, “bring amazing young educators” and “challenge kids to problem solve, critically think and to innovate.” The administrators said outside programs generally offer only one of these components and it is one of the reasons Change is Simple is so effective.”  

•  One Principal enthusiastically shared, “Change is Simple is so respectful, fun and the kids connect. They deliver the goods in a way I’ve never seen another outside program do. They get kids and they get schools. These guys, holy cow, they deliver.” 

• One teacher spoke with me as the Change is Simple lesson was taking place in her classroom. As she watched she said, “There are a high number of behavior challenges in this class but not when Change is Simple is here. It is 45 minutes into the lesson today and they have been engaged the entire time. This never happens.” This was a sentiment that was shared in many classrooms. 

The research conducted by The Evaluation Institute revealed the strength and efficacy of CiS programming and teaching methods for increasing student engagement, boosting core learning skills, and instilling environmental values. The Institute’s investigations into student engagement over the course of our lessons revealed elements of our teaching practices that worked especially well as well as those where student engagement was lost. This knowledge helped us to shift our teaching practices to maintain high engagement throughout the entire lesson, and structure engaging new lessons founded in our evidence base. 

As part of their overall assessment of CiS, The Evaluation Institute interviewed stakeholders to assess organizational strengths and weaknesses. Guided by recommendations from this assessment, CiS has employed a program director to work directly with schools and has begun diversifying funding streams through the pursuit of large grants and a professional development program design to empower teachers to educate their students on environmental stewardship throughout their entire classroom curriculum, not just when CiS comes to visit. The research also indicated the efficacy of CiS interventions, and has been used to garner more funding for CiS to implement its curriculum in even more schools. The results collected by The Evaluation Institute were leveraged to gain support from Braitmayer Foundation and Devonshire Foundation, who invested in our teacher training/professional development program.

There has never been a more urgent time to redefine humanity’s relationship with the natural world. As a society we have prioritized conveniences and profits over the health of not only our planet, but our communities and ourselves. Over the last twelve years CiS has developed a robust and impactful education program around these values that can be plugged into any public school. By furthering our understanding of CiS’s impact on the pro-environmental knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors of our partner students, schools, and communities, we will be better poised to advocate for funding and expand our reach through direct service education, professional development training, and online/ edtech solutions to infuse more of this education into schools throughout the region and country.  

Since concluding our multi-year study with The Evaluation Institute our staff has been collecting  data on our program. This data has NOT shown marked behavioral changes or improvements in environmental science knowledge as they did during the Evaluation Institutes project, despite our anecdotal observations that students are just as engaged, excited, and inspired by CiS programming now as they were then. Some of these irregularities in results may be due to COVID-19 pandemic-related learning loss which has disproportionately impacted underserved schools and made our once-useful tools more challenging for them. It may also be due to the fact that our partners from The Evaluation Institute were involved in every step of the evaluation process the first year, from proctoring surveys to conducting interviews and working closely with school partners to capture accurate data. The irregularity in results indicates our need for new evaluation tools and training protocols to ensure the long term success and validity of our evaluation protocols. 

Additionally, public school partners are driven heavily by data on student achievement and growth. By developing a strong data collection process that can be managed by our team, we  will be able to provide schools with data that shows the value of the work and impact on students. Additionally, data collected from current partner schools could pave the way for new partner schools to implement the program. This will result in more students being exposed to STEM and climate issues. The data collected will provide insights that will be valuable to educators participating in our trainings and assist as we continue to scale up the impact of our mission. 

Given the ages of children that we work with, including young children still developing critical reading and writing skills, what types of evaluation tools enable us to capture an authentic understanding of CiS’s impact on students, and how can we most effectively leverage those? 

What can schools, administrators, teachers, and parents reveal about CiS’s  impacts on pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors of school communities, and how can we optimize relationships with these stakeholders to yield the most complete picture of our impact?

How can we develop an effective evaluation tool that will yield replicable, equitable, valid, and valuable results long-term?

As a result of our 12-week sprint, we would like to have a new evaluation tool or tools designed to better assess our program’s short, medium and long-term pro-environmental impacts across all of our partner schools through formative research. These tools would help us to solve a problem we are currently encountering with our evaluation, which is that long, reading and writing intensive surveys are challenging for students and teachers to take and administer. This tool would be a more equitable solution to evaluation across the varying socioeconomic levels that we serve, including English language learners and those impacted by pandemic learning loss.   

In addition to age-appropriate and equitable tools, our desired outcomes also include a framework for administering program evaluations that can be used to train staff currently familiar with CiS evaluation protocols as well as future staff. This methodology would be easily utilized, replicable, and would not place undue burdens on our team of educators or on teachers in our partner schools, who are already stretched thin in their classroom teaching roles. Additionally, we hope that this tool will produce data that will not only be useful in assessing our solution to provide the CiS team feedback with which we can iterate improvements to our programming, but also with data that we can provide with various stakeholders, from school administrators to teachers and families, on the efficacy and impacts of our programming.  We would like to receive guidance grounded in current literature on which dimensions of our community partners yield the most illustrative results of our program’s community-wide impact and how we can leverage those through formative research. Although a 12-week sprint is not long enough to assess the long or even medium term impacts of our solution, our desired outcome would be for an evaluative tool and research plan that could be utilized over time to measure longer term impacts.

Following the conclusion of the LEAP project sprint, CiS will utilize the outputs of the project to conduct evaluations of all our partner school communities using the methodologies and tools developed during the LEAP sprint. We will scale the evaluation up to be implemented in all of our partner schools so that we may ensure that we are providing our partners with the best programming possible and achieving our organizational mission of instilling social and environmental responsibility in our students. We will also use our project outputs to provide feedback to our partner schools on how CiS programming has impacted student participants as evidenced through their actions, behaviors, and attitudes to underscore the significance of their investment in CiS. Presuming that our project outputs will also us to continue to iterate improved programming, as well as highlight the pro-environmental changes created as a result of CiS in school communities, our LEAP project sprint outputs will allow us to garner more funding through grants and corporate sponsorships, both of which will allow CiS to continue to scale up its operations to reach more schools through our educational programming as well as empower teachers to educate students on these topics themselves through subsidized professional development, one of our other offerings. Ultimately, the outputs of the LEAP project sprint will allow us to bring the highest quality climate change education possible to wider audiences. 

Our desired short term outcomes: 

• Scaled up LEAP project evaluation tools for use in all of our partner schools across classroom and age groups. 

• Improved evaluation experience for teachers, who are currently frustrated with our written survey tool, especially for English language learners and non-native speakers. 

• Implementation of evaluation tools that are more equitable for the various types of learning communities that CiS serves, including English language learners, classrooms with a high degree of learner variability, and students impacted by learning loss as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Our desired long-term outcomes: 

• Better understanding of CiS’s elementary and middle school classroom education program’s medium-to-long term impacts on the pro-environmental behaviors, attitudes, and knowledge of our partner schools, their students, and their broader school communities. 

• Confidence and ability of CiS team to faithfully, reliably, and easily reproduce our program evaluation protocols using LEAP project tools and framework from year to year and school to school. Increasing our teams confidence and capacity to maintain fidelity to evaluation protocols will allow us to achieve a meaningful long-term dataset.

• Use of data to expand our mission and work to impact more students beyond our region and infuse our findings into guides for educators we train and strategies we use in online and edtech learning environments.