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Yes Michelle, I completely agree with you. Many children would not have the luxury of living beside a coastal area and may be unaware of the many hidden treasures on offer! I would imagine that some children may never have eaten a mussel or an oyster or even handled one – even children that do live near coastal areas! Exploring aquaculture in the classroom is a fantastic opportunity to educate children and provide a multi-sensory experience.
Everyone’s local area is being impacted by climate changes, including warming temperatures, changes in the amount of rainfall and extreme weather events. Rising sea levels is one that impacts on my local area as I live in a coastal area in North County Dublin. Rising sea levels threaten coastal communities and ecosystems and I have seen, over the last number of years, the devastating impact of coastal erosion. People in our community have lost their homes due to coastal erosion. Other changes in climate that impact locally would be the decline in yields of crops for our local farmers. This in turn, results in higher food prices for the consumer. It’s extremely important that the children in our classrooms are aware of this – the impact of climate change globally, locally. This can be incorporated in many areas of the curriculum. It would be beneficial to bring the class to visit these areas and to see, first-hand, the impact e.g. coastal erosion in our community. A maths lesson could analyse food prices of today compared to 5 years ago and examine the reasons for this. This would pave the way for discussion about what we can do to help and how we can do it.
There are several actions that can be taken to make the world a better place and to slow down climate change. For example, leave the car at home more often when possible; reduce energy use (and bills!); throw away less food; reduce, reuse, repair and recycle!
The Development Education modules in this course can easily feed into any school’s Self-Evaluation. Staff can collaboratively identify areas for improvement and take action that leads to improved learning. A Green Schools committee, for example, could be. This would include staff, pupils and the wider community.
Through doing research for this module I discovered that we have 47 Direct Provision centres in Ireland. There is one not too far away from my locality which was established a number of years ago. There are more than 7,000 asylum seekers in Direct Provision centres including over 2,ooo children. It’s not something that I have really explored in the classroom and I would really like to raise an awareness of this among the school/classroom. Our local hotel also accommodates a number of Ukrainian refugees. One of the teenage girls is in my daughter’s year, 4th year. They were organising their TY Ball this year and they were so inclusive – explaining what the event was, inviting her to the invent etc My daughter and her friends even pooled together and purchased a dress for the student. They pretended that they had enough “points” on their account to get a free dress because they didn’t want her to feel embarrassed. She had a wonderful time with the girls that night and it was so lovely to see inclusion among the children. At primary school level, we work hard to include children from different cultures, countries and situations (refugees). Our Educate Together ethos promotes this where we strive for inclusivity and a child-cantered approach.
The buddy system is a wonderful idea and I’m going to suggest it for our school when I go back in September!
For me, SDG 4 “Quality Education” is one of the most important goals. I grew up in a disadvantaged area and I encountered poverty on a daily basis. I always remember my grandmother telling me that education was the way out! She was right! I was determined to get a good education and to go to college – I was the first in my family to do this! It’s such a wonderful sense of accomplishment and I am lucky that, in Ireland, this was achievable for me – education was/is free! I don’t think children really understand how fortunate we are in this country to be able to go to school, receive books, lunches etc; apply to an abundance of colleges/plc courses etc. We really can be anything we put our minds to in Ireland. I would teach this to my students. I would tell them about my own personal journey. We would explore education in other countries and compare what we have to them e.g. Cambodia. Our school is in a partnership with an organisation that supports the education of children/young adults in Cambodia. I would hope that this would help the children to feel empowered to help accomplish the global goal of quality education and to make the world a better place for all. Continuing our partnership with Cambodia and becoming actively involved, engaging the local community, creating an awareness around the differences between education in different countries would contribute to the development of SG4.
Some good ideas there Orla. Our school is actually in a partnership with am organisation in Cambodia. Each year, we are visited by 4 Cambodian students who we have helped to support through school/college. The students stay with different families in our community, from our school, and learn about the student, their culture, their education etc It’s an extremely worthwhile and educational partnership for our school and involves the local community too.
I actually witnessed a classic example of this in the classroom in June! I was the Support teacher for second class and the class teacher had to deal with the following scenario: the children were outside for yard-time and a game of football started. One little boy was the organiser and the co-ordinator of the game and selection of players. He chose all boys!!! None of the girls were chosen! Needless to say, when the class came back in after yard-time, the teacher was inundated with complaints from the girls! Both the teacher and I were extremely surprised at what had occurred. The little boy in question is new to the class and he comes from a different country/culture so whether or not this had any influence him, I don’t know. The teacher had a chat outside with the little boy and he honestly couldn’t see what the problem was! He said “but girls don’t play football!” The teacher herself actually plays on the local soccer team!!!
It was a great teaching opportunity for the teacher and she handled it extremely well. It opened up the whole conversation on gender equality and allowed the children to explore and to challenge stereotypes based on gender.
Development education in the classroom in this instance, enabled the teacher to raise awareness around gender stereotypes and to identify with issues of unfairness.
Hi Colin,
I also notice this quite a bit in the classroom – assigning a task and then the boys and girls taking on very different roles! During free-play too I notice that a lot of the boys gravitate towards the Lego and the construction activities while many of the girls gravitate towards the dolls, dolls-houses, prams etc It never ceases to amaze me and I do wonder how much of this stems from nature versus nurture!
“The Role of Global Citizens in Today’s World” emphasises the need for people to understand global issues and to appreciate both our own place in society/the world as well as the place of others. I loved the line in this article that said “to be a global citizen is to care. It is to empathise.” As educators, this is something that we can foster and encourage in our students. By teaching social justice in our classrooms we can enable the children to identify with issues of unfairness, to make connections and to have a say/voice. We can teach lessons through various subjects/curricular areas e.g. History; Geography; Art etc I work in an Educate Together school which provides even more scope for teaching through the Learn Together curriculum. Strands of the curriculum include Values and Ethical Perspectives, Equality and Justice and an Ethical Approach to the Environment. Children are encouraged to develop an understanding of right and wrong and to look at values such as respect, kindness and co-operation. They are encouraged to develop an awareness of human rights, equality, diversity and social justice. Issues such as climate change, pollution, endangered species etc are addressed throughout the the curriculum. This curriculum complements DE in the primary classroom. Staff and colleagues would regularly engage in training linked into the Learn Together curriculum. We have set up a Student Council which enables the children to have a say in how the school is run/organised as well as a Green Schools committee which strive towards earning various awards/flags for our school. This is a big part of school self-evaluation for our school each year.
