THE CIRCULAR CLASSROOM

A collaboration for the Finnish Education System to develop engaging and practical in-class resources on the circular economy, sustainability and creativity. 

The Circular Classroom is a free, trilingual (English, Finnish + Swedish) educational resource for students and teachers alike. It is designed to integrate circular thinking into high school classrooms, all packaged up in a fun, beautiful format of video and workbooks.

The Circular Classroom offers the opportunity to think differently about how we design products, how we meet our needs as humans, and how we can support the development of more creative professional roles that help to design a future that is about social, economic and environmental benefits.

The intention behind the project is to support young people in recognizing the exciting opportunity that redesigning products, services and systems have for the future; for exploring how their engagement with the world today impacts the future; and for supporting their decisions around future professions. It’s about making sure that they have the tools and agency to overcome the pessimistic worldview so often painted when global planetary issues are discussed.

Working with our very talented designer Emma Segal, we took great effort to create a visually beautiful and highly-engaging design aesthetic for this project. We created each of 20+ in-class activities as an emergent outcome of engaging directly with students and teachers through a series of co-design workshops that Leyla held in Finland. 

The outcomes of the co-design workshops included a focus on activating both educators and students, as well as supporting the participants’ collaborative development of new materials in the future. The goal is for teachers and students to work together to generate their own circular classroom content that will support other people learning circular thinking. 

FastCo Honorable Mention for World Changing Ideas in Education

Module 1

MOVING FROM THE LINEAR TO THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY

The first module is focused on asking questions about the current linear economy and the possibility and potential of transitioning to a circular one where waste is designed out right from the start. The activities help the students explore what  kinds of actions each person can take to help design a future that works better and what potential for solving complex problems a circular future holds.

MODULE 2

SYSTEMS + SUSTAINABILITY

Module Two is all about understanding how systems work in the world and what the concept of sustainability is really about. It challenges the students to learn how nature works, as well as provides all the life-sustaining services that we all rely on. 

MODULE 3

DESIGN + CREATIVITY

Design is a powerful social influence that impacts every day of our lives. It’s also an exciting profession that helps create many of the new industries we are seeing emerge. Creativity is a critical skill for the future, especially for addressing big complex problems like climate change and ocean plastic waste. This module is all about activating creative thinking and giving young people the tools to be agents of their own life and the future. 

MODULE 4

EDUCATOR SUPPORT MANUAL

In support of the three main in-class modules, we created a valuable Teachers’ Support Pack that includes details on how to integrate the content into the classroom, prompts for employing experiential learning activities into lesson planning (with a connection to the Finnish curriculum) and ideas for more complex conversations around circularity and sustainability.