Schools - Educator's Group
Our Educational greenhouse and organic resources site is at Addison Gardens Allotments
Key Educational Aims:
- Building Blocks to Better Lifestyles for Healthy People and a Healthy Planet
- Parallel Projects with our colleagues in Sierra Leone
Kingston FOE is now looking towards providing educational support to school children for ages around 5 years to 18 years. From our work so far, it appears that there should be more emphasis on the hands on composting and food projects with younger school children, however more advanced issues await older students including our parallel projects with Africa.
The unexpected request for partnership working received from FOE Sierra Leone in West Africa in November 2007, is set to have a profound effect on our educational programme with senior schools where we are looking at international networking with schools on sustainable development.
Shout About Week and other activities that include Climate Change are aimed at key stage 3 (11 – 13 year olds), older children being given more technical theory and advanced projects. Where possible we try to link work in senior schools to the National Curriculum.
In November 2006, for Shout About Climate Change, we had four very successful and enjoyable classroom sessions at Tiffin Girls over a period of two days. Feedback was published in a national FoE Shout About newsletter. In November 2007 KFOE attended Coombe Girls for Shout About activities. Joint Educator's Group coordinator Katie Watson also ran a workshop at FOE annual conference in September, to help other FOE local groups with tips for classroom activities. Katie is on the FOE educational network national advisory group.
Infants and Juniors:
Our seeds project is by we believe so important with a hugely important linkage to our wonderful partners in West Africa is now funded by Kingston Council (grant has been announced July 2008). We have visited one school already in 2008 with project work now underway and attend another at the end of the month. We hope to get eventually a 100% participation in the seeds and wormery project amongst the junior and infants sector, recognising diversity in application.
In September 2006 we visited Coombe Infants School and presented our first assembly to 180 eight-year olds on waste and recycling. We were very pleased with the very enthusiastic response from the children! We provided the school with one of the Council funded Can of Worms wormeries. We provided similar services to Tolworth Infants in 2007. 2007 included visits to schools in Sunbury, Twickenham ('Pupil Parliament' covering various schools),
For younger children we mainly concentrate on food, waste, recycling and composting. We hope to talk to older children in more detail about the wider underlying causes of climate change and environmental degradation, particularly with regard to consumerism. We want to encourage project based work at schools to utlise the distribution networks and existing travel patterns to produce new areas of reuse and sharing of resources.
Kingston FOE now has a broad base of subjects with outline lesson plans for younger children and will be working on more, subject to feedback received, in the coming months! We do however believe that the organics/growing project is a key issue to be worked on with younger children.
Home Composting is a key area in the reduction of waste. In order to achieve an understanding that will influence their future lifestyles we believe that school children should be provided with comprehensive information as to why composting is important and how to compost!
Food Education is a key area in The Healthy Schools initative as well as environmental education through consumerism and encouragement of grow your own. It is important that children are provided with suitable education that suits their dietary needs and that they understand the need to avoid unnecessary processing and additives. Our international partnership with our colleagues in West Africa provides exciting overlaps on food issues where we hope to produce better dietry solutions which can be used by children without gardens in Kingston as well as their counterparts in West Africa. In 2008 we have already begun the process that we hope will lead to children in both countries working on the same project and exchanging experiences.
Good environmental practice goes hand in hand with healthy local food – not processed or transported long distances. This includes education on food miles and seasonal crops. The teaching of grow your own is fundamental good practice in children’s education and adopted around the country.
Supporting healthy local economies - in particular small local shops and more conservation friendly enterprise. Engaging interest is a concern and linking to wider issues such as animal welfare, and educating as to where food comes from are also good healthy eating issues as well as relating to sustainable farming methods and CO2 emissions through 'food miles'. Climate change will affect food supply and there is also the issue of the 'crisis' of choice between farming for food in this country and biofuels; these are important emerging issues that need to be addressed in educational support. These are important issues for West Africa where we are working with our colleagues to encourage Value Added Fair Trade initatives as well as self sufficiency in food.
Other issues we would wish to address are those of consumerism including packaging. The seeds and other growing support will be offered to both Junior and Senior schools and it is likely that different areas to be covered by respective schools will emerge from feedback and participation.
Senior Schools:
In 2006, with four signed up educators all of whom have attended at least one workshop, we emailed schools. We enjoyed our subsequent visit to Tiffin Girls for 4 classroom activities during Shout About Week on Climate Solutions in November 2006. In February this year we visited a school in Sunbury, in Twickenham in March and are talking to other schools in the borough about activities. Our Schools Bulletin is gradually going out to schools around the borough!
Our Allotment Site:
The educational greenhouse which we aim to turn into a resource mainly for schools, was erected in October 2006 and we began fitting it out in Spring 2007. We will keep you posted on progress!
If you are a parent or teacher and would like us to visit your school please contact us in the first instance - PennyKFOE@aol.com
