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A Return bottle bank is an great and easy way to help schools recycle more. Thanks for the idea. Its something I will look into for my own school.
Climate change impacts on my area of Lucan Co. Dublin are Increased flood risk, increased heatwaves and extreme weather. Heatwaves pose health risks for young children and older people. More severe storms such as Storm Eowyn cause power outages, risk to life and damage to infrastructure.
Some actions that could be taken by our students, school, local community to make the world a better place and slow down climate change are…
- to support community woodland planting projects, plant some more trees on the school grounds and develop a school garden. Tees absorb C02, cool neighbourhoods, manage surface water and improve air quality. Take part in The Green Schools Flag
- Encourage walking, cycling or public transport to help reduce traffic emissions and improve air quality. We introduced a WOW initiative in our school where children are encourage to Walk on Wednesdays to school to win points for their class.
- Have classroom discussion, school assemblies, research projects highlighting climate impacts in the local area e.g. flood risk map, recent storm damage etc. and engage with South Dublin County Councils Climate Action Plan 2024-2029.
Great idea Ashling regarding making posters and signs for local shops, businesses, parks to let people know that they are welcome. We have done this within our school but I never thought or widening that out to the local community.
Through researching organisations in my area I came across an excellent organisation called Youth and Education Service(YES) for Refugees and Migrants. YES supports refugee youth and unaccompanied minors through youth clubs, study buddy programs, outreach and cultural activities.
Our school students can take action by partnering with the YES education programme and to volunteer as peer mentors, study buddies or helping newcomer students to settle in. Organising inclusive sports and learning about and playing sports/games that the refugee children know. Raise funds or collect essential donations. Celebrate multilingual and multicultural art, music, dance, food traditions and emphasise inclusion.
By collaborating with local organisations such as YES students can make a real difference in welcoming refugees into their community. Welcoming newcomers in such ways would help reduce isolation and foster empathy and enrich school life and challenge stereotypes.
Caroline, I really like your idea of a research project on fast fashion. I think the children would really enjoy this and engage well with it. As well as looking at charity and vintage shops there are also popular sites where people sell second hand clothes such as adverts, vinted, Depop.
SDG 6 Clean water and Sanitation. This is a very important goal as it is essential for ones survival! In many parts of the world children drink unsafe water leading to disease or don’t have access to water to clean water. Everyday hundreds of children under 5 die due to preventable waterborne diseases. It is not alien to children here either though as many areas of Ireland over the past number of years have had to boil or buy bottled water due to unsafe drinking water.
That said many children locally may take clean water for granted and lack the awareness of its global scarcity and may waste water. However learning about SDG6 can encourage responsible use.
As a class project, children could conduct an audit around the school as to were water is not being conserved/ used responsibly e.g leaking taps, running water while hand washing etc.
Gender stereotypes of course affect students from a young age as it is picked up from society and their environment.
Never in my school has there been a male teacher assigned to the junior or senior infants classes. In my opinion it would be great for the children to see a teacher in this role and to show that males can also have a caring nature towards the young children. Gender balance needs to be seen to be believed.
In the Aistear roleplay area I’ve also noticed many children associate certain careers with specific genders e.g. nurses as female, builders as male. Encouraging role-play and drama that further immerse children in scenarios that dismantle rigid gender roles. Choosing stories that break gender norms and offering praise for kindness, creativity, and bravery, regardless of gender can go towards helping with gender stereotypes.
When I taught 6th class (mixed school), people would often come and ask for some “strong boys” to help do certain jobs. To be honest, the gender stereotype never really resonated with me until I just read your comment there. It’s something I’ll be much more aware of going forward now.
I like your ideas of using debates and roleplay as the children will have to put themselves in “the shoes” of people living in such regions and in certain conditions. This might evoke more empathy and the want to take some kind of action. Often I find adults try to shield children from such inequality and issues occurring throughout the world instead of allowing children to see the injustices and how as global citizens we all have a role to play.
I found Eric Ehigie’s paper inspiring and thought provoking. He speaks of how we can easily ‘become distracted from the fact that we are living in a global village that we all have a stake in’. This is very real as we often feel removed from what’s going on in other parts of the world if it is not directly affecting us or we feel helpless to make a difference. We need to encourage pupils to take social action no matter how small it may seem. As teachers we should try to embed global citizenship into daily learning.
Development Education can be focussed on with School Self Evaluation. Debates, class research projects, artwork and integrating it with our Intercultural Day in our school are ways in which to bring Development Education to the forefront in the classroom.
