La Lomloe, a recognition to the pioneers of environmental education

The climate crisis threatens the conservation and survival of our planet and will continue to increase if we do not remedy it. Nelson Mandela said that “education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world”, a statement that is especially important in this context of climate emergency. From the schools, we, the teachers, are aware of this problem and aware of the power of change in education. When we decided to be teachers, we did so with the clear vocation of transmitting knowledge and values ​​to new generations that contribute to improving society. And we believe that, on this path, environmental education is a key element to achieve it, because it awakens their imagination, encourages their creativity and creates awareness in them to understand how their decisions and actions affect the environment.

For all this, many of us have spent years claiming the need to integrate environmental education into the daily life of students, aware of the importance of instilling in the youngest citizens values ​​of respect and care for nature and of providing them with the necessary tools to act and keep the environment healthy and sustainable for the future.

Until now, choosing this path and incorporating content that addresses the climate emergency into the curriculum was, above all, a personal decision. But, at this beginning of the course, the entry into force of the new Education Law (Lomloe) has meant a great advance. Finally, in line with the United Nations 2030 Agenda, education for sustainable development is going to be a reality in all classrooms. News that we have received with real enthusiasm!

Because, as the law advocates, the educational system cannot be oblivious to the challenges generated by climate change and educational centers must be a space of respect and care for the environment where contact with nature, recycling and other behaviors are encouraged. that promote sustainability.

Instilling this respect and raising awareness in our students can happen by promoting a healthy breakfast with local foods and studying the La Mancha landscape with zarzuelas as representative as La Rosa del Azafrán, as we have done at the CEIP Federico Romero in La Solana (Ciudad Real). You can also promote contact with nature, acquire knowledge through experience or learn about the diversity of habitats by creating an open classroom, as we do at the CEIP Ortega y Gasset (Ceuta). In the same way that it can be conveyed that recycling should be a daily gesture through playful projects and workshops that facilitate the generation of this habit in children, as we have been doing for several years at La Milagrosa School in Oviedo (Asturias).

That’s right, in our case, we had been working for many years to incorporate this education into the classroom, with the firm conviction that environmental education is something that should accompany us throughout our lives. But not all teachers have the necessary tools to carry out the greening of classrooms. The new Lomloe law highlights another of the claims that we teachers who have been working on the subject for years have asked for: the need to provide teachers with training and resources to ensure that the entire teaching staff is involved. Something that, for us, programs such as Naturaliza, the Ecoembes environmental education project, have provided us with, through training and a library with more than 2,000 resources to be able to integrate an environmental perspective into all subjects.

In short, with the new law we received the commitment from the institutions to include, once and for all, environmental education in the educational system. It also represents a certain acknowledgment of the work we have been doing in recent years and our personal commitment to commit to this path and to be “green teachers”. Now the exceptional and optional becomes mandatory and is driven by law. And we, the “pioneers”, cannot be happier because all our colleagues and colleagues in the profession are accompanying us on this path. But, above all, because together we can contribute to educating the little ones in the importance of caring for and respecting the environment.