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Why Teach About Environmental Responsibility?

by
Bill Whorton

Growing up I used to watch a show called Captain Planet, named for the leader of a team of “pollution fighters” who would stop environmental destruction around the globe with their super powers. At the end of the show, after the team had saved the day, Captain Planet would look at the camera and say, “The power is yours!” This concept has stuck with me for most of my life, because of how true it really is. In the real world there are no environmental super heroes, there are just people who can choose to do something positive or do nothing.

Why Should YOU Teach about Environmental Responsibility?

It is a widely agreed upon notion that the sooner you start teaching a child to act a certain way or perform certain tasks, the more likely they are to continue to do that action as they grow older. This means the younger children are when they start learning about their responsibility to the environment, the more likely they will continue to want to protect it in the future. What better place for them to learn these skills than in a classroom?

Another reason why you should teach environmental responsibility is due to the standard question, “What did you learn in school today?” This question is asked daily by parents and guardians of the students that you teach. Not only do the parents want to know what their children are learning, but the students are eager to share with their parents! If you teach your students that when their parents do not use lawn fertilizer properly or during the right season, it can negatively affect water bodies in their area, they will go home and tell their parents “I learned that lawn fertilizer can hurt the plants and animals living in the water near our house, and that we should only use it in the fall.” By default, you are perhaps educating older generations and changing their behavior.

The Chesapeake Bay is a great example to use when demonstrating the impact one person can have on the environment. For example, many people including young students do not know that there are 7 different jurisdictions (6 states and the District of Columbia) in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, and although it may not seem possible, the actions of what people do in headwater states like New York and West Virginia affect the health of the Chesapeake. There are over 16.6 million people living in the watershed, and it will be impossible for the Bay to be restored if everyone does not do their part.

How Can YOU Teach About Environmental Responsibility?

Teaching your students to be environmentally conscious is also something that is very easy to do and will require little to no effort to implement. One way is through how materials are handled in the classroom. Make sure you have different colored bins for different kinds of recycling, and you review what materials should be grouped together.

A great exercise to do with your students to demonstrate the impact one person can have is to give each student a couple pieces of trash (bottles, paper, pencils) and have them form a winding line to represent a stream. Have the first student take one of their pieces of trash and pass it to the person next to them. The person next to them will pass their trash plus the one they just received to the person next to them and so on. The last person in the line will end up with all the trash. This is a simple way to model how trash is carried from higher upstream, to people who live farther downstream, just like the Chesapeake Bay.

Here are some links to help you incorporate environmental responsibility into the classroom: