Learning at an early age

I have recently started a new job at an elementary school as a teacher’s assistant.  I’ve always worked with children and I have always been really fascinated with how much they like to learn and how much they look up to older people.  In this week’s concept I want to stress the importance of teaching sustainability issues at an early age.  I want to be able to educate children about over consumers and how being an over consumer can affect our environment.  When addressing an over consumer, I want children to learn that an over consumer is one who “uses more materials or products that are unnecessary to use”. 

This concept would work as a class for children during the school year.  At the school I work at, every class has an hour set aside for a “special” which is consider to be free time for either P.E., computer class or the counsel comes in and has an attractively planned out for them to do.  I think an environmental class would be a perfect way to educate children at an early age.  This class could be designed to be a “special” class so that children at an early age could learn the basic knowledge about living a sustainable life and helping out our environment.  

The concept of this class would carry on into junior high and high school level but would actually be consider a required class so that kids would continue to learn about ways we can prevent harming our environment and ways we can help our environment to become more sustainable. 

Fuad Luke states “sustainability is learning about living well but consuming (much) less; it is a social learning process and will involve moving from a ‘product – based well being ‘ to thinking about products, dematerialized product, services and enabling solutions to satisfy our needs”.   This is a great explain on how this class can be developed as children move into junior high and high school.  The basic concepts of living a sustainable life style can be taught during an early age and as they move on to junior high the class could require the children to develop a product and apply the their sustainable life style to the product or their concept.  They can continue to develop their concept as they enter high school and finalize their product for a senior project it they chose too.