The Big Green Bus at Primary Schools

I've just been looking at the delightful feedback we received from children at Eastnor Primary School, near Ledbury in Herefordshire, who we visited just before we put the bus to bed for the winter. This has prompted me to look back over previous newsletters to see if I have ever written anything about the way we work when we visit primary schools, and apart from summing them up very briefly, it seems I haven't written much about these visits. So, I thought I'd write an article about the way we conduct these days and include some photos of the recent visit to Eastnor, alongside some of the lovely write-ups from the children who are members of their ‘Eco-club'.

We always tailor bus days to suit the events we attend - and with schools this means extra careful planning and timing so that as many children as possible can benefit from what we offer on the day. We have limited space, but can accommodate a full class of over 30 children by splitting them into two or three groups and rotating these groups so that they each spend time upstairs, downstairs and outside. Depending on the size of the school and how many classes we need to fit in, the children can spend between 12 and 20 minutes in each area.

Our workshops are aimed at Year 3 and above, but if time permits we always try to fit in a short tour for Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 children, so they don't feel left out. We have found children of this age are very interested in the bus itself, but they don't benefit much from the information contained within... in fact they usually ask us where we're going to take them and when we're leaving because they think they are about to go on a school trip!

Most of the schools we have visited this year have been quite large, with more than one class in each year, but Eastnor Primary is a small village school, so not only did we have a nice relaxing set-up at the beginning of the day (it's usually quite manic!), but we were also able to spend up to an hour and a half with each group of children which was wonderful.

To avoid any safety issues, we always try to arrive at the school gate as soon as parents have left. This way we have space and time to manoeuvre into the allocated space (a position which has always been decided, and hopefully cordoned off in advance) whilst the children are in registration. Depending on the timings of the school day we are usually ready to start our workshops somewhere between 9.30am and 10.00am.

Whilst our crew set things up outside (which involves, amongst other things, pulling out the awning, erecting the little wind turbine, setting up the pedal powered smoothie maker and connecting the solar PV panel), I sometimes do a school assembly to explain what the purpose of the bus is. This gives us extra time to concentrate on the subjects we cover in the workshops when the children come out to the bus.

One of the most difficult things has been deciding which areas to concentrate our workshops on. There are so many things we'd like to cover, but only a limited amount of time to cover them... and of course the attention span of the children is limited. So, unless we have a specific request from the school to cover a particular area, we usually concentrate on ‘food', ‘bees', ‘energy', ‘recycling' and ‘walking/biking to school'. We use various props for our workshops. We have a fabulous food card game that has been designed by one of our volunteers, some lovely bee hotels made from recycled wood, various beekeeping items, solar powered wooden toys, items made from re-used materials and a pedal powered smoothie maker. We leave the smoothie maker till the very end of the session when the whole class are together - and the children always love it when their teachers have a go!

School events are hard work, and we need to keep our energy levels up, so we close the bus during the lunch period. We open again as soon as lunch is over and carry on till just before the final bell. Unfortunately, we are not able to keep the bus open at the end of the day for parents because the sheer numbers would cause health and safety issues, so we pack up, and then wait till the last of the children have been collected from school before leaving.

School days are immensely rewarding! Children seem to have an innate sense of what is right and wrong and have not yet ‘grown away from nature' in the way that many adults have. When they hear about the plight of the bee they want to help... when they understand the impacts their choices can make on children on the other side of the world they are often very moved to look again at their choices... and when they understand how easy it is to save energy and water they can't wait to pass this information on to their parents. They listen, they ask amazing questions... and they often teach us as much as we teach them.

I believe the visits we make to schools are extremely important, not only because of the children we reach, but because these children then go home and remind their parents that it's up to us all to try to make changes so that we can (to borrow Ghandi's words) ‘be the change we wish to see in the world'.

Brigit

P.S. Schools have limited budgets and many are not able to afford the booking cost of the bus. If you would like to help make it possible for us to visit more schools, please make a donation via the BGI website and email us to let us know that you would like your donation to be used specifically for a school bus visit.

Thank you!

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