Over 30 step-by-step guides to help educators inspire and support their students as they take meaningful action to create a more sustainable classroom, school, home, or community.
Action is the antidote to being overwhelmed.
Watch our introductory video about how to use our Student Hub resources in your classroom to activate your students to contribute to the solutions to plastic pollution.
How to use our Action Guides
Our step-by-step Action Guides can be used as inspiration for class projects, student assignments, extra-credit, or even a class competition! All Action Guides are located in the Student Hub where you and your students can find additional resources. Students can pick an Action they want to do, read through the instructions and tips, and get started!
Leverage Class Code signups to track student progress.
We’ve made it easy for your students to create accounts with our free and simple Class Code Signup.
Class Code Signup Benefits
- Track each student’s completed Hours in your Educator profile page.
- Each student receives a Certificate at the end of the school year with their completed Hours.
- Our team of experts reviews each submission and approves or rejects based on our grading rubric.
- For submissions that don’t pass, we’ll provide personalized feedback for how to improve their submission.
- Do a class competition, or assign a certain number of Hours for a class assignment or extra-credit.
Get an Earth Month Take Action! Toolkit
Request a free Earth Month Take Action! toolkit that includes suggested Action Pathways, printouts for each Action for your students, and prizes to give your top achievers. All educators who request a kit will also be able to signup for an introductory call with us, a class presentation about plastic pollution and Wayfinder Society (over Zoom), as well as a mentorship session where students can get guidance on their projects.
COMING SOON!
Opportunities for extra dedicated students
Have a student or two who are very passionate about plastic pollution and want to dig in further? Share our student-facing Student Hub with them to explore on their own, while we provide personalized support to guide them. They can also apply for our Student Mini-Grants for funding for a community project or personal education endeavor like an internship, university, or a conference.
Individual Signup
Perfect for
- students passionate about environmental issues,
- independent home-schoolers,
- students looking to boost their extracurricular activities,
- or any student interested in tracking their community service hours.
Students can
- submit their projects to our team of experts for review,
- get personalized feedback,
- accumulate Hours in their profile,
- earn milestone prizes and certificates,
- and apply for our Student Mini-Grant opportunity (Jan- Apr).
Have an environmental club or scout troop?
If you are the supervisor for a school green team, scout troop, or volunteer group, check out our Team Account. This option is great for groups working together to complete Actions, or younger students working with an adult.
Team Signup
- The team manager (you or one student per team) creates and manages the account for the whole team.
- Actions are completed and submitted as a team. Hours are earned collectively for the team. Earned milestone prizes and certificates are provided for the team as a whole.
- Our staff review each submission and provide personalized feedback if necessary.
- We recommend team sizes be between 2 and 6 people. For a school sustainability club, have students form a couple teams.
- Great for project groups, Green Teams, scout troop, families, etc.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does this cost?
All of the Wayfinder Society program, including the Action Guides, Student Accounts, Individual Accounts, Team Accounts, and Action review by our team of experts is completely free thanks to the generosity of our funders and donors who make this program possible. It’s our mission to provide students with both accessible resources and personalized support in their endeavors to learn about and take action on environmental issues. Our funders stand by us on this mission.
Do my students need to create an account?
No, you can view all of our Action Guides for free and use them as home assignments, extra credit, class projects, etc. Without an account, our step-by-step Action Guides are still available and can be used in anyway that you can imagine to make positive change! However, by creating accounts you and your students get extra support from our team who reviews and approves/rejects each submission. You’ll also help us measure the impact of our community (which you and your students are an important part of) as we journey together to create a world where plastic pollution is unthinkable!
What are the benefits of creating an account?
By creating a free account (either team, individual, or through our class code signup), your students can securely submit their work to our team of experts to get their actions reviewed. Our team reviews each action manually and provides personalized feedback any time a submission is rejected so the student can improve their next submission. We use our rubric to approve or reject each submission on a pass/fail basis. For each successfully completed Action, the account holder will earn Hours for their achievement. Students can earn milestone awards like tshirts, Wayfinder Society wooden pins, stickers, and certificates. We’ll celebrate our community’s combined effort at the end of each school year with a virtual event! Join our awesome community of educators and students around the world who are taking action for our environment.
How does the class code signup work?
Our Class Code Signup option was created to make it easier for educators to have their students create individual accounts. Complete our Class Code Signup form with the number of class periods or groups you’ll need. We’ll send you an email with your Class Codes. Share the student sign up link in the email with your students. They’ll use the class code and their school email to create an account. We collect minimal personal information. They won’t need to access their school email to access their account. Once they are logged in they can submit Actions in the Track form located in each Action Guide. In their profile, they’ll see their approved completed Actions, as well as their total earned Hours. They’ll also be able to see any feedback from our team of experts in the Messages tab.
As the educator you can see each student’s total number of Hours as well as their completed Actions in their profile. Go to the Groups tab in your profile to see your classes.
We take the privacy and safety of our website users seriously. See our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy for more information.
Who reviews the students' submissions?
Wayfinder Society is powered completely by the Algalita team.
Trina, 
Emily, 
Anika, and 
Katie
Our small team of employees, currently including Trina, Emily, Anika, and Katie, read each submission as soon as possible and assess it according to our rubric. This is a lot of work, but we believe in the power of personalized support for students, and the power of human interaction – even if it’s through written messages. This program allows us to support students across the world who are passionate about addressing plastic pollution and related issues and who don’t have other forms of support or mentorship.
Read our team bios and learn about our amazing board and advisors here.
What is our Action review rubric?
As our Actions generally do not include correct/incorrect answers, a submitted Action is approved if:
- the user provides a comprehendible response to at least 60% of the questions.
- the user demonstrates that they’ve understood the prompt and attempted to provide a reasonable response.
Actions are generally declined if:
- the user provides a nonsensical or inappropriate response.
- the user provides a plagiarized response.
Do you have more questions or need to contact us?
Please reach out to us if you have additional questions, need assistance, or to let us know how we can better accommodate your needs. Contact us.
Inspire your students with these stories from our Student Mini-Grant Awardees.
Anaïs
Anaïs has been active in the Ohio River Valley bringing attention to the proposed petrochemical buildout in the region with the goal of amplifying fights in our region and energizing the local community.
Hannah
Hannah has led the trend for Litterless Lunchboxes in Australia through her positive energy and dedication to her new org – Sea Good.
Raul
Raul led his Southern California community college away from plastics through his focus on environmental justice for his community. He’s currently studying GIS.
Looking for more ideas for how to use the Student Hub in your classroom?
Read our full How-to Guide: Ideas for using the Student Hub to empower your students to take action.
“Educators are our greatest allies toward a cleaner, safer world.”
Katie Allen, Executive Director
