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Evidence of climate change is becoming more and more obvious here in Ireland, year on year. While impacts on my own local area have not been extreme, nevertheless they are apparent.
Rainfall has increased, leading to some flooding, and to the Boyne breaking its banks and flooding adjacent walkways and fields.
There has been an increase in the number of heavy storms and high winds. This is leading to disruption to the electricity and water supplies.
Temperatures have become more extreme in recent years.
These climate change impacts can be devastating for some businesses and groups. While for many, they might be just inconvenienced by a loss of electricity, for more vulnerable people, like the elderly, this could have serious consequences.
Three actions I could take that could make the world a better place and slow down climate change are:
• Walking rather than driving whenever possible and shopping locally to reduce my carbon footprint
• Supporting local producers and businesses, using less plastic and refilling containers if it is possible. Our town has a cult zero shop which emphasizes locally sourced, organic, chemical free produce with minimal single use packaging.
• Being mindful of energy use – turning off lights, closing windows, turning down heat, and not wasting water.In school, we could:
• encourage children and their families to walk to school (also benefiting health and well-being), or to car-pool.
• Children could take more responsibility for ensuring that we are not wasting energy…in our school, each class generally has monitors who make sure that we turn out the lights and turn off the IWB, laptops and computers, and check that there are no taps left running in the bathrooms. Our Green Schools Committee are very active in this respect.
• Older classes could investigate the benefits of buying locally and how that reduces carbon footprint.
• Taking part in local recycling initiatives – for example, partnering with ReTurn scheme to raise money for a cause or for the school.Hi Jamie, love the idea of establishing a baseline and then checking again at a later stage to see if changes have been made that would reduce their carbon footprint. I think pupils would find this really motivating.
Hi Orla,
Your story of your 6th class pupil is both sobering and uplifting. For that child, the outcome could have been vastly different. But it takes a village – from the strangers who put him into the container to the foster family to the school.
Although there is not a specific, dedicated refugee service in Ratoath, there are a number of organisations who work to support refugees in the Meath area.
Meath County Council runs a local authority integration service, which aims to link people with local service providers appropriate to the need of the person. The authority acts as the direct point of contact to provide information, guidance and advice to queries, as they arise. The integration team provides signposting to services one needs to access employment and develop English language proficiency, access childcare and healthcare services and to connect to sporting and other local/community activities.Together with Louth County Council, the local authority has also developed a migrant strategy, focusing on integration and inclusion of new communities and considering what is needed to enable the areas to enjoy the benefits of diversity.
Cultur Migrants Centre, based in Navan, is a voluntary organization that celebrates cultural diversity through education, sport, music and drama. It brings people from different backgrounds and walks of life together. Members and volunteers join their time and efforts in order to:
• Provide advocacy and information to migrants through the Migrant Rights Initiative.
• Offer capacity building through the English Class Initiative.
• Facilitate integration through cultural and sporting activities.
• Promote intercultural awareness through anti-racism and intercultural training.
• Enable inter-agency involvement with migrant communities.Another great service is the local family resource centre. In my local one, a man who arrived in the town from Ukraine after the outbreak of war now co-ordinates welcome and language programmes for new arrivals.
In school, there needs to be a visible welcome for new arrivals. Signs and communications can be made available in different languages – even better if a parent from a migrant or refugee community can help with this. A regular tea or coffee morning is a good idea, especially if new pupils are arriving at different points in the year. There could be a day celebrating different languages and cultures. Pictorial communication boards (often used by pre-verbal autistic children) are a great resource and can be used by all.
Hi Claire, I really like your ideas here, of looking at what happens when we discard stuff and how it impacts the environment.
Another idea could be a repurposing / junk couture project, with a fashion show, inviting the local community, and highlighting the SDGs and how the children are supporting sustainability.
Goal 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production) aims to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns. Target 12.5 states that we should “substantially reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse” (SGD Briefing Book 2023).
This target fits very well with the work of our student population and our Green Schools Committee to ensure that we all sort, recycle and compost as much as possible.
This year our school partnered with the Re-Turn scheme, thus supporting the ESD to 2030 Priority Action Area 5: Accelerating Local Level Action and ensuring that “enhanced collaboration exists between education providers, local authorities, local communities, civil society organisations and enterprise in ESD as part of lifelong learning, towards achieving sustainability at a local level”. From April to June, parents and children brought in their plastic returnable bottles from home. Funds raised went towards growing and improving equipment to encourage and promote greater physical activity levels, linking to SDG Goal 3 (Good Health and Wellbeing)
Hi Ailish…so true, it is so easy to fall into the trap ourselves of assigning traditional roles to different children. Also, even saying things like ‘boys and girls’ can be difficult. In the RSE course I completed a couple of years ago, the facilitator pointed out that we cannot presume that all the children in our class identify as one or the other. It can be such a minefield!
Even at a young age, gender stereotypes can place limits on a child’s ambitions and aspirations – the roles in which the see themselves, their future achievements, and so on. I remember once asking a group of children in an infant primary school in London to draw a picture of a scientist – what did they think a scientist looked like. Without exception, they all drew men in lab coats surrounded by vials and strange apparatus. Nobody saw a female scientist. Equally, when I asked some children at the senior infant level what they would like to be when they grew up, generally speaking the boys wanted to be soldiers, police officers, footballers and video gamers. The girls wanted to be stay at home mums, nurses, teachers, and influencers.
Development education methodologies can help combat or challenge these stereotypes by providing children with examples of people in non-traditional roles. It can encourage the children to think critically about the ideas they have about gender and gender roles, through discussions about stories, pictures, videos, and by providing opportunities for all children to engage with games, toys, activities that might be seen traditionally as belonging to one particular group.
Hiya,
love the idea of using project work to promote development education. I always think a project fosters greater understanding of and engagement with a topic – the children always seem to have a greater stake in the learning.
In his introduction to the paper, ‘The Role of Global Citizens in Today’s World ’ (Ehigie, 2021), Eric Ehigie quotes Malcolm X on the abuse of power leading to inequality, and the consequent need for change and action to bring about a better world, advocating for the necessity of recognising the commonality of all humans, and of our common goals and struggles. In a world where, at local and national levels, and at an international, geo-political level, there is a shift away from shared goals, from the importance of rights for all, and towards discriminatory practices and ideologies and self-interest, education in global citizenship, and in understanding the power held by individuals and groups to improve our communities, local and global, is vitally important.
In my own teaching role, I would try to embed development education through, for example:
• researching a related area of interest to the children
• debating the topic, arguing for and against a viewpoint
• identifying ways in which we could act to bring about a change/improvement or just engage with the topic and deciding which path / action to take
• carrying out the action (eg a petition, a letter, an awareness campaign, poster competition etc)
At a school level, there could be a development education / global citizenship awareness week where either there could be one particular whole school focus, or different year groups could focus on different areas. Alternatively, it could also be something led by the school council.