009 Environment Education
The environment should be a major concern for all citizens of this planet. We don’t need a Swedish teenager to tell us that the climate crisis is real and that we should all act on it immediately (Thank you, Greta).
This is why the Educator Empowerment Program (EEP) was designed to empower teachers to become champions of the environment, not just in their schools but also in their respective communities.
For sure, the EEP provides teachers with the scientific knowledge required to understand these pressing environmental issues. But even more so, it teaches them how to teach these environmental topics to their students.
We believe that more than being science topics—more than just including environment topics in science classes—environment education should be a lesson in values. And this is emphasized in each and every environment education lesson in our EEP teacher training modules.
As values lessons, we also made sure that there is a lot of experiential learning for the students, since it certainly is the best way for students to learn and adopt these values (or any other values).
Yes, through these EEP lessons, both teacher and student will understand the underlying science behind these environmental issues, but more importantly, they’d adopt the proper values because they are immersed in environment action as part of their lessons.
We feel that it’s a win-win for the environment. On the one hand, we prepare our students—who will of course inherit this planet soon enough—to become better caretakers of the environment in the future. On the other, we already provide them with ways to take action—now—with environmental projects and activities that help immerse them on environmental issues (Moreover, we’ve provided teachers ways to easily integrate these environmental efforts in the different subjects that they teach).
We’ve seen wonderful results in our beneficiary schools up north—Ilocos Norte—wherein students have already shown their commitment to the cause of the environment, thanks to the lessons their teachers have learned from the EEP training modules.
Knowing that public school children in far-flung settings are leading the cause of the environment in their community is certainly a cause for celebration. That their teachers have reported that these students continue to implement the EEP environment initiatives long after these were taught to them is a testament to the effectiveness of our lessons—and of their teachers.
It is our hope that other schools can have a more substantial contribution to the cause of the environment, both in terms of teaching the proper environmental values to their students and making them take action now, rather than later.
It is our hope that we can empower all our schools—and teachers—to become true champions of the environment. Our EEP lessons on the environment—including its environment education-focused component, the Green Schools Project—are our contribution to this effort.