Environmental messages are critical, now more than ever. Getting children to understand the natural world and their place in it is of vital importance . If children cannot get to the Lapalala Wilderness School, it is imperative that the message the School imparts is brought to the children…Thanks to the Educators Workshop initiative, this is now possible.
One of the Lapalala Wilderness School goals is to spread a positive environmental message to as many children as possible. After a period of development and discussion, the first Educators Workshop held recently at Lapalala Wilderness School proved to be a resounding success.
School director Dr. Anthony Roberts explains further. “The Educators Workshops initiative came about when we realised that our resources and capacity are finite – we only have limited ability to approach the thousands of children that we have around us. We thought that by empowering educators with knowledge and passion about environmental education, they can take that to more children than we could ever dream of being able to access.”
Teachers from Gauteng and Limpopo Provinces who attend the Workshops are given tools and teaching aids to enable them to bring the natural world into the classroom. This makes lessons fun and easy whilst illustrating the importance of our environment.
Dr Roberts expands on this; “Environmental Education is really about the environment in which you are living. That can vary from a rural area to an urban area. We show how you can take anything out of your immediate environment and construct lesson plans around it.”
“That gives the teachers the ability to pick up a stone or a stick and incorporate that into a maths lesson, a geography lesson or a history lesson. By bringing the teachers out into the Wilderness we are hoping to expose them to the natural environment and in so doing, encourage a bit of passion and excitement in new teaching ideas to take back to their classrooms.”
Through games and activities, a great time is had by all. Education Department Subject Advisor for Natural Sciences, Sindy Radley, reflected on the workshop and what she learned. “These workshops are very important because teachers - in fact the Department - saw Environmental Education as a separate entity. But then attending these workshops, one has seen how it can be incorporated in all learning areas – that’s what I learnt here…”
“I think they are very, very important and there should be more of these courses. I do believe that even the learning area subject advisors from the Department should be involved in this, so that when they go to schools, they are talking the same language as the teachers. And they also will see how important environmental education is. I think it is of utmost importance to our lives, let alone education .”
Teachers from both rural and urban settings attended the workshops. Together, this gave them invaluable time to connect and network, as well as to share insight and gain inspiration from the workshop.
Doris Lekgothoane, a teacher from Mpepule Primary, in Limpopo said, “A special thing for me is the activities we did together. What benefited me most from the workshop was assistance with creative lessons plans; how to do projects and then how to keep the locale and environment clean.”
Anthony Ngobeni, a high school teacher from Alexandra township near Johannesburg couldn’t wait to get back to the children after his particular workshop weekend, “We usually teach these natural sciences in isolation of the environment in which we are. By coming here, we will be able to integrate our experience here to the curriculum and it will be interesting. “We need to go home and teach those kids, because they are waiting for us. We will be doing them an injustice not coming back…”
More of these Teachers Workshops are planned for this year. Please contact the Wilderness School for more information on this new initiative.
