This article is part of our Youth Voices series. At Ten Strands, we believe that young people have valuable perspectives and a critical role in shaping our society and our world. We recognize their power to drive dialogue and create positive change and are committed to providing a platform which amplifies their contributions. Today, you’ll meet Joseph Or, one of the inspiring youth leaders contributing to this important work.
Q: Briefly introduce yourself: Tell us a little bit about your background and who you are—grade level, where you go to school, geographical location, any diversity indicators (pronouns, race, ethnicity, etc.). You can include your major, interests, or anything else you’d like us to know!
A: My name is Joseph. I was born and raised in the Inland Empire region of Southern California, and I’m now a rising sophomore at Yale University, double-majoring in Political and Environmental Science.
Q: Why are you interested in environmental and climate issues? And why did you want to pursue an internship with Ten Strands, an organization that focuses on environmental and climate action in TK-12 schools?
A: Growing up in the Inland Empire, an environmental justice community with some of the worst air quality in the United States, is what first drew me to environmental and climate action. I was especially drawn to efforts around advocating for environmental education, equity, and building climate resilience in schools: issues I connected with personally as a student in the K-12 public school system. I previously worked on the 8th Grade Unit for Ten Strands’ Seeds to Solutions® curriculum as part of the Environmental Education Collaborative, focused on air quality in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. That project was really impactful for me personally, inspiring me to pursue Environmental Science and get more involved with Ten Strands and their mission.
Q: What projects, programs, and services did your internship focus on with Ten Strands? Describe your experience and what stood out to you as you worked on different aspects of your internship.
A: I had the opportunity to work on a project with Ten Strands’ Data Initiative. Our team tracked board policies across 900+ California school districts, updating adoption and revision statuses for policies modified since 2024. Using this data, we analyzed differences between local and templated policy language and examined trends in policy adoption over time to assess how standardized environmental policy is across California school districts. My work focused specifically on BP 3511 (Energy and Water Management), BP 3511.1 (Integrated Waste Management), and BP 3514 (Environmental Safety). It was really interesting to track and examine board policies across the state, seeing where content deviated and how those deviations correspond, for example, to state-level policy shifts. I am personally interested in energy management and how careful and cleaner energy consumption can improve climate resilience in schools, so it was rewarding to be able to look at BP 3511 and observe what actions, if any, districts were taking to reduce electricity and other natural resource consumption.
Q: In what ways do you hope the work you did through your Ten Strands internship will make an impact?
A: The templates that exist and the level of adoption and compliance across California school districts is not well documented, but understanding it is really helpful for effective school board-level advocacy since it reveals where gaps exist in the policies actually being implemented. We found that most districts adopt at least the base template language, which raises more specific questions for us like, what’s actually being included? When districts do change the language, what’s motivating those changes, and what does that reveal about a district’s commitment to sustainability? Several times, we found evidence of entirely new generations of board policy language, tracing back to, for example, observable state-level movements (e.g., a mandate requiring schools to implement recycling programs). I hope our work analyzing templates and language similarity can provide a foundation for further advocacy and policy work, helping identify what environmental policies need to be updated, and in which regions the greatest need lies.
Q: What skills did you learn or grow during the internship, and/or what did you learn about yourself during this internship?
A: I was able to strengthen my quantitative skills through hands-on experience with data analysis. Most of the policy research I’ve done in the past and in my coursework has been largely qualitative, so working with a large dataset spanning over 900 California school districts was new to me, but it was a really valuable experience. I was also able to learn so much about the current state of environmental policy in California by going through each of the templates, seeing what districts are actually implementing, and thinking about that ties back into the Data Initiative’s core indicators.
Q: To what extent do you plan on pursuing something related to the environment in your college or career pathways?
A: I hope to work in environmental policy and law. Within my Environmental Studies major, I’m currently designing a concentration in Energy and Infrastructure, so I’d like to focus my future work in those areas. This internship exposed me a lot to school board policies—a form of public policy that’s often overlooked, but one that connects directly to these sectors.
Q: How do you see data as a meaningful and powerful tool in catalyzing environmental and climate action in schools? Reflect on how data, in your view, can support systemic change in TK–12 education.
A: I believe data is a core element of identifying climate and sustainability gaps in TK–12 education. It allows us to visualize trends and developments on a large scale, and see specifically what’s missing to meaningfully inform future policy and advocacy efforts. This is one of my biggest takeaways from this internship. For instance, tracking “policy adoption” for this project could have simply meant a yes/no check across districts. But by diving into the data and analyzing the actual text of adopted policies, comparing them against the templates, we were able to produce more nuanced findings, such as identifying distinct template generations and tracing specific updates, that will hopefully set a foundation for future work toward systemic change.
