Local4Global

This Primary school network met for the first time in November 2008 at The Palm House in Haringey. Initial discussion identified that this group are interested in looking at work that brings the local and the global to children in their schools, so that children can make the connections, with a focus on sustainable development and global citizenship, a focus on respecting the local environment and the planet and to enable students to gain valuable Global Dimension skills as well as knowledge.

Angela the lead teacher would like to develop sustainable development work within the Palm House for use with children visiting and in schools, and also with families and the extended community. In particular, the unique environment could be used to explain diversity of plant and animals species and the fragility of the environment, the rainforest and desert habitats, as well as to develop children's knowledge of caring for the environment locally. Such work may well fit in with many agendas, not least Haringey's Sustainable Communities and environmental agenda, community cohesion, ECM and so on.

Jessica would also like to develop these areas and for her class to get a better sense of themselves together as Londoners, British and Haringey children. A group of parents from Earlham are already accessing the Palm House to learn English and in her role as volunteer lead, she sees the value of working across all these agendas too. Jessica is also interested in building up children's Global Dimension skills of empathy and of thinking for themselves. The Palm House has a large focus on volunteer groups from Learning Disability backgrounds and she sees these cross cutting agendas as relevant, engaging and vital for her students, in terms of valuing the local and the global, and of valuing each other.

Maureen was thinking how she could amalgamate all of this into her curriculum and has decided to incorporate Global issues into the whole school curriculum by arranging the school's humanities week on 19th January around the theme Local and Global. They will be using the Oxfam resources to raise the children's awareness of global issues whilst linking it to the children in Crowland and the wider world. Each year group will be covering a different theme, e.g. poverty, water wastage, cotton production, food, etc.

All teachers are planning to visit The Palm House as part of the network activity, to develop their work and resources.

Support and guidance for the group is provided by Lisa Taner.
January 2009

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