The importance of environmental education

Karen Magnussen Community Recreation Centre, Kirkstone Road, North Vancouver, BC, Canada

This week as a group we were reflecting on the idea of what opportunities do children have to care for their environments? I connected this question to a reading “infusing Caring for the Environment with Our Children, Leaders of the Future” by Kathryn Jackman Murphy. This reading is important as it notes that children are some of the most vulnerable to the negative effects of environmental damage and this harm will be made worse by the climate crisis. These effects are an important reason to teach and provide opportunities for students about how to protect the environment.

This article highlights many of the current environmental issues and provides ideas for how educators can address the issues, both in and outside of the classroom. Some of these ideas could easily be implemented into everyday routines such as classroom plants to increase air filtration and community gardens which can relate to many areas of the science curriculum. There are also opportunities to take this learning to the community with students interacting with politicians and other officials to address environmental issues which matter to them such as stream protectors or neighbourhood pollution issues.

Another area of the article I appreciated was the connection it put into having schools work with parents to address environmental issues as a larger community. Connecting parents to these important issues and how they can impact children’s health is a great way to create community connections and create a whole school response/action which the students can learn from. The article notes things such as book lending libraries set up in conjunction with teachers and parents which allowed for less waste and provided a fun literacy sharing opportunity for students.

The summary of the article sets up the big idea that if we as educators and adults work to teach environmental protection students will bring these practices home with them which will help create a healthier environment for everybody.

Jackman-Murphy, K. (2014). “Infusing Caring for the Environment with Our Children, Leaders of the Future”, International Journal for Human Caring. 18(2). 40-42. https://web.p.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=1&sid=70ae4a04-1aba-4827-b7b9-91afbe917fae%40redis