The Environment in the Student's Hands
Students of 3rd year Secondary Education at IES Juan Orobiogoitia in Iurreta have become the people responsible for the environment at school through the Environmental Committee.
There is no better way of understanding how you can be environmentally sustainable than applying it to your surroundings and taking responsibility for the small everyday actions that help conserve our ecosystem.
The Juan Orobiogoitia Secondary School in Iurreta boasts a relaxed atmosphere thanks to its location in a rural setting and a number of students that barely reaches 300, from different small towns. With these characteristics, it is the perfect setting for the launch of a workshop in which the students are the people responsible for the environment at the school.
Since its creation in 1996, the Juan Orobiogoitia school had worked on issues of waste, energy, ecological footprint and sustainable consumption within the School Agenda 21, which four years ago earned the Sustainable School award. So, the next step seemed obvious.
This optional workshop, in which the students are the key players and set the pace, with space and time for reflection and decision-making, aims, through its new functions, not only to make them responsible for the environment at school but also to increase their participation and autonomy, being key players. As a result they are able to organise, engage, work cooperatively and make joint decisions.
The initiative is aimed at students in 3rd year Secondary Education and collaboration is voluntary. The participants, with the help of a teacher, decide what, how and when to make the decisions of the Environmental Committee on communication and awareness, the school's agreements on sustainable management, waste, energy, participation in official campaigns, etc.
For this purpose they have different laboratory, kitchen, computer resources... and all the skills in general, especially those that enhance their autonomy and personal and social and civic initiative.
In addition, their task goes beyond the limits of the school and they work in coordination with environmental representatives of the community, to whom they also make their recommendations in the shape of diagnoses, communications or requests to the Town Council.
Orobiogoitia BHI Iurreta ( Bizkaia)
Scientific Bird Watching
The birds in the area and the osprey are no secret to the students of Gautegiz Arteaga and Muxika. The project has been possible thanks to the help of the Bird Center and the students' families.
During the 2006-2007 school year, the Montorre Gautegiz Arteaga and Urretxindorra Muxika (Bizkaia) schools launched a new joint project to study the birds of their area and encourage the use of new technologies under the title 'computing and scientific watching'. As the two schools are small, those responsible decided to involve students of all ages in the initiative.
Adapting the schools, hanging feeders and nest boxes for the first watching sessions, banding birds with the help of parents or taking pictures were just some of the tasks that, throughout the course, allowed different tasks to be performed for information gathering, preparing dossiers, installing a txoko at the school's entrance, presenting these works to other students and even uploading them to the website www.hegaztiakeskolan.com.
For the 2012-2013 school year, Urdaibai Bird Center proposed the development of a new project on the osprey and the teachers did not hesitate. In June of that year, some of the students had the opportunity to present this work to the Leader of the Basque Government and the Minister of Education during the Sustainable Schools award ceremony. At the same time, Urretxindorra and Montorre joined other schools in Scotland, Finland and Italy in the 'Rutlan ospreys' project (www.ospreys.org.uk), which was later joined by schools in Africa. In order to show people from other places the fauna in their area, students from Muxika and Gautegiz Arteaga have developed different documentaries and in the future they will also try to keep in touch via 'Skype' with a school in Gambia.
The families' involvement has also been a key factor in the success of this initiative. Many students (boys and girls) installed feeders at home to carry out a more rigorous watching in order to develop new research work, this time focusing on the birds in their area. Naturally, the work was another resounding success. This work, together with the work on the osprey, can be found on the Urdaibai Bird Center website, www.birdcenter.org, on which both schools have their space.
The project is still making progress and proof of this is that last year it was presented at the Zamudio school (Bizkaia) and they are currently renewing the feeders installed.
Montorre de Gautegiz Arteaga y Urretxindorra de Muxika ( Bizkaia)
