INTRODUCING CLIMATE CHANGE KNOWLEDGE

AND ENERGY EFFICIENCY IN SCHOOL

By working in the initiative for Introducing Climate Action into the Program of Bulgarian Schools and Kindergartens, participants join a large network of teachers, educators, specialists, managers, volunteers from all over Europe and from many other countries in the world, who already know for sure and realize that there is climate change, that it is seriously influenced by human activity and that every inhabitant of the planet can personally, individually and specifically contribute to reducing this impact only by treating each of their actions meaningfully.

This initiative is easy to implement and realistic to implement because it is related to the daily lives of children and young people in kindergarten and the school they study at. In it, we specifically deal with the way we use energy in school and kindergarten. The goal is to motivate children in schools and kindergartens in Bulgaria to use energy wisely and to control their actions from the point of view of the "footprint" they leave on the environment, on our planet.

Our expectations are that children from kindergarten to adolescence will develop behavior aimed at saving energy, which in turn contributes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, causing climate change.

What are the practical actions?

1. You will create an energy team - a group of children who become responsible for the way energy is used in school.

2. In parallel with this or shortly before the formal creation of the energy team, you will initiate an energy tour of the school or kindergarten. It will involve school specialists who understand building management, including technical personnel and financial managers. You will find places where energy is "wasted" and you will find out what can be done to improve the situation.

3. You will spend time with the energy team to gain an understanding of what climate change is, how energy production affects it and how energy can be saved in everyday life.

4. You will take a second energy tour of the school, this time with the student energy team, so that the children can make an energy profile of their school.

5. With the children, you will carry out the necessary measurements in the building and learn to analyze and summarize the information.

6. With your help, the energy team will identify energy saving measures.

7. And now – the children in action: to show their classmates, teachers and parents what needs to be done to save energy. We change behavior!

8. You will also gain an understanding with them of some measures that do not depend only on the behavior of the students, but also require small investments and you will share them with the school management.

9. At the end of the school year, you will compare the information on energy consumption with that of the same months of the previous year, calculate the saved energy and financial costs and suggest how to spend these savings.

It is clear that in order to implement these nine steps, it is imperative that we have the necessary preparation, knowledge and support materials.

This is also the goal of this series of educational packages, which are intended for Bulgarian kindergartens and schools - to provide basic information and preparation for the work of energy teams as a form of extracurricular work "after hours" or during playtime in kindergartens.

The results show savings in energy and, accordingly, in financial costs for electricity and heating of an average of 7% per school year. What the activities with children have brought to their civic awareness, leadership skills, breadth of knowledge about the world and satisfaction, we have not yet been able to measure in percentages...

How were these publications created?

The entire series contains one set of textbooks for preschool and primary school, and four for primary school, which are designed for teachers of physics, chemistry, biology and geography. They contain much broader ideas and knowledge than the specific ones on the topic of energy saving, which will be interesting to use in working with children in school and kindergarten.

The authors of the materials are university professors with extensive experience in improving the qualifications of Bulgarian teachers, writing textbooks and textbooks, forming education policies in Bulgaria and most importantly – with a taste and drive for innovations and curiosity about the modern world.

You can download the entire package of materials in pdf format here.