With the adoption of the new UN Sustainable Development Goals fast approaching, delegates at EI's Seventh World Congress have the chance to find out how how to introduce the most important topics to the classroom.
“As educators, you can plant the seeds to make the Sustainable Development Goals happen.” A blog
by Emily Laurie, Project Manger for the World’s Largest Lesson
I would like to take credit for that quote but actually it was said by Richard Curtis, the UK Film maker and campaigner, while recording a short film about the critical role educators can play in informing and inspiring children about the new Sustainable Development Goals. We have developed an initiative to make this easier for educators and truly global in scale - the World’s Largest Lesson. It is for this initiative that I am travelling to Ottawa, to attend the 7th World Congress for Education International. I will be there to discuss the World’s Largest Lesson with the only people who can make it happen: teachers.
The World’s Largest Lesson aims to make sure as many children as possible around the world find out about the new Global Goals for Sustainable Development, the week after they are approved at the United Nations, starting on September 25th 2015.
The initiate is part of a broader campaign, co-founded by Richard Curtis, which aims to communicate the Global Goals to everyone on earth - Project Everyone. Very simply, the new Goals will not be met if people don’t know about them, so this campaign aims to make them famous. Once people know about them they can do their part to make sure they become a reality, including holding their governments to account for the commitments they have made.
In order to help make sure children find out about the goals we have developed some great teaching assets about the goals and have asked all Ministries of Education to agree to share the Worlds Largest Lesson across all their schools. We are also partnering with UNICEF, UNESCO, UNHCR and many civil society organisations to make sure the content is shared far and wide, including to out of school children.
The assets we have developed are: a short animated film (written by Ken Robinson), a comic (made by the same people as Wallace and Gromit!) and a selection of exciting lesson plans which teach about the goals as whole, and some about individual goals. All the assets will be translated into nine languages and will be available to use in their final formats from September 1st.
I am here in Ottawa to ask you as educators to run a lesson, using some or all of the assets, in your school. And then ask your education network to do the same. We want as many lessons as possible to take place around the world over the week of September 27th as every child deserves to know about their global community.
On Sunday 19th I will be running a lunch time session in the Parliament Foyer starting at 12.30, to get your views on the assets, tell you more and critically get you to sign up to be a part of the World’s Largest Lesson! Do come along. There will be a great lunch!
Find more details on our website https://www.tes.co.uk/worldslargestlesson and follow us on twitter for updates! @TheWorldsLesson #GlobalGoals #LargestLesson