32
Eco learning at Damers First School by Edd Moore When I first joined Damers School eight years ago, there wasn’t a huge level of environmental awareness across the school. The children did not know about recycling or how to look after their environment, they also did not know where their food came from – they just thought it came from the supermarket! I saw great potential to embed the Eco Schools programme across the school. Eco-Schools is a global programme engaging 19.5 million children across 67 countries, making it the largest educational programme on the planet. There are now 20,000 schools in England signed up to Eco Schools. Every class at Damers First School has an Eco ambassador who forms the Eco Crew. Each class makes a termly pledge to help animals, people or the environment giving every child the opportunity to have a voice and speak passionately about environmental issues they believe in. Pledges have included encouraging the community to feed the birds, making Dorchester litter free and encouraging other schools to be involved, encouraging businesses to reduce their single use plastic and devising a Litter Policy for other schools to use in Dorset with Litter Free Dorset. Children at the school have given up their weekends to lobby local businesses on environmental issues. Some of the children even asked for litter pickers for Christmas! The school has become a leading force on environmental issues with many other schools across Dorset and the rest of the UK wanting to come and see the school and speak to children about what they have learned and see their environmental work. The Eco Schools programme has had a huge impact on the children’s learning across the school. They
PrimaryFirst
have gained confidence and they believe that what they are doing will make a real difference to the society they live in They have the passion and confidence to stand up in front of a room full of people and talk about the changes they would like to see. They are very determined, and they do not take no for an answer. The skills they are developing are skills they will need as adults. I would like Sustainability to be compulsory in schools, because for me, children learning about the environment is just as important as literacy and numeracy. Many organisations want to work with us on our environmental campaigns linked to work the children have already done. City to Sea, Refill HQ visited after they had heard about the work the children had done in signing up businesses to Refill Dorset. They interviewed the children and put a video together to inspire other towns across the UK to get on board with Refill. The school has become an ambassador for Delphis Eco, an ecological cleaning company whose products the school has been using for 4 years. The children speak to other schools about the product getting them to use it. They also sell the product to parents, staff and businesses. They have been filmed speaking about it and the CEO of the company, Mark Jankovich, has visited the school to speak with the children about how he can improve his product. Two of the quotations on the new bottle were written by the children and one of the school cleaners. The children have been active in getting the local community to recycle - printing cartridges, pens, biscuit wrappers, crisp packets, soap dispensers, baby pouches, helping the environment and raising £1500 towards a bird hide and wildlife area. The school’s
