Classroom and Community Partners: The Ethics and Morality Inherent in Sustainable Practices

Abstract

The economic, political, and cultural elements that comprise global policies and their effect on individuals, and the greater society of nation/states is the contextual setting to this chapter and the role all educators should acknowledge: the ethical and moral values embedded in today’s classrooms especially in teaching sustainable practices. This chapter examines sustainability, the role of educators in the classrooms, and within their local communities. Community involvement action when bridged to moral valued actions that educators teach and model, as extension of the family, can serve as the bridge for all citizens of planet earth to move to the ethically valued actions that will sustain earth and thereby, the well-being of all future generations.

Appendix

Teaching Activity on the Morality of Sharing with Limited Resources in an Early Childhood Classroom

An activity that met with success in one teacher’s room provided the students with an opportunity to share their rationale for how to share limited resources or commodities. The teacher brought in one sealed plastic bag of individually wrapped taffy candy. If counted singly, the amount would have been enough for each person in the room to have one piece, leaving two extra. At the beginning of the lesson, the teacher made a very big show of having only one bag of candy by dramatically looking for another bag that was never found. Then, just as dramatically, the teacher placed several handfuls of candy on the desks of students who were sitting closest to the area of distribution quickly running out of taffy pieces as the third row of students looked on. With no candy left in the bag, the teacher apologized for not having enough for the entire class reiterating that it was unfortunate that there was no more to be found. As the teacher retells the story, the hush in the room sounded thunderous. The children (10 and 11-year-olds) were faced with the dilemma of fairness. Almost immediately, the children who had been given several pieces went directly to the classmates who had none and shared from their abundance. When it was realized that there were two extra pieces, the teacher found that they had been placed back into the plastic bag. No one took more than one piece of taffy. Using discussion questions that helped the children describe their actions and emotions, the teacher elicited responses that helped the children describe their need for equality and justice. The sense that everyone in the classroom should enjoy the same measure of sweetness was a lesson that held transfer to other areas of the curriculum. Teacher and students understood the need for integrality and transfer from one area to another and more importantly, that each student had a role to play in the universal acceptance of the process. This lesson was built on the premise that students deeply care about each other after they have come to know each other. As students share their family structures, neighborhoods, cultures, and uniqueness, they come to recognize unifying aspects. They wish to meet each other’s needs even at personal loss.

Reprinted with permission of the authors: Schonaerts, C. E., & Papa, R. (2016). Creating magical moments to reveal student learning and universal acceptance of each other. In R. Papa, D. M. Eadens & D. W. Eadens (Eds.), Social justice instruction: Empowerment on the chalkboard. New York: Springer.