Sustainable Development

Student teachers must

• Embrace locally and globally the educational and social values of sustainability, equality and justice and recognise the rights and responsibilities of future as well as current generations.
• Value as well as respect social, cultural and ecological diversity and promote the principles and practices of local and global citizenship for all learners.
• Demonstrate a commitment to engaging learners in real world issues to enhance learning experiences and outcomes, and to encourage learning our way to a better future.

(Standard for Provisional Registration with GTCS, benchmark 1.1)

During your eight serial days, you should gather this information, by observing, speaking to class teachers and other colleagues, interacting with learners, reading school policies, and any other appropriate activities. You should consider and identify the most appropriate ways(s) to record this information.

• Mapping of school grounds/area.
• Evidence of existing engagement with sustainable education within the school such as garden area, recycling bins, litter picking ‘wardens’, bird boxes, and so on.
• Consideration of actual play space for children and its suitability.
• Discussion with children on these aspects of sustainable education.

 

After observing the environment and having discussions with the children and staff around the school, as well as having a look at school documents and policies in relation to sustainable education, I have learned about and seen the activities the school carries out for the children, gathered information about the resources the school uses and been shown first-hand how the school promotes sustainable development within education.

Firstly, the children were able to tell me a lot about what they do to be sustainable within the school. They informed me that they are an eco-school and that they have achieved the green flag award. They told me that they enjoy learning about the environment and what they can do to help.

The children informed me about their eco committee and what roles they play in it. The committee is mostly all child led with minimal adult involvement. The children are responsible for accessing their environment and coming up with ways to improve it. They hold meetings at least once every two weeks and aim towards maintaining/ improving areas and aspects within their school. For example, the garden area, recycling and maintaining the bug hotels and grassy areas. The eco committee involve the whole school and give the whole school a voice in what happens in the running of these areas and other aspects of sustainability within the school.

Secondly, the children took me on a tour around the school where they showed me the play areas, places where they plant flowers and some small vegetables and other various areas such as litter bins, bird boxes and recycling bins. There are also litter pickers at lunchtime, who work in rotation each term to help the janitor pick up stray litter around the grounds of the school.

The children then showed me around the infant area of the school first. Here, there is a garden area which promotes messy play, there are different materials situated here for the children to experience, such as, leaf covered areas, grass, bark/woodchip and mud/soil. There is also a garden shed and hedge tunnels for the children to learn about the outdoors as well as a bug hotel to learn about insects and small creatures.

Next, the children showed me where they play during interval and lunch time. The play space is very vast and diverse for the children. There is both large concrete and grassy areas fir the children to play on. All children have access to the play areas. The concrete areas are where the children usually play sports and games. The staff around the school also told me of the trim trail that the school has around the concrete. However, this is very popular with all classes within the school and the school is very big. Because of this, there is a timetable to ensure all classes have time to use the trim trail. In my personal experience within the school, I haven’t seen many children playing on the grass. I didn’t find out why this was the case. The only reason I can assume is the weather making the grass slippery and sludgy for the children to play on which puts them off playing on the grass.

Lastly, the children showed me around the other parts of the school. They showed me the litter bins, both in and outside of the school. As well as this, they told me that every class has a blue recycling bin which the children empty into a bigger paper bin twice a week.

In the dining area, the children have a general waste bin and a food recycling bin. The school promotes two ‘eco warriors’ each term and they are in charge of making sure that the children are disposing of their food and other material correctly within the dining hall.

Throughout the school, the children were eager to tell me more about what they do. They told me that they enjoy keeping the school tidy as it looks better and its better for the environment as there is not any rubbish lying around. They also like the idea of planting some of their own vegetables and plants because it is fun to do and they taste and look very nice. Some classes have the opportunity and responsibility of growing and maintaining small plants within their classroom such as cress and rapeseed.

Whilst on my serial days, the class also went on a trip related to sustainable development where they were learning about energy and growing plants for food and crops. The children were so engaged with the activities and were keen to answer any questions about the topics. After the trip, I also asked what they had learned and if they had enjoyed the trip. The majority of the class said that they were more informed about the topics and could realize why learning about these topics were important. For example, pupils said that they know now that energy won’t keep coming unless we are careful with it. They now had a better understanding of how we get electricity and energy etc. The class said that they want to learn more about this type of stuff and carry out more of these activities (indoors and outdoors) in school because it was fun and exciting.

Here is a map of the school grounds, this was created using Digimap.