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Climate change is impacting the weather, leading to extreme weather events such as storms and droughts, and has a knock of effect on locale agriculture, such as failed crops. This is turn leads to a reliance on agricultural imports, with an impact on climate change due to air miles.
In schools, we can implement simple measures to educate the children on climate responsibility, such as waste (reduce, reuse, recycle & composting), water conservation, the need for planting etc. Discrete and direct education on climate change is necessary, but instilling good habits in the children is essential in forming lifelong good habits, and has the benefit of reaching others in the childrens’ household. Children learn best by doing, after all. The green flag initiative is a constructive way to learn and put these habits into action. Furthermore, climate change lends itself well to integration and thematic teaching. There’s endless scope for teaching and learning in this area.
I’d love to see an effort to reduce plastic packing in the children’s lunchboxes (both from an environmental and healthy eating perspective) and agree with Clodagh’s suggestion of a “zero-waste” lunch policy.
In researching this, I was heartened to find a couple of organisations working with refugees in the community of my school – The Welcome Project & The Ecumenical Project Team. These organisations carry out fundraising for displaced individuals but are also committed to providing non-financial support to those who have escaped the trauma of conflict. The groups fundraise both for funds, and “in-kind”, such as services and local knowledge to assist with enroling in schools, register for medical services and to help with the practicalities of integrating into a new community.
The school and pupils can get involved by helping with fundraising, but also in simply being welcoming to any refugees in the community. The Plan lesson plans are ideal for providing students with context and developing empathy.
I must look into the resource “Brothers Across Borders” (https://brothersacrossborders.com/en/) mentioned by Elaine.
SDG 13: Climate Action
This is an area that be introduced to very young children in order to have lifelong consequences. Every individual is affected by climate change and it’s essential to get children into the mindset of awareness and taking responsibility for the planet. This can be achieved through the discrete teaching of the SDG, as well as actively carrying out measures beneficial in achieving the SDG. Schools are already actively involved in this development goal through recycling, composting, water conservation and growing plants, to name a few areas, and it is further bolstered through the green flag initiative. Regarding SD to 2030 Priority Action Area 5, the green flag initiative and measures taken by schools relating to SDG 13 are of benefit to the local community and local authority. For example the picker pals programme benefits the local community as well as educating the children, and their parents, regarding the disposal of litter.
I like Catherine’s idea of student-led action in the community – tree planting and litter picking. I think as well as actively participating in these community-based activities, it’s important to raise awareness that these are being done, through social media.
Gender stereotypes are instilled in many of our pupils from birth, even before then, and accordingly affect both boys and girls from a young age. Stereotypes are promoted by way of toys, hobbies and expected behaviours. Toys are often categorised as boys (eg tractors and balls) and girls (dolls and play kitchens), boys’ hobbies focus heavily on sport whilst girls’ hobbies often involve art and music, and boys & girls are expected to behave according to their gender stereotype. I have seen the stereotypes play out in the classroom. An example that springs to mind is the pressure a group of boys in Rang 1 put on themselves to perform well at maths, and outperform each other, like they had their own club going on, and it was obvious not only that girls weren’t welcome, but they weren’t considered worthy. The gender stereotypes are also obvious in sport, with boys favouring soccer, and it being unusual for a girl to be interested. Fortunately though, I can think of lots of situations where the gender stereotype is not the norm also, and it’s something I promote in the classroom. It’s really important to me that children feel free to “feel” their gender rather than their sex. Empowering them to do so not only helps them but it contributes to their critical thinking and empathy, and the possibility to change unjust situations.
I agree with Clodagh that storytelling, drama, group discussions, and picture books that showcase diverse role models, are good ways of teaching children about gender.
Development education ties in with our role as an educator to develop pupils as citizens, in this case as global citizens. It is an essential part of being human. Development education encompasses a broad range of curricular areas – language, SESE, SPHE, music and art – and therefore has great scope for use in the primary school classroom. It enables the development of empathy, an essential trait in any citizen or global citizen. Furthermore, with children being exposed to so many negative news stories on a daily basis, it is important that aspects of development education are explored in the safe setting of the classroom, and critical thinking skills developed. I approach the teaching of development education in different ways, depending on the class level involved. For the senior classes I tend to teach it discretely, whereas for the junior classes I find it best to integrate, eg as part of a literacy or SESE lesson. I find that the children respond very well to the lessons, and their empathy is obvious. Their critical literacy skills also develop in a very natural way. Often, the children’s innate sense of justice brings out the quietest of voices.
Like Catherine, I have, in the past, used real world case studies with senior classes to teach lessons on the SDG’s. The children have responded particularly well to drama lessons based on same.