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Hi Ashling, I like the idea of a ‘waste free’ lunch campaign as we have a lot of food waste in our classroom since the introduction of the free school lunches.
Climate change is seriously affecting my school’s local area. Storm Debi in November caused major damage to houses and shops and some businesses had to close as a result of the damage. Our school grounds also got badly hit during this storm and many of the trees around the school fell. As a result our school path was blocked meaning we had no access to the pitches which the pupils would go to at lunch time and use for training.
I would get the pupils to explore the effects of climate change further by looking at Storm Debi and the effects it had on our school. I will get the pupils to look at other storms that we had over the last few years and what effects or damage they caused. We will explore what was different about storm Debi and what effects it had on our school community.
Three actions:
Once a week pupils and teachers should try to walk, cycle or car pool to school.Energy conservation in the school. Laptops and lights are constantly left on and plugged in in classrooms when they are not being used. Getting teachers to assign a different pupil each week to be in charge of monitoring when we actually need the lights on in the classroom and making sure devices are only plugged in when necessary.
Reuse paper- I find a lot of pupils ask for a page to draw/doodle on and then I see this page on the floor or in the bin with one small thing on it. I want to make pupils conscious of their single use of paper and start to re-use paper instead of automatically throwing it out.
I like the idea of creating space for pupils to learn about why people become refugees and the challenges they face when arriving in a new country.
The Galway County Integration Team help migrants access services and supports and help them to integrate into the community. They help direct people to services that they may need, such as health care, education, training, English classes, events in the area, information on social welfare supports and employment opportunities.
A good way for our school and students to take action and support refugees would be organising multi-cultural events in our school for both pupils and parents. This would give pupils an opportunity to share information about their culture and explore others. It would give parents an opportunity to meet and talk to other parents, as this can often be difficult at the school gate.
For new pupils in our school we could organise a welcome pack for them. I would get the pupils to come up with ideas of things that they think would be beneficial for a new pupil who may not speak English. Some things it could include would be a map of the school in their language, translations of simple words that they may need to communicate. We could also organise a buddy system if there was other pupils in the school that spoke the same language.
I really like the idea of writing letters to local representatives, this would be a great idea to do with the older classes!
A topic related to the sustainable development goals that children might be affected by at both local and global levels is climate change. I chose this as it is an area that we focus a lot on in our school and children have worked hard to make a difference in our school.
Locally, as our school is in the West of Ireland, we faced a lot of school closures this year due to damage and no electricity. A lot of children also faced damage to their homes and loss of water and electricity for extended periods of time. We spoke a lot about how we experienced climate change first hand.
I would encourage my students to take further action on this area by looking at how the Global South also face climate change and what issues they can face because of it.
I would then get the pupils to research how they can make a different to combating climate change locally, one way would be continue with our Green Schools programme in our school. I would also get them to research how we can help with climate change in the Global South as well.Hi Shane,
<p style=”text-align: left;”>I like this idea of talking about the traditional views people may already have. And also showing the children that men and women can do the same jobs.</p>Gender stereotypes can already be affecting our pupils at a young age and throughout primary school. I have seen this in my classroom last year, it was a class that had mainly girls and only a few boys. I noticed the stereotypes at the start of the year with just simple art activities. We were doing Halloween art where there was a few different options of templates to use, I handed these out just randomly but the reactions surprised me. Some of the boys said they didn’t want the “girly” option and some girls wanted to swap with the boys, whereas a minority didn’t care which they had.
We worked on gender stereotypes after this and how there shouldn’t be a girl or boy option in art or in any subject or area. Even after working on this, there was many other situations like this throughout the year.
Development Education methodologies could help combat these stereotypes. I think educating pupils on the importance of gender equality in our school and in the world will help with this. Giving real life examples of the challenges that girls face all over the world. I would get the pupils to discuss how the children in these examples might feel and what we could do to help. Focusing first on what we can do in our school and then in our community and the world.Hi Maria, I like the idea of linking local and global issues and also using debates in the classroom to work on these issues.
I really enjoyed this piece and it opened my eyes to many ideas that I can bring to the classroom and share with my colleagues.
Developmental education is very important as we have made great progress so far and there is no reason why we can’t continue making progress and breaking down barriers.
I agree with the article where it said that “many number of today’s youth recognise their role as global citizens”. This is very clear in school as I see many of the pupils I teach questioning issues in the world, sharing their thoughts and wondering how they can help or make change. I believe it is very important as their teacher to encourage these questions and ideas even further and to provide the pupils with tools and supports to make changes no matter how big or small.
Sometimes I am asked the question of “How can we make a difference as a 10 year old and who do we need to get to help us?” This is an area that I want to work on with my pupils. A quote I liked from this piece was “viewing our problems of our neighbours as problems of our own”. I want to highlight this to my pupils and spend sometime exploring this with them, figuring out what that means for them and our school community.What I will share with my colleagues is the importance of inspiring all pupils in the school to strive to make change no matter how big or small. “Trying to be the change we wish to see in the world is both accessible and powerful”.