Concepts as important as drought, deforestation, climate change, pollution or waste are already part of the vocabulary of more than 10,900 students in Valencian primary schools thanks to Naturalizethe project Ecoembes which was born in 2018 with the aim of bringing environmental education into classrooms, as well as providing courses on the environment.
After six years in which 236 teachers from 176 schools in the Valencian Community have joined the Naturaliza network, the project goes even further and brings an environmental perspective to students for the first time. Early childhood education and special education centers. Thus, teachers at these educational levels who wish to integrate the environment and education for sustainable development in a transversal manner into their classes will be able to do so from the new school year 2024-2025.
To do this, they will have free access to the Teachers’ School and to materials designed specifically to work with students in early childhood education and special education. Thus, to the more than 140 proposals available to teachers in the Naturalization Librarynine more will be added (three per course) for the second cycle of early childhood education and three for special education, all in the form of 30-minute sessions to be developed in class, designed and adapted in duration and methodologies to these levels.
Helena Astorga, spokesperson for Naturaliza, stresses that “education can no longer be understood without an environmental perspective, as it constitutes a key aspect of progress towards a a more circular, green and fair world. At Naturaliza we work to integrate it into the educational sector with the aim that boys and girls have the necessary tools to take care of our planet. In addition, aware that respect for the environment is in everyone’s hands, this new school year we go even further and add early childhood and special education to our curriculum.
A model that integrates environmental education with basic knowledge
Currently, Naturaliza offers three types of proposals for primary education: double sessions to work in class in two teaching periods of 50 minutes, quarterly projects with different sessions scheduled throughout a quarter and proposals for out-of-class courses to replace the classroom space with an outdoor space. This last point is particularly relevant because Naturaliza seeks to bring the environment into the classrooms, but also to bring the classrooms into the environment. To do this, it is proposed to choose an outdoor space such as the patio, the school garden, a park or a natural space near the center where to use the resources of the nearby environment and contact with nature for the development of basic knowledge of the different areas.
In the coming years, the Ecoembes project will continue to enrich this library with new resources and proposals so that teachers at different levels of education have more and more tools to integrate an environmental perspective into their classrooms.
To be part of Naturaliza, simply register for free on the project website.
