Making a Song and Dance act
To be a good educator you need to be an entertainer. When we are interested in the subject matter, we are more likely to learn and retain it - intrinsic motivation.
You can take go and visit a farm, see some cows, collect eggs, see some vegetables growing, pat a baby animal. But if you want to really reach children, their parents and loved ones, there must be some interactive entertaining elements that capture and hold their interest. I’ve had some large groups visit the farm…30 or 40 school children at once and family groups of 10 or more. For them to walk past a paddock with some Black Angus feeding and be told that’s what you eat – well it’s a bit all ho-hum and they are more interested to know what fish are in the dam they can’t even see. However, if the same groups of children are shown a McDonald’s burger wrapper they recognise, then shown a KFC wrapper and then see a rooster go past riding on a Black Angus bull’s back, then they are receptive enough to understand that is a ‘double decker ‘ burger and that is what they eat. Mind you, all to their immense shock but none the less, the job of education is complete.
I had a family group with 7 children visit. The parents were concerned their children were just not interested in vegetables or fruit, and as a result were poor eaters. I like to play a game with people in the vegetable garden – what vegetable is that? I got these kids digging up carrots, picking snow peas, finding strawberries, pulling apart ‘little trees’ - broccoli, washing and eating them raw. Then a trip through the orchard saw the kids picking their own mandarins and one little fella even picking and eating lemons. Job done! The kids had a new interest in food and at least had expended their choices and were willing to try new things. They left with their mini-bus full of fresh vegetables, fruit and eggs I happily donated.
Although I have reached my goal of self-sufficiency, my greater purpose is now education. Some 99.9% of people will never choose to become small farm, self-sufficient or live alternatively off the grid. A few percentage points more will become farmers of some sort, but less and less of the world’s food supply will come from what is now the traditional ways of farming – things grown in soil and animals roaming free.
My role as an educator is to give children, through their families and schools, informed choices when they come to choose their food and to at least question and investigate the process by which food is presented for their purchase.
You can take go and visit a farm, see some cows, collect eggs, see some vegetables growing, pat a baby animal. But if you want to really reach children, their parents and loved ones, there must be some interactive entertaining elements that capture and hold their interest. I’ve had some large groups visit the farm…30 or 40 school children at once and family groups of 10 or more. For them to walk past a paddock with some Black Angus feeding and be told that’s what you eat – well it’s a bit all ho-hum and they are more interested to know what fish are in the dam they can’t even see. However, if the same groups of children are shown a McDonald’s burger wrapper they recognise, then shown a KFC wrapper and then see a rooster go past riding on a Black Angus bull’s back, then they are receptive enough to understand that is a ‘double decker ‘ burger and that is what they eat. Mind you, all to their immense shock but none the less, the job of education is complete.
I had a family group with 7 children visit. The parents were concerned their children were just not interested in vegetables or fruit, and as a result were poor eaters. I like to play a game with people in the vegetable garden – what vegetable is that? I got these kids digging up carrots, picking snow peas, finding strawberries, pulling apart ‘little trees’ - broccoli, washing and eating them raw. Then a trip through the orchard saw the kids picking their own mandarins and one little fella even picking and eating lemons. Job done! The kids had a new interest in food and at least had expended their choices and were willing to try new things. They left with their mini-bus full of fresh vegetables, fruit and eggs I happily donated.
Although I have reached my goal of self-sufficiency, my greater purpose is now education. Some 99.9% of people will never choose to become small farm, self-sufficient or live alternatively off the grid. A few percentage points more will become farmers of some sort, but less and less of the world’s food supply will come from what is now the traditional ways of farming – things grown in soil and animals roaming free.
My role as an educator is to give children, through their families and schools, informed choices when they come to choose their food and to at least question and investigate the process by which food is presented for their purchase.
I do that for FREE on my small farm and as much as I can make that a fun and enjoyable experience with some entertainment from myself and my animals – well at least I find it funny.
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