Education Short List

Everyone does better in their learning when they have an example to follow. And, like so many other parts of life these days, that example comes from the classroom. As a big advocate of saving the environment (really who shouldn’t be?) I have the top 6 ways to help make that example of change start in your classroom.

1. Brown Bag Lunch

a. This concept has a wide reaching impact. Not only are you saving gas by bringing your lunch and not going out for it, but you are more likely to put better, healthier food into your body. By making your students aware of your homemade meals – you are inadvertently teaching them about food, farming, health, local, and pollution.
b. What if once a month you had a group of students bring their lunch and eat with you? Do you think that could provoke change? I do. I did this very thing. My students didn’t always bring a lunch and we didn’t always talk about the environment. Yet, they were always curious about the food I brought from home, which allowed me to express my views on caring for the planet to them.

2. Turn off the lights

a. I haven’t met a person yet who enjoys the harsh white lights that can be found in each classroom. So, I can’t imagine someone would feel denied an hour or two of having them turned off. By doing silent reading, or individual work time, with the lights off – a classroom is changed. People are quieter, a bit more mellow, and you are saving electricity to boot.
b. Turn off the A/C or heat for that matter. The same energy conservation applies to this. Obviously no one wants to be too cold or too warm. But, open up the windows and door for a breeze. Bring a sweater to wear on chiller days, drink water to quench your thirst.

3. Reuse Paper

a. You know what is so cool about white copier paper? The blank backside. Yup, just switch that paper over and you have a whole new side to print things on. In my classroom, our students take reading tests every day. Once that test was logged into the computer, there was a perfectly good piece of paper thrown away. We decided to print the reading reports on the other side. Viola.
b. That paper can also be used to sketch out problems for math, doodle on, write lists or notes. Several uses can be implemented. Don’t throw out a piece of a paper just because one side is used.

4. Classroom/School Garden

a. Go one step further and create a community garden with unused lawn space. There are schools around the country who are giving up unused lawn space to the community at large, so people without a yard can still have a garden. Not only is this a huge way to improve the environment, but it creates a community feeling of kinship with the school and neighbors and it teaches intrinsic values to students.
b. Butterfly and chick project – don’t want to grow vegetables? Alrighty, what about getting caterpillars that grow into butterflies and talk about that life cycle? Or eggs that grow into baby chicks and chickens?
c. Grow seeds of plants, vegetables, or fruit, in your room. This is appropriate for elementary to high school. High school students can study soil, erosion, various soil/planting materials. You can study geology, darwinism, etc.

5. Use reusable containers

a. Lunch bags/boxes, water bottles, and coffee mugs, etc. All of these containers are ones we, as adults, use each day. Why not show our students that we are taking the first step to protect the planet for them, and use these handy dandy containers?

6. Create an in-class recycling project

a. My master teacher loves Coke, drinks a coke every day. And each day she would save her coke can on the back counter, not throwing it in the trash – but leaving it out. I asked her why she did it. She wanted to use it as a conversation starter about recycling. Students were constantly asking her about it, which got them all talking about it, and got the kids interested in it to.
b. No matter what you have in the room, or the age of your students, you can do something just like my master teacher did.

7. Get out of the classroom

a. Alright, I know, it says ‘Top 6’ and this is 7 – but I’m much too much of an environmental nut to stop at 6. Realistically I could go to 12 or 18. But, this one – getting out of the classroom was too important to pass up.
b. Take your students out of the classroom for a lesson. Even if you teach math class, why not teach it outside one day? By getting more (literally) involved with nature, you are allowing your students to see and appreciate it more. Yes, there’s an obvious bonus if you teacher science and life science – but I had college professors who were teaching us about the Holocaust, and we did it outside.

As with all of these ideas, teachers should talk to their students about what they are doing and why it is important to make these changes. A teacher can go further and make their students part of the discussion and figure out how they want to make a change to protect the planet. These learning lessons are all around us. With a touch of time and planning, a teacher can bring the ‘real world’ with all its glories and disasters into the reality of their students. I believe that children and teenagers are just short adults. With that understanding, I believe that my students can examine any real world issue; and that they have a voice with an opinion on each subject.

Taking care of the planet is one of those subjects that educations can bring into focus in their classrooms. From little steps to big projects, to daily tasks and once a semester units – this topic, like a vast many others, has unlimited potential. Just like your students.

http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2010/01/with_help_from_portland_eco-sc.html