The national Enviroschools team, together with Enviroschools Auckland, were invited to present at the 2025 STEAM Education Summit, held recently in Tāmaki Makaurau.
The two-day conference brought together educators, leaders, and industry partners to explore how integrated STEAM learning can boost student engagement, improve literacy and numeracy, and connect learning to real-world pathways.
The Enviroschools presentation, entitled Creating Changemakers: Cross-Curricular STEAM for a Sustainable Future, focussed on:
- Embedding sustainability into learning by empowering students, schools, and communities to take action for the environment and create long-term change
- Exploring case studies of STEAM programmes that embed sustainability, showing how students solve real-world environmental challenges through creative, cross-curricular learning
Esther Kirk, Enviroschools national manager
Esther Kirk, Enviroschools national manager, opened our session and set the scene beautifully, sharing the importance of the Enviroschools Kaupapa at this time when global environmental and social issues are escalating. The Enviroschools programme facilitates positive energy for change – there is a groundswell of people wanting to move from unsustainable, disconnected ways of being, to a world that is healthy, equitable and sustaining for all.
Enviroschools is an action‑based, place‑based, values‑rich, ecological framework that creates fertile ground for STEAM learning. When well done, projects combining them can deepen learning, increase relevance, nurture environmental citizenship, and build skills for the future.
Esther provided an inspiring array of examples of STEAM in action from Enviroschools all across the motu.
We then heard from Susan Hutchinson Daniel, Regional Coordinator for Enviroschools in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, about Enviroschools in the Auckland region. Susan shared information about how Enviroschools in structured in the region and commented that the depth of experience of the Enviroschools teachers and students who weave STEAM through their teaching and learning practice in Tāmaki Makaurau is astonishing.
Susan introduced Cate Jessep, Sustainable Schools Advisor and Enviroschools Facilitator, who guides and supports schools on their sustainability journey. Cate works in 75 schools in Ōtara Papatoetoe and Howick. Her work for the last nearly 20 years focuses on empowering courageous committed tangata she has the privilege to work with to be leaders of sustainability in their communities.
Susan Hutchinson-Daniel and Cate Jessep, Auckland Council
One of the schools Cate works with is Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate, a yr 1-13 school in Ōtara. Cate introduced kaiako Kirsten Taranaki and Juliana Goodman, who ended our Enviroschools session by sharing inspiring examples of cross-curricular programmes, student-led STEAM inquiries and opportunities they are creating for students that embrace community partnerships using a systems change approach to inspire courage, curiosity and active participation in young people.
The mahi these courageous and dedicated kaiako are doing is incredible, and the results speak for themselves – they are instilling confidence in their tauira to become trailblazers and leaders in their communities.
Kirsten Taranaki and Juliana Goodman, Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate
