Incorporating Environmental Awareness and Protection in Teaching English Language Arts to Second Graders

Abstract

In this unit, environmental care and protection will be incorporated in the daily lessons of English Language Arts, particularly in the lesson about verbs, to make the students aware of the importance of taking care of the planet as they interact with their immediate home and school community and as they perform their rituals, dances and practices. Environmental care and nurturance should be a common base point for everyone, whatever culture, belief and practices a person has or to whatever clan he or she belongs. And though the second graders, considering that they come from different communities and clans, also have different languages. However, the things that they do daily at home and in school, which directly or indirectly affect the environment can be their common way of expressing their care and concern for their ’common home’, the earth. In performing daily obligations, it is most of the time the environment which is abused, taken for granted and neglected. Communities can only be empowered if people live in a safe, green and clean environment. The more people take care of our environment, the more the environment becomes a habitable home (Courier, 2021). Alongside that, it is a universal understanding that life is sacred and it comes from the land, which means to say that Mother Earth is divine. Native Americans operate under the conviction that all objects and elements of the Earth-both living and nonliving-have an individual spirit that is part of the greater soul of the universe (Faust, 2019). In addition, Professor Bryan Brayboy in 2023, stressed that in the indigenous knowledge systems, cosmology reminds us of our origin. And as such, the land is not only the place where we live but most importantly, a living memory and a lived experience that tell stories of our relationships with other living and nonliving components.