Friday, December 5, 2014

share the passion

It is common belief that teachers who are passionate about what they do make a profound impression on their students. When children observe the excitement and ambition they are often lead to curiosity, inquiry, and learning of their own. I recently encountered quite a manifestation of this very thing and it has continued to grow for a couple of weeks now!

I have to admit, I was and continue to be really excited for this "trash free" endeavour I've found myself embarking on. Now I like to share personal experiences (of an appropriate nature) with my class,  so I thought I'd share this with my grade 1's. Already, our school is determinedly raising awareness amongst the children of their own trash disposal means. This often consists of 1. dropping it wherever they happen to be; 2. putting it on the ground or in the goal posts of the soccer field with the intention of picking it up later (unless the wind blows it elsewhere); or 3. throwing it in the garbage can and if they miss, "well at least I tried?" These kids are the future and they need the information and the means to understand how to live in a way that is not detrimental to our planet. We are well past the point of a neutral sort of living; life where everything balances out and the planet can sustain our needs. We need to do something and it has to be big. Sorry, next generations, you've got a rather large task ahead of you. But we can help too, now. We can give them facts. We can give them the means. And this is why I shared my goals with them. I must have been really "passionate" because I have never seen these children as excited and driven as I have these past weeks. The leadership, cooperation, sense of responsibility, and initiative is through the roof!

the provocation

First, we began with a conversation about some past topics from our previous units. Problems that children face around the world, poaching animals, etc. I also showed some pretty bleak photographs of animals who have eaten or become affected in some way by trash. Then, we talked about a perfect world, or a Blue Sky World. What would it look like to us?







 "No throw garbage."




 "If we don't pick up garbage we will die. If we pick garbage we'll live all years."





"My world is a clean world. I don't want a contaminated world."








Pretty clever kids, eh?  To follow up: "How will we get to this place--this Blue Sky World? Is this something we can accomplish?"

 "Yes, but only if the world works together!"  (Heartwarming.)

the outcome

1. A club, complete with clipboard, that was going around the school asking others to sign up and join in the campaign agains littering at school.
2. The idea that we were going to use this trash and turn it into treasure. We can then see these treasures and donate the money we made to help the world!
(I swear this was all them.)

This is not where it ends. The was just the beginning. A group of children are responsible for number 1. The rest of the class is all in for number 2. We are going to do this. It was an awesome idea and we are...

taking action


The first thing we did, was look at other organizations that work for the world. What comprises their teams? What makes them work effectively? After some research, we had our own organization in the making and everyone had a part.








This group made posters to circulate our need for plastic bottles. (You'll see what we're transforming our trash into later.)










This group worked on developing a name and a logo for our team.








This team researched different charities and organizations that would be able to use our money to help others.





the first results










We have a name and logo,
we have  signs to advocate for our cause,
and we had a list of charities, ranging from animal charities, orphanages, a deafblind charity in Brazil, and environmental organizations.


We're on our way to making a difference!

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