A school under the Sun for future SPARE participants

Authors: B. V. Trishkin, O. G. Kalmykov, L. S. Zhirina, I. V. Skiba

Interpreter:  Bamidele Oni, Founder, Green Impact International

Every year, the coordinators and active teachers of the SPARE program in the Moscow region and the regions of the Central Federal District begin to prepare for the new academic year of the SPARE in the summer. We are holding a contest of innovative proposals on how to make SPARE brighter, more modern, deeper, more interesting, more attractive for all children and teenagers 3-17 years old.

Our first step is to train new teachers and improve the methodological support of secondary school education on climate and energy issues. In June 2021, we developed adapted recommendations for the work of preschoolers and schoolchildren under the SPARE program for children with disabilities, for gender groups, for students of Waldorf and private schools. On July 1-15, we organized and conducted four thematic distance classes, where we trained teachers of these groups of children to work in the SPARE program. We have prepared and sent out new presentations to teachers on the methodological support for secondary school education on climate and energy issues. Teachers used these materials for their own presentations at environmental city, district, rural events, forums, festivals. This is how more than 150 new students, their parents and residents of settlements learned about the SPARE program.

All these materials were used and developed in the talented minds and hands of schoolchildren in 8 school camps in the Moscow, Yaroslavl, Bryansk, Kaluga and Voronezh regions. The introduction to the SPARE program was designed for six days of one-hour classes. Master classes on the use of waste material, theoretical lessons, excursions to local power plants, garbage collection in the forest and on the banks of local rivers, workshops and festivals introduced more than 200 children and teenagers to the issues of energy efficiency, climate and energy, separate garbage and its processing. The students learned about the events of the entire school year of SPARE, got acquainted with the books and posters of the Program, carefully studied the exhibition "Energy-efficient Building". The students themselves called this "immersion" in the SPARE program "School under the sun".

And it really turned out to be a "SCHOOL". After the first introductory classes, the students listened with great interest about the experience of SPARE schools in working with school projects and Energy Saving Day, learned about the promotion of strategies for separate collection and processing of urban and rural waste, about the creation and work of Eco-Advisers and Members of school Energy Brigades. Studying the information about the exhibition "Zero waste and plastic" expanded the imagination of schoolchildren in the production of posters, drawings and decorative installations on the topics of minimizing garbage.

Classes on the development of School Climate Action Plans aroused great interest, but also some difficulties. The teenagers got acquainted with the Climate Plans of other schools in our region. They even tried to create the first model of a Climate Action Plan for their school camp. Teachers and schoolchildren realized that having their own, really functioning, climate plan is modern and mandatory. But not very easy!

Therefore, training sessions on SPARE for new students will continue in the 2021-2022 academic year.