I belong to a generation that used to play outside, sharing toys and games with other children of the neighbourhood, that used stuff from the street to create new games and that didn't need a lot to have fun.
At home we were taught not to waste because resources were limited and, eventhough we had everything we needed, we treated things well so that they could last long. It was a kind of slow times, opposing to the times we are living now: everything is immediate, everything is feeble, everything moves really fast, things can be found in a minute and achieved in a second.
I sometimes miss things from those times (not everything, of course!) like the fact that everything was worthy: a special wrapping paper, a card, a sticker... finding a stamp or a coin from another country was a treasure! I also miss the fact that everything had a second use and a second life. I think it is important to bring those values back to the new generations : to teach them that things can have a second life and that it is not always important to buy things new because you can make things out of other things you can find at home. It is what nowadays is called "boost creativity" but I call it "avoid over-spending and over-wasting, specially in things that you might not need more than 5 minutes".
It was long ago that I heard about the quote One man's trash is another man's treasure and it inspired me to bring its spirit into the classroom and to start developing eco-friendly projects that show how we can save resources and contribute to make our environment a little bit better.
One day -not long ago- one of my students said to me that she thought all this was very good but unrealistic. Her argument was that she and her classmates were just 20 children that could not do a lot for the environment eventhough they were very-very eco-friendly, and it was because maybe the rest of the world did not think in the same way and they could do very little to change that. Just by hearing her speech I realised that I had achieved my goal which, in the end, had been to raise awareness of a group of pre-teens about environment and their present and future role to make things change.
