National 30-minute Student Strike, 20th September 2019

Headteachers, your students may wish to join a national 30-minute strike for action on climate change on Friday 20th September. Below are three ways you can support them (with opportunity for follow-up training here):

1. Assembly before or after the strike – inform students about likely costs and benefits of different types of action, e.g. strikes, petitions, relational power-building for negotiation with power-holders. Your Citizens:mk Community Organiser and leaders of member institutions can lead an assembly presentation.
2. Conversations– each student could have a one-to-one conversation with three other students – within or between year groups, indoors or outside – to discuss global warming. They could talk about:
   • Your global warming habits
     • what you do that contributes most to it?
     • what do you do that contributes most to reducing it?
     • what more would you like to do to reduce it?
   • Who has most power to reduce global warming?
     • who are the main power holders?
     • which of these are most accessible to you?
     • what can you do to help him/her/them?
   • Your family and friends
     • what’s the worst habit of someone you know
     • realistically, what could s/he do differently?
     • what would you say to them?
3. Survey Action – students could collect data to answer some or all of the questions below, and feed the results back to Citizens:mk who will collate the data from all MK schools and produce a report which you can present back to all participants:
   • Why are you taking part in this survey?
     • I care passionately about reducing global warming and feed driven to take action
     • I think it’s important and want to play my part
     • I like getting out of normal lessons
     • I didn’t want to take part, but was forced to.
   • If you think global warming is an importan issue, which power holders do you think have most power to reduce it (rank them 1-8 where 1=most powerful and 8=least powerful)
     • United Nations
     • UK government
     • Milton Keynes Council
     • My neighbourhood
     • My school
     • My family
     • Me
     • Other (please state).

For further information, or to express interest in taking part, contact Tom Bulman, Community Organiser, tel 07962 838685.