Eco Education
Mood:  incredulous
Now Playing: Mother Earth Loves You!
Yesterday was another new experience. I was able to observe a lesson given to the ichi-nensei's (first graders)- that's first year junior high here. It was called Eco studies. These two hours were presented to the students by industry people (agriculture to recycling to compost folks). The presenters took turns presenting their individual parts. There were between 15-20 adult presenters. A lot of the lesson was filmed by two local tv crews with portable lights and cameras. This consisted of about 6 crew members. Then there was a group of adults from India observing. They are in Japan for some kind of Environmental agenda and wanted to observe what Nishinomiya is doing in the schools. Nishinomiya has a real dynamic commitment to deal with ecological issues. It was very apparent how strong this committment is. Not only did they have incredible "manpower" behind this project, they also had very effective teaching and presentation methods. This made for an exciting, stimulating (if rather crowded) atmosphere. The kids didn't seem to mind all the adults and attention in the room. They were absorbed in the materials and ideas that were being presented. The kids were sitting at tables of about 8 kids each. There were lots of things for them to touch, feel, smell and explore. For instance, there were bundles of rice with the roots still in tact. Bags of rice kernels - hulled and unhulled. A baggie of the powdered rice hulls that are used for some kind of use that I didn't catch. Then they were asked to guess how many rice kernels are in a bowl of rice. (3,000 kernels!) wow. Then we figured out how many stalks of rice that would take to fill a bowl. They also had the kids explore a shopping bag of different types of food and brainstorm where they came from before they got to the store and what happened to the wrapping and left overs after the food was eaten.

It was amazing to watch the way the whole idea of ecology was presented to these students. I am so impressed with the effort to develop these students into good citizens and stewards of the earth.