Fifty schools and more than one hundred primary school teachers are involved in Ecoembes’s pioneering environmental education program
Almost six thousand primary school students already know that the Region of Murcia is one of the European territories most affected by climate change and that it also suffers from other threats such as desertification and loss of biodiversity. They are also aware of the consequences of the drought and that the high amount of sunshine accentuates atmospheric pollution. These children between six and twelve years old with advanced environmental knowledge study in the fifty schools of the Autonomous Community where more than one hundred teachers have been trained with the Naturaliza project, which for three years has provided teachers from all over Spain with the necessary resources to educate their students in a hitherto secondary or complementary subject.
The Naturaliza program, launched by Ecoembes – the non-profit organization that manages the recycling of waste that is deposited in the yellow and blue containers – offers cross-cutting environmental education in the core subjects of Primary: Sciences of the Nature, Social Sciences, Mathematics and Spanish Language. And it influences active pedagogies through cooperative learning and community projects.
“A few years ago we realized that it was very good to bring recycling to school, but we understood that we had to go one step further. We met children very far from the environment; highly trained in technology and languages but with a lack of nature. And, on the other hand, we saw many teachers who had an incredible desire to advance this topic with their students. So we got down to work with a group of education experts to set up a project that would promote the presence of the environment in the education system, “explains Nieves Rey, Director of Communication and Marketing at Ecoembes, to LA VERDAD.
The Naturaliza project is designed for teachers from any school or teachers who want to participate individually. It also has a school for teachers for training in environmental content and advice on outings and classes outside – the patio, a public park and even nature – and which also prepares proposals for the centers to be more sustainable.
The Mar Menor in the classroom
One of these centers connected to the Naturaliza project is the Miralmonte school in Cartagena, in the Santa Ana residential area, where more than a thousand students have already received practical and theoretical notions on issues related to sustainability and the climate emergency. “We integrate the problem of the Mar Menor and the conservation of ecosystems into the teaching programme. The message has penetrated very strongly in the students, ”explains its director, Joaquín Ruiz Abellán, to this newspaper.
On a practical level, the Miralmonte school is energy self-sufficient; minimizes and optimizes water consumption; has set up recycling workshops; it has installed an ecological chicken coop that contributes to the recovery of the Castilian hen; he has set up insect hotels and nesting boxes for birds; It has a school agrarian cooperative that produces oil with olive trees from its own orchard; and all his students bring lunch in a lunch box and drink from thermal bottles to minimize the generation of waste.
Nieves Rey: «We met children with a lack of nature and many teachers with an incredible desire»
“There is no going back”, says Joaquín Ruiz Abellán, “once the students become familiar with the concepts of sustainable development and responsible consumption. Then they become active agents forever.”
Raquel Marín, coordinator of Naturaliza, highlights “the involvement and motivation of teachers to bring environmental education to schools, which is what makes it possible for environmental values to reach more and more boys and girls throughout the country.”
Naturaliza already extends green knowledge in 17 municipalities of the Region through fifty schools, 109 teachers and 5,986 schoolchildren. In total, more than 1,800 teachers and 81,000 students throughout Spain have integrated the interpretation of nature into the classroom.
#thousand #schoolchildren #Region #Murcia #study #pollution #drought #Naturaliza #project